The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Wilfrid Bonser
Date:
1963
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    463/492 (page 423)
    VETERINARY MEDICINE AND CHARMS FOR LIVESTOCK 423 by Whitley Stokes occurs the passage, ‘Aqua residua in qua asinus aut bos biberit potui sumpta efficaciter sanat.’ 1 The Penitential of Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter (n61-86), prescribes penance for those who make ‘amulets or incantations and bewitchments by charm, with sorcery, and conceal them in the grass, or in a tree, or at the cross-roads ( in bivio ), in order that their own animals may be freed from injury’. 2 The Council of London in 1075 ordained that a man shall not practise divination or similar arts, nor hang up the bones of dead animals to ward off diseases of cattle. 3 (b) Cattle The following occurs in the laws of Ine, king of Wessex, which date from about 693: ‘If a man buy any kind of cattle, and he then discover any kind of unsoundness in it within XXX days, then let him throw the cattle on his [i.e. the vendor’s] hands, or let him [the latter] swear that he knew not of any unsoundness in it when he sold it to him.’ 4 A passage in the laws of Hywel Dda runs: Whosoever shall sell a steer to another, it is right for him to be answer- able for the three disorders incident to cattle: 5 and further for the mange, until the feast of St. Patrick [i.e. 17 March]: the person who shall buy it is to keep it in pasture, and in a healthy place, and in a building wherein no mange has previously occurred for seven years: and for the staggers, three dew-falls. 6 Bede says that cattle—as well as men—could be cured by drinking the water containing slips of the cross set up by King Oswald before the battle on the Heaven-field. 7 There are two Anglo-Saxon charms for lung trouble in cattle, 8 both thoroughly ecclesiastical in flavour. In one, various herbs have 1 Zeit.f. celt. Philologie, 1897, i. 18. 2 MS. Cotton Faustina A. VIII, fo. 3a. (Quoted in Wright and Halliwell, Reliquiae antiquae, vol. i, p. 385.) 3 Roskoff, Geschichte des Teufels, vol. i, p. 310. 4 Laws of King Ine, 56. 5 Laws of Hywel Dda. These are staggers, strangles, and farcy (cow) according to the Dimetian code, Bk. 11, ch. xxvii. 17; and staggers, glanders and farcy (ox) according to the Gwentian code, Bk. II, ch. xi. 6. ( Ancient Laws of Wales, vol. i, 1841). 6 Ditto, according to the Venedotian code, Bk. Ill, ch. vii. 6. 7 Bede, Eccles. Hist. iii. 2. Quoted on p. 183. 8 Wip lungen adle hriderum : pleuro-pneumonia of cattle was a sequel of famine in Ireland.