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Variant versions of Old English medical remedies and the compilation of Bald's Leechbook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Audrey L. Meaney
Audrey L. Meaney
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, New South Wales
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Extract

Over a hundred years ago, T. O. Cockayne published his Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, in which he edited the texts of all the medical writings in Old English he could find. It is massive in its scope, and no modern scholar is ever likely to produce its equal. Yet we, metaphorically standing on Cockaynes's shoulders, and equipped with aids provided by more recent research, are able to examine more closely than he could some of the special features of the field which he revealed to us. Its English substrata have been comparatively neglected, however, and therefore I propose in this paper to examine closely the relationships of the hundred or so medical remedies in Old English which have been preserved – usually in different manuscripts – in two or three versions so close that it is obvious, even on a superficial view, that they either derive from the same English original, or are copied the one from the other. These remedies usually begin by specifying the ailment for which they are recommended, and then go on to set out the ingredients and method of making the appropriate herbal concoction. Nearly all the repeated remedies are found at least once in the Leechbook manuscript, now London, British Library, Royal 12. D. xvii, and so I will begin by describing it, and use it as the basis of the argument. Then I will describe briefly in turn the other manuscripts in which the remedies are found, discussing as I proceed those with minor parallels to Bald's Leechbook; and then, separately and in detail, the important duplications in the two final manuscripts under consideration. It may thereafter be possible to draw some conclusions about the method of compilation of Bald's Leechbook.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 13 , December 1984 , pp. 235 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, 3 vols., ed. Cockayne, T. O., Rolls Ser. (London, 1864–1866).Google Scholar

2 This research includes Cameron's, M. L. two recent articles, ‘The Sources of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 11 (1983), 135–55Google Scholar, and ‘Bald's Leechbook: its Sources and their Use in its Compilation’, ASE 12 (1983), 153–82.Google Scholar

3 The fact that the ailment is almost always mentioned first is partly the reason that I use here the term ‘remedies’ in place of the more usual ‘recipes’, which would give primary importance to the concocting of the medicine, and whose connotations appear to me inappropriate.

4 Table 1 (below, pp. 238–9) sets out all the duplications in schematic fashion, and should be used in conjunction with the following discussion.

5 Ker, N. R., A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957)Google Scholar, no. 264. See also the facsimile edition by C. E. Wright, EEMF 5 (Copenhagen, 1955). References are to Cockayne's edition, Leechdoms 11.

6 See Meaney, A. L., ‘Alfred, the Patriarch and the White Stone’, AUMLA 49 (1978), 65–79.Google Scholar

7 Meaney, A. L., ‘King Alfred and his Secretariat’, Parergon 11 (1975), 16–24Google Scholar, and Parkes, M. B., ‘The Palaeography of the Parker Manuscript of the Chronicle, Laws and Sedulius and Historiography at Winchester in the late Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, ASE 5 (1976), 149–71.Google Scholar

8 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 68/25–6.

9 Ibid. 11, 340/21–2.

10 There is also a general similarity between remedies for ailments of the ears, BLbk 1.iii. 1 and L 111.iii.3, but insufficient to establish a relationship.

11 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 138/14–22, and 356/4–10 respectively.

12 BLbk 1.lxiii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 138/19–22) ‘Go again to church with that same song, and sing 12 masses over [them] and over all the drinks which pertain to the illness, in honour of the twelve apostles.’

L 111.lxviii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 356/9–10) ‘Go again to church, sing 12 masses over the herbs when you have poured them out.’

13 See below, pp. 249–50.

14 Ker, Catalogue, no. 225.

15 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 280–9.

16 Ibid. 11, 286/24.

17 Liturgica Historica (Oxford, 1918), pp. 384–91.Google Scholar

18 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 294/17–296/5.

19 Or in the closely related manuscript BL Cotton Nero A. ii; see Ker, Catalogue, no. 157.

20 See below, pp. 247 and 254–5.

21 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 1, lxxxiv; the ‘herb cures’ are ptd Ibid. pp. 380–3.

