The Nine Herbs Charm, Nigon Wyrta Galdor, Lay of the Nine Healing Herbs, or Nine Wort Spell (among other names) is an Old English charm recorded in the tenth-century CE.[1] Anglo-Saxon medical compilation known as Lacnunga, which survives on the manuscript, Harley MS 585, in the British Library, in London.[2] The charm involves the preparation of nine plants.

The poem contains one of two clear Old English mentions of the god Woden in Old English poetry; the other is Maxims I of the Exeter Book. Robert K. Gordon's translation of the section reads as follows:

A snake came crawling, it bit a man.
Then Woden took nine glory-twigs,
Smote the serpent so that it flew into nine parts.
There apple brought this pass against poison,
That she nevermore would enter her house.[1]

Nine and three, numbers significant in Germanic paganism and later Germanic folklore, are mentioned frequently throughout the charm.[2]

Scholars have proposed that this passage describes Woden coming to the assistance of the herbs through his use of nine twigs, each twig inscribed with the runic first-letter initial of a plant.[3]

According to Gordon, the poem is "clearly an old heathen thing which has been subjected to Christian censorship."[1] Malcolm Laurence Cameron states that chanting the poem aloud results in a "marvellously incantatory effect".[4]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Gordon (1962:92–93).
  2. 1 2 Macleod (2006:127).
  3. ↑ Mayr-Harting (1991:27).
  4. ↑ Cameron (1993:144).

References

  • Cameron, Malcolm Laurence (1993). Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40521-1
  • Gordon, R. K. (1962). Anglo-Saxon Poetry. Everyman's Library #794. M. Dent & Sons, LTD.
  • Macleod, Mindy; Mees, Bernard (2006). Runic Amulets and Magic Objects. Boydell Press. ISBN 1-84383-205-4
  • Mayr-Harting, Henry (1991). The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. Penn State Press ISBN 0-271-00769-9
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.