282 PRIMITIVE LEECHCRAFT 



a salve composed of forty-four ' worts ' or plants, and the 

 fat or bones of fourteen animals, to be rubbed on after 

 repeating the Creed, the Magnificat, the Benedictus, and 

 the prayer of the Four Evangelists. 



^Elfric, of course, was only repeating what had been 

 handed down to him from pagan forebears plus the 

 Christian anthems and prayers; nor were these pagan 

 forebears, perhaps, so simple as we may suppose. The 

 Germanic colonists, who proved strong enough to relegate 

 the Celtic tribes of Britain to the 'fringe' they still enjoy, 

 had not been wanting in brains. Their c^iief deity was 

 Woden a name cognate with our ' wit ' and ' wisdom ' 

 they worshipped him as the Almighty Wit the Supreme 

 Intelligence. To Thor the mighty Thunderer was 

 assigned inferior rank to Woden brute force they never 

 imagined as a match for intellect. It is true they were 

 of the same Teutonic stem which had overthrown the 

 culture of Rome, and violently checked the current of 

 civilisation for nearly a thousand years; it is true that 

 we, their descendants, are wont to use their names 

 Goths and Vandals to typify everything that is brutal 

 and ignorant and coarse. Yet even among these Germans 

 there were a few who were careful to preserve and hand 

 down some of the ancient learning. They studied, and 

 even translated, many works of Greek and Latin writers, 

 and much of their leechcraft was derived from Hippo- 

 crates, ^Esculapius, and Plato. But the ingenious and 

 delicate surgical instruments, of which such a variety 

 have been unearthed at Herculaneum and Pompeii, were 

 unknown to them, or, if known, their use had been 

 forgotten : surgical and medical science had to be recon- 

 structed from the foundation. 



