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

  • Bonser, Wilfrid, 1887-1972.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

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.

    477/492 (page 437)
    processions about the fields’. A vigil was to be followed by a solemn procession in the morning, and the bearing of relics about the fields. 1 The following fourteenth-century German charm was evidently to protect the field from bad weather: ‘Contra tempestatem, isti tres versus scribantur in cedulas quatuor, et ponantur subter terrain in quatuor partes provincie: Sancte Columquille, remove mala queque procelle, ►ft Ut tunc orasti, de mundo quando migrasti, ►B Quod tibi de celis promisit vox Michahelis.’ 1 2 The ‘quatuor cedulae’ recall the four crosses of quickbeam in the field-blessing mentioned above. St. Columba (Columkille) seems to have been especially con nected with field charms. 3 Adamnan, in his Life of the saint, says: About fourteen years before the date at which we write, there occurred during the spring a very great and long continued drought in these marshy regions.... We therefore ... took counsel together, and resolved that some of the senior members of the community [i.e. Iona] should walk round a newly ploughed and sown field, taking with them the white tunic of St. Columba, and some books written in his own hand, that they should raise in the air and shake three times the tunic which the saint wore at the hour of his death. . . . When these directions had been executed ... copious rain fell day and night, and the parched earth . . . yielded the same year a most abundant harvest. 4 Very occasionally traces are found among the Teutons of the practice of distributing the members of a dead king or saint so as to produce fertility. Thus the Heimskringla records of King Half- dan the Black that ‘his reign had been more fortunate in the seasons and crops than those of all other kings. So much trust was placed in him that, when they learned he was dead and his body carried to Hringariki to be buried, there came influential men from Raumariki and Vestfold and HeiSmork, all begging to have the 1 Pfannenschmidt, Emtefeste, pp. 50-84. For conversion of heathen to Chris tian ceremonies, see ch. 8. 2 Codex lat. Monacensis, 7021. (Quoted by Schonbach: ‘Eine Auslese alt- deutscher Segenformeln’, No. 30. Analecta Graeciensia: Festschrift, &c., Graz, 1893, P- 45 -) 3 Mrs. Banks, in British Calendar Customs: Scotland, Folk-lore Society, 1941, iii. 8-10, says: ‘Spells from the Western Isles invoke Columba as a patron of cattle.’ Various charms follow. 4 Adamnan, Life of St. Columba, ii. 44.