The Old English Herbals. Eleanour Sinclair Rohde
one Bald, who, if he were not a personal friend of King Alfred’s, had at any rate access to the king’s correspondence; for one chapter consists of prescriptions sent by Helias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to the king.[4] We learn the names of the first owner and scribe from lines in Latin verse at the end of the second part of the MS.
“Bald is the owner of this book, which he ordered Cild to write,
Earnestly I pray here all men, in the name of Christ,
That no treacherous person take this book from me,
Neither by force nor by theft nor by any false statement.
Why? Because the richest treasure is not so dear to me
As my dear books which the Grace of Christ attends.”
The book consists of 109 leaves and is written in a large, bold hand and one or two of the initial letters are very faintly illuminated. The writing is an exceptionally fine specimen of Saxon penmanship. On many of the pages there are mysterious marks, but it is impossible to conjecture their meaning. It has been suggested that they point to the sources from which the book was compiled and were inserted by the original owner.
The Leech Book of Bald was evidently the manual of a Saxon doctor, and he refers to two other doctors—Dun and Oxa by name—who had given him prescriptions. The position of the leech in those days must have been very trying, for he was subjected to the obviously unfair competition of the higher clergy, many of whom enjoyed a reputation for working miraculous cures.[5] The leech being so inferior in position, it is not surprising that his medical knowledge did not advance on scientific lines. He relied on the old heathen superstitions, probably from an instinctive feeling that in pagan religion, combined with the herb lore which had been handed down through the ages, the mass of the people had a deep-rooted faith. Nothing is more obvious in the Leech Book than the fact that the virtues ascribed to the different herbs are based not on the personal knowledge of the writer, but on the old herb lore. This gives the Leech Book its special fascination; for it is the oldest surviving manuscript in which we can learn the herb lore of our ancestors, handed down to them from what dim past ages we can only surmise. We have, therefore, to bear in mind that what may strike our modern minds as quaint, or even grotesque, is in the majority of instances a distorted form of lore which doubtless suffered many changes during the early centuries of our era. Nearly all that is most fascinating in the Leech Book is of very ancient Indo-Germanic or Eastern origin, but one cannot help wondering how much the Saxons incorporated of the herb lore of the ancient Britons. Does not Pliny tell us that the Britons gathered herbs with such striking ceremonies that it would seem as though the Britons had taught them to the Persians?
One cannot read Bald’s manuscript without being struck by his remarkable knowledge of native plants and garden herbs. We are inferior to our continental neighbours in so many arts that it is pleasant to find that in the ancient art of gardening and in their knowledge of herbs our Saxon forefathers excelled. It has been pointed out by eminent authorities that the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, a far larger number of plants than the continental nations. In the Herbarium of Apuleius, including the additions from Dioscorides, only 185 plants are mentioned, and this was one of the standard works of the early Middle Ages. In the Herbarius of 1484, the earliest herbal printed in Germany, only 150 plants are recorded, and in the German Herbarius of 1485 there are 380. But from various sources it has been computed that the Anglo-Saxons had names for, and used, at least 500 plants.[6] One feels instinctively that the love of flowers and gardens was as deep-rooted in our ancestors as it is in our nation to-day, and though we do not know exactly what they grew in their gardens—which they called wyrtȝerd (literally, herb-yard)—we do know that the marigolds, sunflowers, peonies, violets and gilly-flowers which make the cottage gardens of England so gay and full of colour to-day were also the commonest plants in the Saxon gardens. Fashions in large gardens have changed throughout the centuries, and there are stately gardens in this country famed the world over. But in regard to our cottage gardens we are staunchly conservative, and it is assuredly the cottage garden which is characteristically English. Incidentally, one cannot help regretting that so many of our old Saxon plant names have fallen into disuse. “Waybroad,” for instance, is much more descriptive than “plantain,” which is misleading.[7] “Maythen” also is surely preferable to “camomile,” and “wergulu” is more characteristic of that fierce weed than “nettle.” Those of us who are gardeners will certainly agree that “unfortraedde” is the right name for knotweed. And is not “joy of the ground” a delightful name for periwinkle?
The oldest illustrated herbal which has come down to us from Saxon times is the translation of the Latin Herbarium Apuleii Platonici.[8] The original Latin work is believed to date from the fifth century, though no copy so ancient as this is in existence now. The name Apuleius Platonicus is possibly fictitious and nothing is known of the writer, who was, of course, distinct from Apuleius Madaurensis, the author of the Golden Ass. The Saxon translation of this herbal (now in the British Museum) is supposed to date from A.D. 1000–1050, and belongs to the school of Ælfric of Canterbury. The frontispiece is a coloured picture in which Plato is represented holding a large volume which is being given him by Æsculapius and the Centaur, and on the other side of the page is a blue circle spotted with white and red, within which is the name of the book: “Herbarium Apuleii Platonici quod accepit ab Escolapio et Chirone centauro magistro Achillis.” The book consists of 132 chapters, in each of which a herb is described, and there are accompanying illustrations of the herbs. Throughout the book there are also remarkable pictures of snakes, scorpions and unknown winged creatures. It has been pointed out that the figures of herbs are obviously not from the original plants, but are copied from older figures, and these from others older still, and one wonders what the original pictures were like. It is interesting to think that perhaps the illustrations in this Saxon herbal are directly descended, so to speak, from the drawings of Cratevas,[9] Dionysius or Metrodorus, of whom Pliny tells us “They drew the likeness of herbs and wrote under them their effects.” The picture of the lily is very attractive in spite of the fact that the flowers are painted pale blue. The stamens in the figure stand out beyond the petals and look like rays of light, with a general effect that is curiously pleasing. One of the most interesting figures is that of the mandrake (painted in a deep madder), which embodies the old legend that it was death to dig up the root, and that therefore a dog was tied to a rope and made to drag it up. It is the opinion of some authorities that these figures show the influence of the school represented by the two splendid Vienna manuscripts of Dioscorides dating from the fifth and seventh centuries. There is no definite evidence of this, and though the illustrations in the Saxon manuscript show the influence of the classical tradition, they are poor compared with those in the Vienna manuscript. To some extent at least the drawings in this herbal must necessarily have been copies, for many of the plants are species unknown in this country.
ÆSCULAPIUS PLATO AND A CENTAUR
From the Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius (Cott. Vit., C. 3, folio 19a)
The Saxon translation of the Περὶ Διδαξέων (Harl. 6258) is a thin volume badly mutilated in parts. Herr Max Löwenbeck[10] has shown that this is in part translated from a treatise by an eleventh-century writer, Petrocellus or Petronius, of the School of Salerno—the original treatise being entitled Practica Petrocelli Salernitani.[11] As has been pointed out by many eminent authorities, the School of Salerno, being a survival of Greek medicine, was uncontaminated by superstitious medicine. Consequently there are striking differences between