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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    whole charm is described as bot for fields (i) that are not productive, (2) that have suffered through drycrxft or lybldc. 1 The final part deals with the ceremonial at the first ploughing. Omitting many of the Christian elements, the rite consists in the taking of four pieces of turf, one from each boundary of the field to be treated: in their place is to be dropped a mixture of various ingredients, the most important of which are oil, honey, yeast, and milk. The turves are to be taken to the church and placed so that their grassy sides are turned towards the altar, while masses are sung. They must be returned to the places whence they came before sunset. Four crosses of quickbeam, on which the names of the four Evangelists have been written, 1 2 must be placed in the holes before the turves are put back in them. A prayer, beginning ‘I stand towards the east’, must then be said, the invocator bowing nine times and then turning himself three times sunganges. Then, after various Christian hymns, ‘let unknown seed be taken from beggars, and let there be given to these twice as much as one takes from them, and gather together all the ploughing utensils. Then bore in the plough beam [a hole, and put in it] frankincense and fennel 3 and hallowed soap and hallowed salt. Take then the seed and set it in the body of the plough.’ The prayer to Erce follows, and the first furrow is made. The following prayer is next said: ‘Hail to thee, Earth (folde), mother of men, be thou fertile in God’s embrace, filled with crops for the benefit of men.’ In the furrow a loaf kneaded with milk and holy water is to be laid. The ceremony ends with another prayer and the repetition three times of the words, ‘Crescite, in nomine patris, sit benedicti.’ Much of this practice, as shown by E. H. Meyer, 4 is derived from older Indo-European sources, and much has survived, especially in Germany, till more modern times. The ceremonial at the first ploughing was to remove the impurities of the winter, and also to bring fertility and a blessing for the coming year. The date of it was about the time of the vernal equinox. In Pomerania and in 1 See p. 147. 2 Cf. the Byzantine charm in the tenth-century Geoponica to remove dodder (‘lion’s grass’) from a field: 5 potsherds, each bearing a picture in chalk of Herakles strangling a lion, must be put at the four corners of the field and in the middle. (Quoted by IT. J. Rose, ‘Folklore of the Geoponica’, Folk-lore, 1933, xliv. 69.) 3 One of the ‘nine magical herbs’ of the Lacnunga. 4 E. H. Meyer, ‘Indogermanische Pfliigebrauche’, Zeit. d. Vereinsf. Volks- kunde, 1904, xiv. 1-18, 129-51.