The Old English Herbals

by Eleanour Sinclair Rohde

One cannot read Bald’s manuscript without being struck by his remarkable knowledge of native plants and garden herbs. We are inferior to our continental neighbours in so many arts that it is pleasant to find that in the ancient art of gardening and in their knowledge of herbs our Saxon forefathers excelled. It has been pointed out by eminent authorities that the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, a far larger number of plants than the continental nations. In the Herbarium of Apuleius, including the additions from Dioscorides, only 185 plants are mentioned, and this was one of the standard works of the early Middle Ages. In the Herbarius of 1484, the earliest herbal printed in Germany, only 150 plants are recorded, and in the German Herbarius of 1485 there are 380. But from various sources it has been computed that the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, at least 500 plants.[6] One feels instinctively that the love of flowers and gardens was as deep-rooted in our ancestors as it is in our nation to-day, and though we do not know exactly what they grew in their gardens—which they called wyrtȝerd (literally, herb-yard)—we do know that the marigolds, sunflowers, peonies, violets and gilly-flowers which make the cottage gardens of England so gay and full of colour to-day were also the commonest plants in the Saxon gardens. Fashions in large gardens have changed throughout the centuries, and there are stately gardens in this country famed the world over. But in regard to our cottage gardens we are staunchly conservative, and it is assuredly the cottage garden which is characteristically English. Incidentally, one cannot help regretting that so many of our old Saxon plant names have fallen into disuse. “Waybroad,” for instance, is much more descriptive than “plantain,” which is misleading.[7] “Maythen” also is surely preferable to “camomile,” and “wergulu” is more characteristic of that fierce weed than “nettle.” Those of us who are gardeners will certainly agree that “unfortraedde” is the right name for knotweed. And is not “joy of the ground” a delightful name for periwinkle?

The oldest illustrated herbal which has come down to us from Saxon times is the translation of the Latin Herbarium Apuleii Platonici.[8] The original Latin work is believed to date from the fifth century, though no copy so ancient as this is in existence now. The name Apuleius Platonicus is possibly fictitious and nothing is known of the writer, who was, of course, distinct from Apuleius Madaurensis, the author of the Golden Ass. The Saxon translation of this herbal (now in the British Museum) is supposed to date from A.D. 1000-1050, and belongs to the school of Ælfric of Canterbury. The frontispiece is a coloured picture in which Plato is represented holding a large volume which is being given him by Æsculapius and the Centaur, and on the other side of the page is a blue circle spotted with white and red, within which is the name of the book: “Herbarium Apuleii Platonici quod accepit ab Escolapio et Chirone centauro magistro Achillis.” The book consists of 132 chapters, in each of which a herb is described, and there are accompanying illustrations of the herbs. Throughout the book there are also remarkable pictures of snakes, scorpions and unknown winged creatures. It has been pointed out that the figures of herbs are obviously not from the original plants, but are copied from older figures, and these from others older still, and one wonders what the original pictures were like. It is interesting to think that perhaps the illustrations in this Saxon herbal are directly descended, so to speak, from the drawings of Cratevas,[9] Dionysius or Metrodorus, of whom Pliny tells us “They drew the likeness of herbs and wrote under them their effects.” The picture of the lily is very attractive in spite of the fact that the flowers are painted pale blue. The stamens in the figure stand out beyond the petals and look like rays of light, with a general effect that is curiously pleasing. One of the most interesting figures is that of the mandrake (painted in a deep madder), which embodies the old legend that it was death to dig up the root, and that therefore a dog was tied to a rope and made to drag it up. It is the opinion of some authorities that these figures show the influence of the school represented by the two splendid Vienna manuscripts of Dioscorides dating from the fifth and seventh centuries. There is no definite evidence of this, and though the illustrations in the Saxon manuscript show the influence of the classical tradition, they are poor compared with those in the Vienna manuscript. To some extent at least the drawings in this herbal must necessarily have been copies, for many of the plants are species unknown in this country.

ÆSCULAPIUS PLATO AND A CENTAUR

From the Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius (Cott. Vit., C. 3, folio 19a)

The Saxon translation of the Περὶ Διδαξέων (Harl. 6258) is a thin volume badly mutilated in parts. Herr Max Löwenbeck[10] has shown that this is in part translated from a treatise by an eleventh-century writer, Petrocellus or Petronius, of the School of Salerno—the original treatise being entitled Practica Petrocelli Salernitani.[11] As has been pointed out by many eminent authorities, the School of Salerno, being a survival of Greek medicine, was uncontaminated by superstitious medicine. Consequently there are striking differences between this and the other Saxon manuscripts. The large majority of the herbs mentioned are those of Southern Europe, and the pharmacy is very simple compared with the number of herbs in prescriptions of native origin. As Dr. J. F. Payne[12] has pointed out, Herr Löwenbeck’s important discovery does not account for the whole of the English book. The order of the chapters differs from that of the Salernitan writer; there are passages not to be found in the Practica, and in some places the English text gives a fuller reading. It is fairly evident that the Saxon treatise is at least in part indebted to the Passionarius by Gariopontus, another Salernitan writer of the same period.

