These manuscripts are so full of word pictures of the treatment of disease that one feels if one were transported back to those days it would in most cases be possible to tell at a glance the “cures” various people were undergoing. Let us visit a Saxon hamlet and go and see the sick folk in the cottages. On our way we meet a man with a fawn’s skin decorated with little bunches of herbs dangling from his shoulders, and we know that he is a sufferer from nightmare.[23] Another has a wreath of clove-wort tied with a red thread round his neck. He is a lunatic, but, as the moon is on the wane, his family hope that the wearing of these herbs will prove beneficial. We enter a dark one-roomed hut, the dwelling of one of the swineherds, but he is not at his work; for it seemed to him that his head turned about and that he was faring with turned brains. He had consulted the leech and, suggestion cures being then rather more common than now, the leech had advised him to sit calmly by his fireside with a linen cloth wrung out in spring water on his head and to wait till it was dry. He does so, and, to quote the words with which nearly all Saxon prescriptions end, we feel “it will soon be well with him.” Let us wend our way to the cobbler, a sullen, taciturn man who finds his lively young wife’s chatter unendurable. We find him looking more gloomy than usual, for he has eaten nothing all day and now sits moodily consuming a raw radish. But there is purpose in this. Does not the ancient leechdom say that, if a radish be eaten raw after fasting all day, no woman’s chatter the next day can annoy? In another cottage we find that a patient suffering from elf-shot is to be smoked with the fumes of herbs. A huge quern stone which has been in the fire on the hearth all day is dragged out, the prepared herbs—wallwort and mugwort—are scattered upon it and also underneath, then cold water is poured on and the patient is reeked with the steam “as hot as he can endure it.”[24] Smoking sick folk, especially for demoniac possession, is a world-wide practice and of very ancient origin. There is no space here to attempt to touch on the comparative folk lore of this subject. Moreover, fumigating the sick with herbs is closely akin to the burning of incense. Even in ancient Babylonian days fumigating with herbs was practised.[25] It was very common all through the Middle Ages in most parts of Europe, and that it has not even yet died out is shown by the extract from The Times given below.[26] I have purposely put in juxtaposition the translation of the ancient Babylonian tablet and the extract from The Times.
It is noteworthy that not only human beings, but cattle and swine were smoked with the fumes of herbs. In the Lacnunga, for sick cattle we find—“Take the wort, put it upon gledes and fennel and hassuck and ‘cotton’ and incense. Burn all together on the side on which the wind is. Make it reek upon the cattle. Make five crosses of hassuck grass, set them on four sides of the cattle and one in the middle. Sing about the cattle the Benedicite and some litanies and the Pater Noster. Sprinkle holy water upon them, burn about them incense and cotton and let someone set a value on the cattle, let the owner give the tenth penny in the Church for God, after that leave them to amend; do this thrice.”—Lacnunga, 79.
“To preserve swine from sudden death sing over them four masses, drive the swine to the fold, hang the worts upon the four sides and upon the door, also burn them, adding incense and make the reek stream over the swine.”—Lacnunga, 82.
Herbs used as amulets have always played a conspicuous part in folk medicine, and our Saxon ancestors used them, as all ancient races have used them, not merely to cure definite diseases but also as protection against the unseen powers of evil,[27] to preserve the eyesight, to cure lunacy, against weariness when going on a journey, against being barked at by dogs, for safety from robbers, and in one prescription even to restore a woman stricken with speechlessness. The use of herbs as amulets to cure diseases has almost died out in this country, but the use of them as charms to ensure good luck survives to this day—notably in the case of white heather and four-leaved clover.
There is occasionally the instruction to bind on the herb with red wool. For instance, a prescription against headache in the third book of the Leech Book enjoins binding waybroad, which has been dug up without iron before sunrise, round the head “with a red fillet.” Binding on with red wool is a very ancient and widespread custom.[28] Red was the colour sacred to Thor and it was also the colour abhorred not only by witches in particular but by all the powers of darkness and evil. An ancient Assyrian eye charm prescribes binding “pure strands of red wool which have been brought by the pure hand of ... on the right hand,” and down to quite recent times even in these islands tying on with red wool was a common custom.
Besides their use as amulets, we also find instructions for hanging herbs up over doors, etc., for the benefit not only of human beings but of cattle also. Of mugwort we read in the Herbarium of Apuleius, “And if a root of this wort be hung over the door of any house then may not any man damage the house.”
“Of Croton oil plant. For hail and rough weather to turn them away. If thou hast in thy possession this wort which is named ‘ricinus’ and which is not a native of England, if thou hangest some seed of it in thine house or have it or its seed in any place whatsoever, it turneth away the tempestuousness of hail, and if thou hangest its seed on a ship, to that degree wonderful it is, that it smootheth every tempest. This wort thou shalt take saying thus, ‘Wort ricinus I pray that thou be at my songs and that thou turn away hails and lightning bolts and all tempests through the name of Almighty God who hight thee to be produced’; and thou shalt be clean when thou pluckest this herb.”—Herb. Ap., 176.
“Against temptation of the fiend, a wort hight red niolin, red stalk, it waxeth by running water; if thou hast it on thee and under thy head and bolster and over thy house door the devil may not scathe thee within nor without.”—Leech Book, III. 58.
“To preserve swine from sudden death take the worts lupin, bishopwort, hassuck grass, tufty thorn, vipers bugloss, drive the swine to the fold, hang the worts upon the four sides and upon the door.”—Lacnunga, 82.
The herbs in commonest use as amulets were betony, vervain, peony, yarrow, mugwort and waybroad (plantain). With the exception of vervain, no herb was more highly prized than betony. The treatise on it in the Herbarium of Apuleius is supposed to be an abridged copy of a treatise on the virtues of this plant written by Antonius Musa, physician to the Emperor Augustus. No fewer than twenty-nine uses of it are given, and in the Saxon translation this herb is described as being “good whether for a man’s soul or his body.” Vervain was one of the herbs held most sacred by the Druids and, as the herbals of Gerard and Parkinson testify, it was in high repute even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It has never been satisfactorily identified, though many authorities incline to the belief that it was verbena. In Druidical times libations of honey had to be offered to the earth from which it was dug, mystic ceremonies attended the digging of it and the plant was lifted out with the left hand. This uprooting had always to be performed at the rising of the dog star and when neither the sun nor the moon was shining. Why the humble waybroad should occupy so prominent a place in Saxon herb lore it is difficult to understand. It is one of the nine sacred herbs in the alliterative lay in the Lacnunga, and the epithets “mother of worts” and “open from eastwards” are applied to it. The latter curious epithet is also applied to it in Lacnunga 46,—“which spreadeth open towards the East.” Waybroad has certainly wonderfully curative powers, especially for bee-stings, but otherwise it has long since fallen from its high estate. Peony throughout the Middle Ages was held in high repute for its protective powers, and even during the closing years of the last century country folk hung beads made of its roots round children’s necks.[29] Yarrow is one of the aboriginal English plants, and from time immemorial it has been used in incantations and by witches. Country folk still regard it as one of our most valuable herbs, especially for rheumatism. Mugwort, which was held in repute throughout the Middle Ages for its efficacy against unseen powers of evil, is one of the nine sacred herbs in the alliterative lay in the Lacnunga, where it is described thus:—