Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 A Medieval Scandinavian Context
- 2 The Earliest Anglo-Saxon Evidence
- 3 Female Elves and Beautiful Elves
- 4 Ælfe, Illness and Healing (1): The ‘Elf-Shot’ Conspiracy
- 5 Ælfe, Illness and Healing (2): Ælfsīden
- 6 Anglo-saxon Myth and gender
- 7 Believing in Early-Medieval History
- Appendix 1 The Linguistic History of Elf
- Appendix 2 Two Non-Elves
- Works cited
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Foreword
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 A Medieval Scandinavian Context
- 2 The Earliest Anglo-Saxon Evidence
- 3 Female Elves and Beautiful Elves
- 4 Ælfe, Illness and Healing (1): The ‘Elf-Shot’ Conspiracy
- 5 Ælfe, Illness and Healing (2): Ælfsīden
- 6 Anglo-saxon Myth and gender
- 7 Believing in Early-Medieval History
- Appendix 1 The Linguistic History of Elf
- Appendix 2 Two Non-Elves
- Works cited
- Index
Summary
One assumes that when, around the end of the tenth century or the beginning of the eleventh, somewhere in the south-west of England, the scribe began what was probably the last stint on his manuscript of medical recipes, he did not guess that it would remain in use for over six hundred years – more or less until it came into the hands of Reverend Robert Burscough, who, passing it on to his friend Humphrey Wanley, transformed it from a practical text into an object of scholarship. His parchment stiff, his script functional and the finished codex portable, the scribe was making a practical reference work for day-to-day use. Having already copied the Old English Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, he was concluding a large, miscellaneous collection of medical texts, known since Cockayne's edition as Lācnunga (‘remedies’). One wonders whether, having reproduced the conventional prose direction ‘Wið fǣrstice feferfuige ד sēo rēade netele ðe þurh ærn inwyxð ד wegbrāde wyll in būteran’ (‘For a violent, stabbing pain: feverfew and the “red nettle” [L. Lamium purpureum] that grows through the ?corn, and plantain. Boil in butter’), he registered any surprise as he proceeded to copy a long metrical charm on to folios 175–6v. It has, at any rate, intrigued and challenged scholars since the nineteenth century:
Hlūde wǣran hȳ lā hlūde ðā hȳ ofer þone hlǣw ridan
wǣran ānmōde ðā hȳ ofer land ridan
scyld ðū ðē nū þū ðysne nīð genesan mōte
ūt lȳtel spere gif hēr inne sīe
stōd under linde under lēohtum scylde
þǣr ðā mihtigan wīf hyra mægen berǣddon
ד hȳ gyllende gāras sændan
ic him ōðerne eft wille sændan
flēogende flāne forane tōgēanes
ūt lȳtel spere gif hit hēr inne sȳ •
sæt smið slōh seax
lȳtel īserna wund swīðe
ūt lȳtel spere gif hēr inne sȳ
syx smiðas sǣtan wælspera worhtan
ūt spere næs in spere
gif hēr inne sȳ īsenes dǣl
hægtessan geweorc hit sceal gemyltan
gif ðū wǣre on fell scoten oððe wǣre on flǣsc scoten
oððe wǣre on blōd scoten
oððe wǣre on lið scoten nǣfre ne sȳ ðīn līf ātǣsed
gif hit wǣre ēsa gescot oððe hit wǣre ylfa gescot
oððe hit wǣre hægtessan gescot nū ic wille ðīn helpan
þis ðē tō bōte ēsa gescotes ðis ðē tō bōte ylfa gescotes
ðis ðē tō bōte hægtessan gescotes ic ðīn wille helpan
flēo [?MS fled] þǣr on fyrgenhǣfde[…]
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- Elves in Anglo-Saxon EnglandMatters of Belief, Health, Gender and Identity, pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007