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.

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    to be burned together ‘on the side where the wind is’, so that the smoke is blown towards the cattle. Then five crosses are to be made of hassock grass; they are to be set on the four sides of the cattle and one in the middle, and various litanies and the paternoster chanted. The charm ends with the payments demanded by Holy Church for its part in the ceremony: ‘Let the cattle be valued. Give the tenth penny for God; after that leave them to mend; do thus thrice.’ 1 The other charm is defective, the beginning having been lost. It runs: ‘. . . and burn to ashes’—presumably certain herbs as in the last charm—‘on midsummer-mass day: add holy water and pour it into their mouths on midsummer’s morrow: and sing these three psalms over them: “[Miserere] nostri”, and “Exurgat dominus” and “Quicunque vult’” (i.e. Psalms 51 and 68, and the Athanasian Creed). 2 As the charm now stands, presumably there was no remedy if the disease attacked the cattle at any other time than midsummer, but the first part, now lost, may have been a specific one against ‘disease of the lungs’, the last part being a preventive charm to be used at midsummer to keep the cattle free from disease throughout the ensuing year. The tradition of psalm-repetition died hard. As late as the seven teenth century Minderer advised the plague doctors to repeat the 22nd psalm every time they approached a patient. 3 The last-quoted manuscript contains another defective charm to be used for the general good health of cattle: ‘[Sing] over thy cattle every evening to be a help to them “Agios, agios, agios”. [Take two] four-edged sticks, . . . and write on either stick, on each end, the paternoster to the end : and let fall the inscribed stick on the floor, and the other . . . .’ 4 Another charm, to be employed ‘if cattle are dying’, is to put groundsel and three other worts into holy water, and pour into the mouth. 5 A Latin charm which occurs in what was probably a monk’s common-place book dating from about the year 1300, although it is later than our period, may be mentioned as relevant since it is typical. It may be rendered thus : 1 Lacn. 79 (cxli). 2 MS. Cotton Vitellius E. XVIII (quoted by Cockayne, voi. i, p. 388). 3 F. H. Garrison, History of Medicine, 1939, p. 287. 4 Cotton Vitellius E. XVIII, fo. 13&. (Quoted by Cockayne, voi. i, p. 386.) 5 Lacn. 78 (cxl).