32 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



initiated who alone understood them? At present it is all 

 mysterious, though perhaps one day we shall discover both their 

 sources and their meaning. They show no definite traces of the 

 Scandinavian rune-lays concerning herbs, though one of the 

 charms is in runic characters. It is noteworthy that in the third 

 book, which is evidently much older than the first two parts of 

 the Leech Book, the proportion of heathen charms is exceptionally 

 large. In one prescription we find the names of two heathen 

 idols, Tiecon and Leleloth, combined with a later Christian 

 interpolation of the names of the four gospellers. The charm 

 is in runic characters and is to be followed by a prayer. Many 

 of the mystic sentences are wholly incomprehensible, in others we 

 find heathen names such as Lilumenne, in others a string of words 

 which may be a corrupt form of some very ancient language. 

 Thus a lay to be sung in case a man or beast drinks an insect 

 runs thus : " Gonomil, orgomil, marbumil, marbsai, tofeth," 

 etc. 1 



If some of the charms have a malignant sound, others were 

 probably as soothing in those days as those gems are still which 

 have survived in our inimitable nursery rhymes. 



For instance, the following has for us no meaning, but even 

 in the translation it has something of the curious effect of the 

 words in the original. A woman who cannot rear her child is 

 instructed to say " Everywhere I carried for me the famous 

 kindred doughty one with this famous meat doughty one, so 

 I will have it for me and go home." 



In the Lacnunga there is a counting-out charm which is a 

 mixture of an ancient heathen charm combined with a Christian 

 rite at the end. 



" Nine were Noddes sisters, then the nine came to be eight, 

 and the eight seven, and the seven six, and the six five, and the 

 five four, and the four three, and the three two, and the two one, 

 and the one none. This may be medicine for thee from scrofula 



1 Lacnunga, 9. 



