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[edit]
Notes[edit]
References[edit]
- 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
External links[edit]
- Foys, Martin et al. Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project (Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019-); digital facsimile edition and Modern English translation. Accessed February 2023.
- Hopkins, Joseph S. 2020. "Nigon Wyrta Galdor: Popularly Known as the Nine Herbs Charm". Mimisbrunnr.info. Accessed February 2023.
- Hostetter, Aaron K. 2023. "The Metrical Charms". Old English Poetry Project. Rutgers University-Camden. Accessed February 2023.
- Jolly, Karen Louise. 1996. "Lay of the Nine Herbs and Lay of the Nine Twigs of Woden". Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pp. 125-127.
- Thomas, Val. 2022. "The Nine Herbs Charm: Plants Poisons and Poetry". Herbal History Research Network. Accessed February 2023.
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