22 See De Vriend, H. J., The Old English Medicina de Quadrupedibus (Tilburg, 1972), p. xxviiiGoogle Scholar and n. 37, and Ker, N. R., ‘A Supplement to Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon’, ASE 5 (1976), 121–31, at 126Google Scholar, n. 1.

23 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 18/10–11.

24 Ibid. 11, 68/14–16.

25 Ibid. 11, 68/9–12.

26 BLbk 1.xxvi (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 68/8–9) ‘If a sinew pulsates: mugwort, beaten and mixed with oil and laid on.’

Harley 6258 b ‘If sinews shrink: take mugwort, beaten and mixed with oil, placed on; anoint with that.’

Herb. Apul. xii ‘For pain of sinews and for swelling; take the same plant; pound it with oil, well boiled; lay on; it heals wonderfully.’

27 BLbk 1.xxvi (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 68/10–11) ‘Mugwort juice mixed with rose oil; anoint with it; at once the pulsation will be stilled.’

Harley 6258 b ‘Mugwort juice, boil in oil; anoint with it.’

Herb. Apul. xiii ‘For pulsation of the sinews: take juice of this same plant mixed in oil; anoint it then with it; it removes the pulsation and it takes away all the ailment.’

28 See below, p. 268.

29 See Schauman, B. and Cameron, A., ‘A Newly-Found Leaf of Old English from Louvain’, Anglia 95 (1977), 289–312Google Scholar, and Ker, ‘Supplement’, p. 128. Since the publication of Schauman and Cameron's edition the Omont leaf has passed to the newly established French-speaking University; the location given here therefore differs from theirs.

30 ‘Bald's Leechbook’, p. 168.

31 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 92/29–94/3.

32 Yfemestan, not ytemestan as Cockayne has.

33 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 64/30–66/10.

34 BLbk 1.xxiii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 66/4–9) ‘If thighs are numb: dig the lower part of sedge; boil in water; let it steam on the limb that is numb. Anoint with a salve which is made thus: from pig's fat, sheep's fat, butter, pitch, pepper, mastich, ‘swarl's apple’, sulphur, costmary, vinegar, oil.’

Omont, lines 26–33 ‘For a numbed body: take the lower part of sedge; boil in water, lay a hot stone in; let it steam on the body where it is numbed. Make for him also a good salve: take the red nettle, and raven's foot; boil in pig's fat and sheep's, and in butter, pitch. Anoint with the salve the body where it is numbed. Also likewise there is another good salve for the same: pepper, mastich, ‘swail's apple’, sulphur, costmary, vinegar, oil.’

35 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 38/22–5; see below, n. 37.

36 Schauman and Cameron, ‘Newly-Found Leaf’, p. 291, n. 7.

37 Ker, Catalogue, no. 231; Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 2–80, and Grattan, J. H. G. and Singer, C., Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine (London, 1952)Google Scholar. In this article (illogically, but in order to provide maximum ease of reference), the numbering of the remedies will be according to Grattan and Singer, but page references will be given to Cockayne.

38 See below, pp. 255–64, and table 2.

39 See Ker, Catalogue, no. 180; Grant, R. J. S., ‘Laurence Nowell's Transcript of BM Cotton Otho B. xi’, ASE 3 (1974), 111–24, at 112 and 117Google Scholar; and Torkar, R., ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten in Otho B. xi und Royal 12. D. xvii’, Anglia 94 (1976), 319–38.Google Scholar

40 See discussion of BL Harley 55, above, p. 240.

41 Torkar, ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten’, pp. 319–20.

42 That most of his alterations are in this direction rather than the reverse is proved by a comparison of his transcript of the West Saxon Regnal Table and Genealogy with his original from Tiberius A. vi (now in BL Cotton Tiberius A. iii). This also shows that Nowell split words at the ends of lines in a completely arbitrary way, unparalleled in his exemplar, e.g. wœ/ron, co/man. Yet as a whole his transcription is very faithful, apart from understandable slips such as the sequence sunu cuman for sunu coman. (Nowell did not copy the Regnal Table from Otho B. xi.) See also Grant, ‘Nowell's Transcript’, pp. 118–24.

