36 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



the earth take the newer root, delve it up, cut up nine chips 

 with the left hand and sing three times the Miserere mei Deus 

 and nine times the Pater Noster, then take mugwort and ever- 

 lasting, boil these three worts and the chips in milk till they get 

 red, then let the man sip at night fasting a pound dish full . . . 

 let him rest himself soft and wrap himself up warm; if more 

 need be let him do so again, if thou still need do it a third time, 

 thou wilt not need oftener." Leech Book, II. 65. 



The leechdom for the use of dwarf elder against a snake-bite 

 runs thus : l 



" For rent by snake take this wort and ere thou carve it off 

 hold it in thine hand and say thrice nine times Omnes malas 

 bestias canto, that is in our language Enchant and overcome all 

 evil wild deer ; then carve it off with a very sharp knife into three 

 parts." Herb. Ap., 93. 



Some of the most remarkable passages in the manuscripts 

 are those concerning the ceremonies to be observed both in the 

 picking and in the administering of herbs. What the mystery 

 of plant life which has so deeply affected the minds of men in all 

 ages and of all civilisations meant to our ancestors, we can but 

 dimly apprehend as we study these ceremonies. They carry us 

 back to that worship of earth and the forces of Nature which 

 prevailed when Woden was yet unborn. That Woden was the 

 chief god of the tribes on the mainland is indisputable, but even 

 in the hierarchy of ancestors reverenced as semi-divine the 

 Saxons themselves looked to Sceaf rather than to Woden, who 

 himself was descended from Sceaf. There are few more haunting 

 legends than that of our mystic forefather, the little boy asleep 

 on a sheaf of corn who, in a richly adorned vessel which moved 

 neither by sails nor oars, came to our people out of the great 

 deep and was hailed by them as their king. Did not Alfred 

 himself claim him as his primeval progenitor, the founder of 



1 For further instances of the mystic use of three and nine see also Leech 

 Book, I. 45, 47, 67. 



