The Old English Herbals — Story, Setting & Ideas

earful eyes, and would look downwards. Amongst the herbs to be administered when the charm was sung over him were a yew-berry, lupin, helenium, marsh mallow, dock elder, wormwood and strawberry leaves.

Goblins and nightmare were regarded as at least akin to elves, and we find the same herbs were to be used against them, betony being of peculiar efficacy against "monstrous nocturnal visions and against frightful visions and dreams."[14] The malicious elves did not confine their attacks to human beings; references to elf-shot cattle are numerous. I quote the following from the chapter "against elf disease."

"For that ilk [_i. e._ for one who is elf-shot].

"Go on Thursday evening when the sun is set where thou knowest that helenium stands, then sing the Benedicite and Pater Noster and a litany and stick thy knife into the wort, make it stick fast and go away; go again when day and night just divide; at the same period go first to church and cross thyself and commend thyself to God; then go in silence and, though anything soever of an awful sort or man meet thee, say not thou to him any word ere thou come to the wort which on the evening before thou markedst; then sing the Benedicite and the Pater Noster and a litany, delve up the wort, let the knife stick in it; go again as quickly as thou art able to church and let it lie under the altar with the knife; let it lie till the sun be up, wash it afterwards, and make into a drink with bishopwort and lichen off a crucifix; boil in milk thrice, thrice pour holy water upon it and sing over it the Pater Noster, the Credo and the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, and sing upon it a litany and score with a sword round about it on three sides a cross, and then after that let the man drink the wort; Soon it will be well with him."--_Leech Book_, III. 62.

The instructions for a horse or cattle that are elf-shot runs thus:--

"If a horse or other neat be elf-shot take sorrel-seed or Scotch wax, let a man sing twelve Masses over it and put holy water on the horse or on whatsoever neat it be; have the worts always with thee. For the same take the eye of a broken needle, give the horse a prick with it, no harm shall come."--_Leech Book of Bald_, I. 88.

Another prescription for an elf-shot horse runs thus:--

"If a horse be elf-shot, then take the knife of which the haft is the horn of a fallow ox and on which are three brass nails, then write upon the horse's forehead Christ's mark and on each of the limbs which thou mayst feel at: then take the left ear, prick a hole in it in silence, this thou shalt do; then strike the horse on the back, then will it be whole.--And write upon the handle of the knife these words--

"Benedicite omnia opera Domini dominum.

"Be the elf what it may, this is mighty for him to amend."--_Leech Book of Bald_, I. 65.[15]

Closely allied to the doctrine of the elf-shot is that of "flying venom." It is, of course, possible to regard the phrase as the graphic Anglo-Saxon way of describing infectious diseases; but the various synonymous phrases, "the on-flying things," "the loathed things that rove through the land," suggest something of more malignant activity. As a recent leading article in _The Times_ shows, we are as a matter of fact not much wiser than our Saxon ancestors as to the origin of an epidemic such as influenza.[16] Indeed, to talk of "catching" a cold or any infectious disease would have struck an Anglo-Saxon as ludicrous, mankind being rather the victims of "flying venom." In the alliterative lay in the _Lacnunga_, part of which is given below, the wind is described as blowing these venoms, which produced disease in the bodies on which they lighted, their evil effects being subsequently blown away by the magician's song and the efficacy of salt and water and herbs. This is generally supposed to be in its origin a heathen lay of great antiquity preserved down to Christian times, when allusions to the new religion were inserted. It is written in the Wessex dialect and is believed to be of the tenth century, but it is undoubtedly a reminiscence of some far older lay. The lay or charm is in praise of nine sacred herbs (one a tree)--mugwort, waybroad (plantain), stime (watercress), atterlothe (?), maythen (camomile), wergulu (nettle), crab apple, chervil and fennel.