43 The one leaf from Otho B. xi which survived the Cottonian fire unscathed because it had been separated earlier, that containing the West Saxon Regnal Table and Genealogy (now in BL Add. 54652), has a similar number of lines to those on Nowell's pages, though the number of letters per line is somewhat higher.

44 Torkar, ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten’, pp. 331–8.

45 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 234/11–12.

46 Ker, , Catalogue, p. 233.Google Scholar

47 For MS m.

48 ‘Take hens’ eggs, the yolk, and thirty purgative seeds, and a good deal of white salt, and fine flour;// mix all together; add egg shell; put on the embers; add ale, one draught; sip thus, hot.’

49 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 26/7–10.

50 Ibid, 11, 30/11–26.

51 Compare the translation in Cotton Vitellius C. iii (which is not from the same original) in Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 1, 178/4–9.

52 Thus BLbk; Nw has blostnana or blosmana.

53 BLbk; Nw oððe in [MS m] œscan.

54 Nw 263r6–9: ‘If ears are growing deaf, or there is bad hearing: take boar's gall, pig's gall, he goat's gall; mix with honey, all of equal quantities; drip into the ear.’

BLbk 1.iii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 40/22–5) ‘For the same, if ears are growing deaf or there is bad hearing: take boar's gall, pig's gall, he goat's gall; mix with honey, all of equal quantities; drip into the ear.

BLbk 1.iii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 42/7–9) ‘Again, for the same: take boar's gall and pig's and he goat's; mix with honey or in oil; squeeze into the ear; and with the same wool stop up the ear.’

L 111.iii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 310/11–13) ‘Make a good ear-salve: take bear's gall and pig's, and oil, all of equal quantities; let drip warm into the ear.’

55 M. L. Cameron, ‘Bald's Leechbook’, pp. 15 3–82. Several of the remedies with more than one version in Old English are translated from the Latin; many which I have recognized are from the Herbarium Apulei, rather fewer from its companion text, the Medicina de Quadrupedibus, and the language of these ‘floating’ remedies varies from that found in Cotton Vitellius C. iii and its cognates. It is difficult to know whether we can assume from this that there was a complete Old English version of the ‘Apuleius complex’ circulating in pre-tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England, or whether it was only certain individual remedies which were translated and circulated. Cameron comments (Ibid. p. 162) that the Herbarium shares so many remedies with other collections that one cannot assume that it is a primary source.

56 Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (Oxford, 1904), pp. 54–7Google Scholar (ch. 74); see also Keynes, Simon and Lapidge, Michael, Alfred the Great: Asser's ‘Life of King Alfred’ and other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 88–90Google Scholar and 255, n. 143.

57 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 292/16–22.

58 Ibid. 11, 64/30–66/10.

59 Ibid. 11, 236/2–6.

60 Ibid. 11, 164/16–17.

61 However, Cameron (‘Bald's Leechbook’, p. 175) compares BLbk's ‘single chapter’ on eye diseases to the ‘whole book’ of Alexander of Tralles, and from this concludes that the Anglo-Saxons suffered less with their eyes than the Byzantines in the warmer lands of southern Europe. Nevertheless, nearly five of Royal's folios are devoted to the eyes, as compared to three for head pains and two for ailments of the ears; and the organization of the eye chapter appears to be the most complex of all.

62 Torkar, ‘Zu den ae. Medizinaltexten’, pp. 325–8.

63 Though Grant shows (pp. 118–24) that Nowell is unreliable in detail, comparison with Omont shows consistent differences, e.g.

a In Omont œ becomes a before l + consonant, alne line 2 etc.; in Nowell œ becomes ea, ealle 261r4.

b In Omont initial palatal consonants have no effect on the following vowels, e.g. sconcan 7, scœdenne and scedenne 14 and scepes 29; in Nowell œ becomes ea after sc, sceal 261v12 etc. and sceapes 261r; and 13.

c Omont usually has ‘Anglian smoothing’, Nowell has not. For example, ea before h appears as œ in Omont, nœhterm line 10 and naehtnistig line 21; Nowell usually has ea, neaht 261r24 and 263v7 (also mutated forms), unmeahliglic 261v10 and weax 264r16 etc., but also wexes 264r16.