The Lacnunga (Harl. 585), an original work, and one of the oldest and most interesting manuscripts, is a small, thick volume without any illustrations. Some of the letters are illuminated and some are rudely ornamented. At the top of the first page there is the inscription “Liber Humfredi Wanley,” and it is interesting, therefore, to realise that the British Museum owes this treasure to the zealous antiquarian whose efforts during the closing years of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth century rescued so many valuable Saxon and other MSS. from oblivion.[13]

To the student of folk lore and folk custom these sources of herb lore are of remarkable interest for the light they throw on the beliefs and customs of humble everyday people in Anglo-Saxon times. Of kings and warriors, of bards and of great ladies we can read in other Saxon literature, and all so vividly that we see their halls, the long hearths on which the fires were piled, the openings in the roof through which the smoke passed. We see the men with their “byrnies” of ring mail, their crested helmets, their leather-covered shields and deadly short swords. We see them and their womenkind wearing golden ornaments at their feasts, the tables laden with boars’ flesh and venison and chased cups of ale and mead. We see these same halls at night with the men sleeping, their “byrnies” and helmets hanging near them, and in the dim light we can make out also the trophies of the chase hanging on the walls. We read of their mighty deeds, and we know at least something of the ideals and the thoughts of their great men and heroes. But what of that vast number of the human kind who were always in the background? What of the hewers of wood and drawers of water, the swineherds, the shepherds, the carpenters, the hedgers and cobblers? Is it not wonderful to think that in these manuscripts we can learn, at least to some extent, what plant life meant to these everyday folk? And even in these days to understand what plant life means to the true countryman is to get into very close touch with him. Not only has suburban life separated the great concentrated masses of our people from their birthright of meadows, fields and woods; of Nature, in her untamed splendour and mystery, most of them have never had so much as a momentary glimpse. But in Saxon times even the towns were not far from the unreclaimed marshes and forests, and to the peasant in those days they were full not only of seen, but also of unseen perils. There was probably not a Saxon child who did not know something of the awe of waste places and impenetrable forests. Even the hamlets lay on the very edge of forests and moors, and to the peasant these were haunted by giant, elf and monster, as in the more inaccessible parts of these islands they are haunted still to those who retain something of primitive imagination. And when we study the plant lore of these people we realise that prince and peasant alike used the simple but mysterious herbs not only to cure them of both physical and mental ills, but to guard them from these unseen monsters. Of the reverence they paid to herbs we begin to have some dim apprehension when we read of the ceremonies connected with the picking and administering of them.

But, first, what can we learn of the beliefs as to the origin of disease? Concerning this the great bulk of the folk lore in these manuscripts is apparently of native Teutonic origin, or rather it would be more correct to speak of its origin as Indo-Germanic; for the same doctrines are to be found among all Indo-Germanic peoples, and even in the Vedas, notably the Atharva Veda. Of these beliefs, the doctrine of the “elf-shot” occupies a large space, the longest chapter in the third book of the Leech Book of Bald being entirely “against elf-disease.” We know from their literature that to our Saxon ancestors waste places of moor and forest and marshes were the resort of a host of supernatural creatures at enmity with mankind. In the Leech Book of Bald disease is largely ascribed to these elves, whose shafts produced illness in their victims. We read of beorg-ælfen, dun-ælfen, muntælfen. But our modern word “elf” feebly represents these creatures, who were more akin to the “mark-stalkers,” to the creatures of darkness with loathsome eyes, rather than to the fairies with whom we now associate the name. For the most part these elves of ancient times were joyless impersonations and creatures not of sun but of darkness and winter. In the gloom and solitude of the forest, “where the bitter wormwood stood pale grey” and where “the hoar stones lay thick,” the black, giant elves had their dwelling. They claimed the forest for their own and hated man because bit by bit he was wresting the forest from them. Yet they made for man those mystic swords of superhuman workmanship engraved with magic runes and dipped when red hot in blood or in a broth of poisonous herbs and twigs. We do not understand, we can only ask, why did they make them? What is the meaning of the myth? The water elves recall the sea monsters who attended Grendel’s dam, impersonations of the fury of the waves, akin to Hnikarr, and again other water elves of the cavernous bed of ocean, primeval deadly creatures, inhabiting alike the sea and the desolate fens, “where the elk-sedge waxed in the water.” If some were akin to the Formori of the baleful fogs in Irish mythic history and the Mallt-y-nos, those she-demons of marshy lands immortalised by the Welsh bards, creatures huge and uncouth “with grey and glaring eyes,” there were others who exceeded in beauty anything human. When Cædmon wrote of the beauty of Sarah, he described her as “sheen as an elf.” With the passing of the centuries we have well-nigh forgotten the black elves, though they are still realities to the Highlander and too real for him to speak of them. But have we not the descendants of the sheen bright elves in the works of Shakespeare, Milton and Shelley? One feels very sure that our Saxon ancestors would have understood that glittering elf Ariel as few of us are capable of understanding him. He is the old English bright elf. Did not Prospero subdue him with magic, as our ancestors used magic songs in administering herbs “to quell the elf”? Here is one such song from the Leech Book of Bald, and at the end a conjuration to bury the elf in the earth.