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Bald's Leechbook and cultural interactions in Anglo-Saxon England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

M. L. Cameron
M. L. Cameron
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
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Extract

The Old English medical records are rich in materials which contain evidence for contacts between the Anglo-Saxons and other cultures. For example, in 1945 Howard Meroney collected the various loan translations of Irish words found in the medical charms in the Leechbook, Lacnunga and other Old English texts. It is an interesting exercise to speculate on how Irish charms such as these, in Old Irish, got into the Old English medical repertory in their pristine form, whereas most of the Latin medical charms were translated straightway into English. It is customary to suppose that the Anglo-Saxons picked them up from Irish teachers in their monasteries, but there may be other explanations. Recently, while I was reading the Hisperica famina (in Michael Herren's translation), I came across references to young ‘visitors’, students who wandered about the Irish countryside begging for food and shelter among the country people, with whom they had difficulty communicating; as one of them is made to say:

Who will ask these possessors

to grant us their sweet abundance?

For an Ausonian chain binds me;

hence I do not utter good Irish speech.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 19 , December 1990 , pp. 5 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Meroney, H., ‘Irish in the Old English Charms’, Speculum 20 (1945), 172–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Herren, M., The Hisperica Famina, I: the A-Text (Toronto, 1974), pp. 84–5.Google Scholar

3 Lapidge, M. and Herren, M., Aldhelm: the Prose Works (Cambridge, 1979), p. 163.Google Scholar

4 Virtually all surviving Old English medical texts are to be found in Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, ed. Cockayne, O., 3 vols., RS (London, 1864–1866)Google Scholar. Lacnunga has been separately edited by Grattan, J.H.G. and Singer, C., Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine Illustrated specially from the Semi-Pagan Text ‘Lacnunga’ (Oxford, 1952), pp. 96–205.Google Scholar

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6 Talbot, C. H., ‘Some Notes on Anglo-Saxon Medicine’, Medical Hist. 9 (1965), 156–69CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Cameron, M. L., ‘Bald's Leechbook: its Sources and their Use in its Compilation’, ASE 12 (1983), 155–82.Google Scholar

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11 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne II, 358. Note also that, although one of Aldhelm's Enigmata (no. xii) is on the subject of the ‘Silkworm’, Aldhelm was more likely referring to the native oak eggar: see Cameron, M.L., ‘Aldhelm as Naturalist: a Re-examination of Some of his Enigmata’, Peritia 4 (1985), 117–33, at 123–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne II, 56.

13 Ibid. p. 106. Only Chinese silk is yellow.

14 Talbot, C.H., The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany (New York, 1954), p. 170.Google Scholar

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19 Majno, G., The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA, 1975), p. 259.Google Scholar

20 The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus, ed. De Vriend, H. J., EETS os 286 (London, 1984), 232Google Scholar; for a reference to the Laud gloss, see p. 328 (CLXXXV.3); Cassii Felicis De Medicina ex Graecis Logicae Sectae Auctoribus Liber Translatus, ed. Rose, V. (Leipzig, 1879), p. 176Google Scholar. See also Riddle, J.M., ‘Pseudo-Dioscorides' Ex herbis femininis and Early Medieval Medical Botany’, Jnl Hist. Med. 14 (1981), 43–81, at 52–3Google ScholarPubMed, on the probable meaning of gelela. MS Wellcome 573 is one copy of the Curae herbarum in which afrigillam occurs; it was probably from one like it that the Old English translation was made. For evidence that the Curae herbarum and not the Ex herbis femininis was the source of the Old English translation, see Hofstetter, W., ‘Zur lateinischen Quelle des altenglischen Pseudo-Dioscurides’, Anglia 101 (1983), 315–60.Google Scholar

21 Grattan, and Singer, , Anglo-Saxon Magic, p. 110Google Scholar: ‘To wensealfe: Nim elenan 7 rædic, cyrfillan 7 hræmnes fot, ængliscne næp 7 finul 7 saluian 7 supernewuda 7 cnuca tosomne, 7 nim garleaces godne dæl, cnuca, 7 wring þurh clað on gemered hunig; þonne hit swiðe gesoden sy, þonne do ðu pipor 7 sidewar[an], gallengar 7 gingifre 7 rinde 7 lawerbergean 7 pyretran, godne dæl ælces be ðære mæðe’, etc.

22 Ibid. p. 114: ‘To eahsealfe: Nim aluwan 7 sidewaran, lawerberian 7 pipor; gescaf smale; 7 cu-buteran fersce lege on wæter; nim þonne hwetstan bradne 7 gnid ða buteran on ðæm hwetstane mid copore þæt heo beo wel toh, do þonne sumne dæl þara wyrta þærto; clæm ðonne on arfæt; læt standan nygon niht’, etc.

23 Ibid. p. 108, n. 10.

24 Hodgett, , Medieval Europe, p. 50Google Scholar. Professor R. J. Cramp has kindly drawn to my attention the importance of Arab coins found in Western Europe as further evidence for trade links with the Arabs.

25 Miss Ayoub has generously permitted me to use an as yet unpublished paper on the meanings of the word ‘wæta’ in Old English medical texts.

26 I have to thank Associated Medical Services Incorporated and the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine for grants in aid of research and my wife for her continuing helpful criticisms.