For ea before a guttural Omont has œ, e.g. aec lines 22 and 28 and dœg line 11; Nowell ea, e.g. eag 261r15 etc.

For eo before a guttural Omont has e, e.g. ðeh line 6 and seles line 19; Nowell has eo, e.g. seocan 264v5.

d Omont has œ for mutated POE œ before l followed by a consonant, e.g. waell line 24; Nowell has seven times well-, three times wyll- and once wil.

e Nowell has devoicing of finalg in deah 262v19; Omont has not, dœg line 11.

f In Omont io and eo have fallen together, e.g. cnio line 7 (for cneo), neoðowardne line 26 and peopor line 37. Nowell has no instance of io being written for eo, but neopo- is written once (nioþ- four times and niþ- twice), beoð once, 264r12 (cf. Omont biað line 18), and geolocan 262r3 (where eo appears to be from io, the back umlaut of ie from e after an initial palatal; see A. Campbell, Old English Grammar (Oxford, 1959), § 220). All other eo forms have original e,

g Omont has œ as the i-mutation of a before a nasal, gemœncg line 4 and mœng line 8; Nowell has e, gemeng 261r8 and meng 261v3.

64 Described above, p. 245.

65 Compare tables 1 and 2.

66 As reported by Grattan and Singer, Magic and Medicine, p. 208.

67 Ker, , Catalogue, p. 306.Google Scholar

68 On 131r there are four lines in large writing which suddenly becomes smaller in the middle of a remedy but which apparently is the same script.

69 Grattan, and Singer, , Magic and Medicine, pp. 208–9.Google Scholar

70 Perhaps I should add a caveat at this point that there are a few possibilities of parallels which I have passed over because the similarities are too slight for me to be certain that a relationship exists – e.g. between the remedies Wið þeoradlum BLbk 1.xlvii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 116/2–13) and Wið þeore Lacn lxxi (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 28/7–12), which are probably cousins very far removed. Such a distant affinity as this would in any case hardly help in this present enquiry.

71 BLbk 1.i (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 18/19–21) ‘For headache: take the lower part of houseleek; pound it; lay it in cold water; rub it hard until it is all lathered; bathe the head with it.’

Lacn 1 (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 2/2–5) ‘For headache, take the lower part of hellebore and everlasting; pound it; lay it on cloth; rub it in water; rub it hard so that it is all lathered; bathe the head often with the lather.’

72 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 10/2–3.

73 Ibid. 111, 24/27–8.

74 Ibid. 11, 112/28–30.

75 A word which Cockayne translates as the ‘dry’ disease and whose meaning Bosworth, J. and Toller, T. N., Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898)Google Scholar conjecture ‘to denote an inflamed swelling or ulcer’.

76 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 28/7–30/16.

77 Ibid. 11, 324/22–326/8.

78 Ibid. 11, 354/17–22.

79 For example:

L 111.xxx wenwyrt. þa smalan felterre

Lacn lxxiv ða smalan wenwyrt. feltere

Two wenworts are mentioned in other remedies and the adjective certainly belongs here. The error in Leechbook 111 consists only in the placing of the point; normally in this text descriptive epithets precede the nouns they qualify; if the exemplar had the reverse order it is easy to see how the mistake could have arisen.

L 111.lxvi mid hluttrum ealaþ, ‘with clear ale’

Lacn lxxii III mœdrum ealoð, ‘with three measures of ale’

Lacn lxxvi has oxanslyppan after cuslyppan in a list of herbal ingredients; Leechbook 111 does not; and an accidental omission is easier to explain than an addition.

80 Thus Lacn; BLbk sint.

81 7 occurs in BLbk only.

82 Thus Lacn; BLbk twentig.

83 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 98/22–104/13.

84 Ibid. 111, 42/2–44/17.

85 ‘Bald's Leechbook’, p. 161.

