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.

    480/492 (page 440)
    44° VETERINARY AND AGRICULTURAL MAGIC things. It is therefore natural that the gatherer of herbs should address Mother Earth to ask her permission to gather her products. 1 Whatsoever herb thy power do[th] produce, give, I pray, with good will to all nations to save them and grant me this my medicine. . . . Ye [herbs] whom earth, parent of all, hath produced . . . this I pray, and beseech from you, be present here with your virtues, for she who created you hath herself promised that I may gather you with the goodwill of him on whom the art of medicine was bestowed, and grant for health’s sake good medicine by grace of your powers. 2 Two thoroughly Christian Blessings of Plants, in Latin, occur at the end of the Lacnunga. 3 1 Cf. Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxv. 21, where ‘the person about to cut black hellebore turns towards the East, and offers up a prayer, entreating permission of the gods to do so’. 2 Quoted by Singer in ‘Early English Magic and Medicine’, Proc. Brit. Acad. 9, 1920, p. 373. 3 Lacn. (cxci, cxcii).