THE ANGLO-SAXON HERBALS 37 



our race? There is no tangible link between his descendant 

 Woden and the worship of earth, but the sheaf of corn, the symbol 

 of Sceaf, carries us straight back to Nature worship. Sceaf 

 takes his fitting place as the semi-divine ancestor with the lesser 

 divinities such as Hrede and Eostra, goddess of the radiant 

 dawn. It is to this age that the ceremonies in the picking of 

 the herbs transport us, to the mystery of the virtues of herbs, 

 the fertility of earth, the never-ceasing conflict between the 

 beneficent forces of sun and summer and the evil powers of the 

 long, dark northern winters. Closely intertwined with Nature 

 worship we find the later Christian rites and ceremonies. For 

 the new teaching did not oust the old, and for many centuries 

 the mind of the average man halted half-way between the two 

 faiths. If he accepted Christ he did not cease to fear the great 

 hierarchy of unseen powers of Nature, the worship of which was 

 bred in his very bone. The ancient festivals of Yule and Eostra 

 continued under another guise and polytheism still held its 

 sway. The devil became one with the gloomy and terrible 

 in Nature, with the malignant elves and dwarfs. Even with the 

 warfare between the beneficent powers of sun and the fertility 

 of Nature and the malignant powers of winter, the devil became 

 associated. Nor did men cease to believe in the Wyrd, that 

 dark, ultimate fate goddess who, though obscure, lies at the back 

 of all Saxon belief. It was in vain that the Church preached 

 against superstitions. Egbert, Archbishop of York, in his 

 Penitential, strictly forbade the gathering of herbs with incanta- 

 tions and enjoined the use of Christian rites, but it is probable 

 that even when these manuscripts were written, the majority 

 at least of the common folk in these islands, though nominally 

 Christian, had not deserted their ancient ways of thought.^ 



^ St. Eloy, in a sermon preached in a.d. 640, also forbade the enchanting 

 of herbs : — 



" Before all things I declare and testify to you that you shall observe 

 none of the impious customs of the pagans, neither sorcerers, nor diviners, 

 nor soothsayers, nor enchanters, nor must you presume for any cause to 

 enquire of them. . . . Let none regulate the beginning of any piece of work 