86 Cf. Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 1, 74/14–17, 76/4–8 and 72/25–74/2 respectively.

87 Cf. Ibid. 334/2–4 and 366/22–3.

88 BLbk 1.l (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 124/9–11) ‘For a handworm: take pitch and sulphur and pepper and white salt; mix together; anoint with it. A wax salve for a worm, a wax salve: butter, pepper, white salt; mix together; anoint with it.’

Lacn cxlvii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 58/4–6) ‘For handworms: pitch, sulphur, pepper, white salt; mix together; anoint with it.’ cxlvii ‘Again: wax, sulphur and salt; mix; anoint with it.’

89 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 12/9.

90 BLbk 1.xv (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 56/13–17) ‘For cough, how it may come variously on a man; and how one may care for it. Cough has manifold origins, as the spittles are various. At times it comes from excessive heat; at times from excessive cold; at times from excessive dryness.

Lacn clxxx (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 72/26–74/1) ‘For cough: how it comes variously on a man; and how one shall care for it. Cough has manifold origins, as the sweats are various: at times it comes from excessive heat; at times from excessive cold; at times from excessive damp; at times from excessive dryness.’

91 See Campbell, Grammar §§ 420.f.5, 422 and f. 1 and 423. In Lacnunga swat and beoð (with its tall first letter) are run together as if one word; but in BLbk spatl comes at the end of a line (BLbk 1.xv: Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 56/15).

92 Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 4/20.

93 This passage appears to render the beginning of the fifth chapter of Alexander of Tralles, which came to the Anglo-Saxons through an intermediate Latin version; see Cameron, ‘Bald's Leechbook’, p. 155, n. 8.

94 See Grattan, and Singer, , Magic and Medicine, p. 197Google Scholar, n. 2.

95 BLbk 1.xvii (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 11, 60/6–11) and Lacn clxxxv (Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 111, 74/21–5) ‘For heartache: if he has severe heart pain internally, then wind grows in his heart, and thirst afflicts him and he is lacking in strength. Make a stone bath for him, and let him eat southern radish with salt in it; the wound can be healed by this means.’

Nw 261v8–12 ‘If he has severe heart pain internally, then a wound grows in his heart and thirst afflicts him and he is lacking in strength. Make a stone bath for him, and let him eat southern radish in it; the wound shall be healed by this means.

96 Thus BLbk; Lacn ynsan.

97 BLbk; Lacn syle.

98 However, it seems to me that there is a family likeness between the script of Harley 585, of BL Add. 34652, fol. 2 (the West Saxon Regnal List, originally in Cotton Otho B. xi), copied at Winchester some time early in the eleventh century, and some of the hands in Cotton Galba A. xiv, which, as we have seen, was mostly written in the Nunnaminster from about 1000 onwards. Since, as Parkes has pointed out (‘The Palaeography’, p. 163, n. 4), there were potentially three scriptoria at Winchester from the early tenth century onwards, it is not necessary to imagine that the remedies copied into Otho B. xi had been preserved alongside those copied into Harley 585.

99 I should like to thank my colleagues and friends, Elizabeth Liggins and Linda Voigts, for reading this paper in earlier drafts, and for their helpful and constructive criticism; and also Michael Lapidge for his help with the final format. I remember with gratitude the peaceful month I spent working on this paper in the Englisches Seminar at the University of Freiburg-im-Breisgau in the summer of 1981.

page 265 note 1 Very often, BLbk adds further reminders of the topic (e.g. Eft wiþ þon ilcan) to the beginning of succeeding remedies for the same disease; there appears to be no need to comment on this further.

page 266 note 2 However, in slea the s is tall, but in Gis appears like an unfinished f.

page 267 note 3 Before BLbk added wiþ þon ilcan, ‘for the same’, as it did to all remedies except of course the first.

page 267 note 4 Cf. Leechdoms, ed. Cockayne 1, 214/20–3 and 212/3–6 respectively.

page 267 note 5 Note the reversal of the correct order.

page 268 note 6 Which it claims is from Pliny; but Cockayne comments in the margin ‘Nowhere’.