12 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



a fuller reading. It is fairly evident that the Saxon treatise is 

 at least in part indebted to the Passionarius by Gariopontus, 

 another Salernitan writer of the same period. 



The Lacnunga (Harl. 585), an original work, and one of 

 the oldest and most interesting manuscripts, is a small, thick 

 volume without any illustrations. Some of the letters are 

 illuminated and some are rudely ornamented. At the top of 

 the first page there is the inscription " Liber Humfredi Wanley," 

 and it is interesting, therefore, to realise that the British Museum 

 owes this treasure to the zealous antiquarian whose efforts 

 during the closing years of the seventeenth and early years of 

 the eighteenth century rescued so many valuable Saxon and 

 other MSS. from oblivion. 1 



To the student of folk lore and folk custom these sources of 

 herb lore are of remarkable interest for the light they throw on 

 the beliefs and customs of humble everyday people in Anglo- 

 Saxon times. Of kings and warriors, of bards and of great 

 ladies we can read in other Saxon literature, and all so vividly 

 that we see their halls, the long hearths on which the fires were 

 piled, the openings in the roof through which the smoke passed. 

 We see the men with their " byrnies " of ring mail, their crested 



1 On the preceding blank page there is an inscription in late seventeenth- 

 century handwriting 



" This boucke with letters is wr [remainder of word illegible] 

 Of it you cane no languige make. 



BaC. 



A happie end if thou dehre [dare] to make 

 Remember still thyn owne esstate, 

 If thou desire in Christ to die 

 Thenn well to lead thy lif applie 



barbara crokker." 



It is at least probable that Wanley, who at this period was collecting Anglo- 

 Saxon manuscripts for George Hickes, secured this MS. from " barbara 

 crokker." Her naive avowal of her inability to read the MS. suggests that 

 she probably had no idea of the value of the book, and when one remembers 

 Wanley's reputation for driving shrewd bargains one cannot help wondering 

 what he paid for this treasure. Those must have been halcyon days for 

 collectors, when a man who had been an assistant in the Bodleian Library 

 with a salary of 12 a year could buy Saxon manuscripts ! 



