Overview

This three-volume work is a must for the bookshelf of anyone interested in Old English magic, medicine, folklore, and heathenry. Published in 1864-6, it was put together and edited by Thomas Oswald Cockayne (1807-73), a Cambridge graduate, much-published early member of the London Philological Society, and teacher of the philologists Walter Skeat and Henry Sweet. It is a collection of writings and lore from Anglo-Saxon England on plants, medicine and the heavens, mostly in Old English with accompanying modern English translations. The preface of Volume 2 outlines evidence for early medieval British material culture, particularly foodstuffs, drink, fabrics and metals, and argues against dismissing the Anglo-Saxons and their contemporaries as 'primitive'. The Old English text (Bald's Leechbook) in this volume is taken from a tenth-century manuscript in the Royal Collection, which Cockayne suggests may have belonged to the Abbot of Glastonbury. It is a careful and thorough compilation of remedies for conditions ranging from toothache to complications of pregnancy, and digestive problems to mental illness, and reveals the influence of Greek medical learning in the Anglo-Saxon world. In this new reproduction of the original work, the announcements and advertisements of the original publisher, having nothing essential to do with the work, have been removed. This does not affect the original page-numbering.

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9781729370773

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