THE OLD ENGLISH IIETiBALS 
119 
REVIEWS. 
The Old English Herbals. By Eleanour Sinclair Rohde. 
Sm. 4to, cloth, pp. xii, 24.3, with coloured frontispiece and 17 
illustrations. Longmans, 1922. Price 21s. net. 
In this well-printed and generally attractive volume we have a 
comprehensive and admirably written account of our English herbals, 
beginning with the Anglo-Saxon Herbals to which the first chapter 
is devoted, and ending with the Culpeper and William Coles of the 
seventeenth century. 
The account of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, to which, as Miss 
Rohde says, “ we look chiefly for our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon 
plant lore—the Leech Book of Bald , the Laenunga and the Saxon 
translations of the Herbarium of Apuleius, and the so-called Ilept 
iltca '^eiov ”—is exceedingly interesting, and contains much that will 
be new to most readers. She has a happy gift of assimilating infor- * 
mation and of conveying it in readable fashion, and this characterises 
the book throughout. In compiling this chapter she has consulted 
the original MSS. at the British Museum, at the Universities and 
elsewhere; of the actual condition of the Leech Book of Bald , 
dating from about 900-950, she gives a detailed description, followed 
by a sketch of its history, so far as known, and its contents: “ Unlike 
some other MSS. herbals, of which only a few tattered pages remain, 
this perfect specimen of Saxon work has nothing fragile about it; 
the vellum is as strong and in as good condition as when it first 
lay clean and untouched under the hand of the scribe—Cild by 
name—who penned it with such skill and loving care.” The author 
tells us that “the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, a far 
larger number of plants than the continental nations.” In the 
Herbarium of Apuleius alone 185 plants are mentioned ; in the Her- 
barius of 1484, the earliest herbal printed in Germany, only 150 are 
recorded, and in the German Herbarius of 1485, 380 ; “ but it has 
been computed that the Anglo-Saxons had names for and used at 
least 500 plants.” Miss Rohde regrets that so many of these names 
have fallen into disuse, but a reference to the Dictionary of English 
Elant-names or The English Dialect Dictionary would have shown 
her that there is less ground for her regret than she seems to suppose. 
“ Waybroad,” for example, for which she refers to Turner’s Herbal , 
appears there as “ Weybrede ” or “ Waybrede,” and in various spel¬ 
lings (but not as Wa ybroad) in numerous glossaries, and is still in 
common use for Blantago major ; “ Maythen is surely preferable to 
Camomile,” but although it seems to have been thus employed in 
Saxon times it is nowadays applied to Athemis Cotula throughout 
the southern counties, as it is by Lyte and Gerard. We fear that in 
citing “joy of the ground” as “a delightful name for periwinkle,” 
M iss Rohde has misread her text: the name appears as “juy of 
grownde ” in the fourteenth century medical MS. printed in Archaeo- 
logia , vol. xxx., with the explanation : 
“ Ye lef is thicke schinede & styf 
As is yc grene juy [ivy] leef.” 
