ST. LUKE, FROM ST. CHAD’S GOSPEL BOOK, DATE ABOUT 700 A.D.
Like the Dane, the Anglo-Saxon was of an imaginative nature; he not only believed in spirits and demons, but he made a great and complete scheme of mythology into which we need not here inquire; when he was converted to Christianity he surrendered himself to a blind belief in the doctrines of the Church. Many noble and royal persons in the revival of the eighth century showed, as we have seen, the sincerity of their belief so far as to lay down their rank and enter monasteries, or to go off barefooted on pilgrimage. With the majority, their new religion was something added to the old. We are not to suppose that this old mythology was known to the common people, any more than the book of Ovid’sMetamorphoses was known to the average Roman citizen. The Christian Church introduced its teaching gradually, being content to pass over many pagan practices. The Church said nothing while the people continued to believe that the foul fiend entered into the body of a person newly dead and walked about in that body all night. They believed in the power of raising spirits, in magic and witchcraft; they wore amulets and charms for protection; they believed in “stacung,” i.e. “sticking,” a method of killing an enemy by which the slayer simply stuck a thorn or a pin into his enemy and prayed that the part wounded might mortify and so cause death. It was an easy method, but one that offered the obvious objection that you cannot stick a pin into any part of a man without causing him pain; nor can you pray at the same time without his hearing the prayer. Therefore one must believe that the would-be murderer ran great risk himself of being murdered. There were, however, instances in which persons were believed to have caused death by this method. In the tenth century, for instance, we get a glimpse of wild justice. We see a man running madly through the streets; he reaches the nearest gate; he flies across the moor, where none pursue him; he is heard of no more. The crowd which ran after him turned back. They made for a house—not a hovel—a substantial house, where he had lived with his aged mother; they beat down the door; they rushed in; they came out shouting that they had found the accursed thing; they dragged out the old woman shrieking for mercy. “Witch! sorceress! She has bewitched Ælsie by sticking and by prayer. He is sick unto death. She must die.” They hauled her along the streets; they reached the bridge; they hurled the poor creature, now covered with blood and shrieking no longer, into the river. She floated for a second; she sank; again she rose to the surface; then she was seen no more, and the crowd returned. The King for his part confiscated the lands of the sorceress and her son.
Loftie gives the following passage concerning this event. It is from a document in the Society of Antiquaries. Note by the way that it proves the existence of the bridge in 960 or thereabouts:—
“Here is made known in this writing, that bishop Æthelwold and Wulfstan Uccea exchanged lands, with the witness of King Ædgar and his ‘witan.’ The bishop gave to Wulfstan the land at Washington, and Wulfstan gave him the land at Jaceslea and at Aylesworth. Then the bishop gave the land at Jaceslea to Thorney, and that at Aylesworth to Peterborough; and a widow and her son had previously forfeited the land at Aylesworth, because they had driven an iron pin into Ælsie, Wulfstan’s father, and that was detected: and they drew the deadly thing forth from her chamber. They then took the woman and drowned her at London Bridge; and her son escaped, and became outlaw; and the land went into the hands of the king; and the king then gave it to Ælsie, and Wulfstan Uccea his son gave it again to Bishop Æthelwold, as it is here above said.”
The method of “sticking” was continued, but with modifications. The operator no longer stuck a thorn into his enemy. He made a waxen image of him and stuck pins into the image, with a prayer that the man might feel the agony of the wound; he placed it before the fire, and prayed that as the waxen image melted away, so his enemy might waste away and die. The superstition lingered long; perhaps it still has followers and believers. In the fifteenth century the greatest lady in the land was compelled to do penance and was committed to a life-long prison for practising this superstitious rite.
ANGLO-SAXON HUSBANDMAN AND HIS WIFE
Royal MS. 2, B. vii.
Philtres and love potions were greatly in request; the people practised astrology and divination. Their medicine was much mixed with superstition: thus they knew the medicinal properties of certain plants, but in using them certain prayers had to be said or sung; they practised bleeding, but not when the moon was crescent and the tide was rising; the use of relics was prescribed for every possible disease.
It is a great pity that we have neither an Anglo-Saxon house nor any detailed description of one left. There are, it is true, some drawings of houses in the MSS. of the period, but the buildings are presented conventionally; they are indicated for those who would recognise them without too great an adherence to truth. Take that on p. [225]. There is, it will be perceived, a central hall. On one side is the chapel—part of the wall is taken out so as to show the lamp burning before the altar; beside the chapel is a small room, perhaps the chaplain’s chamber; on the other side are two chambers: one belongs to the men-at-arms, the other to the maids; the court is full of beggars, to whom the lord and the lady are serving food, while the maids are bringing out clothes for two adults who are standing at the door in a state of Nature. There is a round building at the back—the walls of the house are of masonry up to a certain height, when timber begins; there is but one floor. The hall was hung with cloths or tapestry; it was furnished with benches and with movable tables on trestles.
In the Saxon household the special occupation of the women was the construction of clothing. They carded the wool; they beat the flax; they sat at the spinning-wheel or at the weaver’s loom; they made the clothes; they washed the clothes; they embroidered and adorned the clothes; the female side in a genealogy was called the spindle side. Kings’ daughters, notably the grand-daughters of King Alfred, distinguished themselves by their work with the spinning-wheel and the needle. The Norman admired the wonderful work of the Saxon ladies; the finest embroideries shown in France were known as English work. Thomas Wright (Womankind in Western Europe, p. 60) gives very complete testimony on this point:—