Extracts from Bald's Leechbook

Extracts from Bald's Leechbook

This edition is based on Bald's Leechbook, a ninth-century collection of medical prescriptions or remedies, which survives in a single tenth-century manuscript. The second volume begins with the Latin colophon Bald habet hunc librum Cild quem conscribere iussit ("Bald owns this book which he ordered Cild to compile").

The following small extracts provide representative examples of references to elves in Anglo-Saxon medicine.

I

Gif hors sīe ofscēoten,¹ oþþe oþþer nēat, nīm ompran sǣd & Scittisc weax. Gesinge mon 12 mǣssan ofer & dō hālig wæter on þæt hors, oððe on swā hwīle nēat swā hit sīe. Hafa ðē wyrte simle mid.

II

Lǣcedom gif hors sīe ofscēoten; & wiþ ūtwærce; & gif ūtgang forseten sīe; & wiþ lencten ādle; eft wiþ ūtwærce & wiþ unlybbum & wiþ þǣre geolwan ādle; & gif men sīe fǣrlice yfele, & to gehealdanne līchōman hǣlo; & wiþ gīeþan & ælue; & wiþ lond-ādle & gongelwæfran bīte; wið ūtsihte & hēafod-sealfa.

III

Gif hors ofscēoten sīe, nīm þonne þæt seax, þe þæt hæfte sīe fealo hrȳþres horn, & sīen 3 ǣrene næglas on…² Sȳ þæt ylfa þe him sīe, þis him mæg dō[n] bōte.

IV

Wiþ ælf ādle lǣcedom, & eft hū mon sceal on þā wyrte singan ǣr hī mon nīme, & eft hȳ mon sceal þā wyrta dōn under wēofod & ofer singan. & eft tācnu be þam hwæþer hit sīe ælf sogoþa, & tācn hū þū ongitan meaht hwæþer hine mon mæg gelācnian, & drencas & gebēdu wiþ ælcre fēndes costunge. Tācnu hū þū meaht ongitan hwæþer mon sīe on wæter ælf ādle, & lǣcedom wiþ þām, & gealdor on tō singanne, & þæt ilce mon mæg singan on wunda.

Notes

The word ofscēotan means simply ‘to shoot’, but, as extracts II and III show, in the context of these remedies ofscēoten means ‘elf-shot’.

Karen Jolly summarises more than century of scholarly assessment:

Elves were thought to be invisible or hard-to-see creatures who shot their victims with some kind of arrow or spear, thus inflicting a wound or inducing a disease with no other apparent cause (elfshot). They appear to be lesser spirits than the Æsir deities, but with similar armaments in spears and arrows. … This attack by elves was eventually linked with Christian ideas of demons penetrating or possessing animals and people, who then needed exorcism. (134)

See Karen Louise Jolly, Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf-Charms in Context (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

Alaric Hall has recently questions whether the pain referred to as ‘elf-shot’ was necessarily taken to be caused by external attack; the reference to elves may be more traditional than an active belief that elves were the cause of the pain. See Alaric Hall, “Calling the shots: the Old English remedy Gif hors ofscoten sie and Anglo-Saxon ‘Elf-Shot’”, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 106:2 (2005): 195-209.

This remedy has been shorted for brevity. The missing section reads in translation: ‘Carve on the horse, on the forehead, Christ’s mark, so that it bleeds. Then carve Christ’s mark on the spine and on each of the limbs which you can grasp. Then take the left ear, pierce it in silence. This shall you do: take a staff; strike on the back. Then the horse will be well. And carve on the dagger’s handle these words: Benedicite omnia opera domini dominum (“bless all the works of the lord of lords”)’.