Charms

Against a wen
Wen, wen, little wen,
here you must not build, here have no abode,
but you must go north to the nearby hill
where, poor wretch, you have a brother.
He will lay a leaf at your head.
Under the paw of the wolf, under the eagle’s wing,
under the claw of the eagle, may you ever decline!
Shrink like coal on the hearth!
Wizen like filth of the wall!
Waste away like water in the pail!
Become as small as a grain of linseed,
and far smaller than a hand-worm’s hip-bone and so very
small
that you are at last nothing at all.

For a Swarm of Bees

Concerning a swarm of bees. Take earth in your right hand, cast it under your right
foot and say:
I have it underfoot; I have found it. Behold! Earth avails against all kinds of
creatures, it avails against malice and evil jealousy and against the might tongue of
man.
When they swarm, scatter earth over them and say:
Alight, victorious women, alight on the earth! Never turn wild and fly to the woods!
Be just as mindful of my benefit as is every man of his food and his fatherland!

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Remedies
For the sickness which they call shingles: take the bark of quickbeam, and aspen, and
apple, maple elder, willow, sallow, myrtle, wych-elm, oak blackthorn, birch, olive
dogwood; there should be most of the ash-tree, and except for hawthorn and alder,
some from every tree which one can get of most of the trees which are written here; and
also; bog myrtle and butcher’s broom, houseleek, elecampane, radish sward elder, the
great nettle, wormwood centaury. Then take a ten-amber cauldron, put in the third
part of the barks and of the hers, boil strongly in unfermented beer, if you have it (if
you haven’t got it, boil hard in water), then remove the barks and put fresh ones into
the same juice; do thus three times, then strain the potion clean, very hot and then add
a basin-full of butter, very hot and stir together. Let it stand for two or three days,
then remove the butter. And then take bog-myrtle catkins, and bunches of ivy
berries, tansy and betony, elecampane, knapweed, basil; beat together; boil in the
butter; then remove the herbs from the butter completely, so far as one can; then take
fine barley flour and burnt salt; then make a pottage with the butter and stir it
without heat, and add pepper. Then let him eat the pottage first fasting for a night.
Then afterwards let him drink the potion and no other liquid for ten days, thirty if he
can. Then take mistletoe from an oak, beat it fine and dry it and rub down to flour;
then weigh out a penny weight; put that into the best wine; let him drink that for nine
days, and eat neither new cheese, nor fresh goose, nor fresh eel, nor fresh pork, nor
anything which comes from a wine-decoction, nor fishes without shells, nor web-footed
birds; if he eat any of these, let it be salted; and let him not drink beer, and wine and
ale only in moderation. If one follows this remedy, then the man will be healthy.

For shingles: take water dock, beat it very fine, boil a good handful in an old wine-
docotion, remove the herbs, add a second handful of the same herb again; boil hard
again, then remove the herbs; then take sulphur, beat it very fine, then add it to the
salve until it is as thick as pottage; then anoint the blotches with the salve until he is
well.

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In case a poisonous spider – that is the stronger one – should bite a man, cut three
incisions close to and running away from it; let the blood run into a green hazel-wood
spoon, then throw it away over the road so there will be no injury. Again; cut one
incision on the wound, pound a plantain, lay it on; no harm will come to him. For the
bit of a weaving-spider, take the lower part of aererthe and lichen from a black-thorn;
dry it to powder, moisten with honey; treat the wound with that. For the bite of a
poisonous spider: black snails fried in a hot pan and ground to powder, and pepper
and betony; one is to eat that powder, and drink it and apply it. For the bit of a
poisonous spider: take the lower part of mallow; apply it to the wound. Again: cut
five incisions, one on the bite and four around about; in silence, cast the blood with a
spoon over the waggon-road.

For the bite of a mad dog: mix agrimony and plantain with honey and the white of an
egg; great the wound with that. For a wound from a dog: boil burdock and groundsel
in butter; anoint with that. Again: bruise betony; apply it to the bite. Again: beat
plantain; apply it. Again: seethe two or three onions; roast them on ashes; mix with
fat and honey, apply it. Again: burn a pig’s jaw to ashes; sprinkle on. Again: take
plantain root; pound it with fat; apply it to the wound so it casts out the poison.

If a man be over-virile, boil water agrimony in welsh ale; he is to drink it at night,

fasting. If a man be insufficiently virile, boil the same herb in milk; then you will
excite it. Again: boil in ewe’s milk: water agrimony, alexanders, the berg called
Fornet’s palm, so it will be as he most desires.

For the dorsal muscle; seethe green rue in oil and wax; anoint the dorsal muscle with
it. Again: take goat hair; let it smoke under the breeches against the dorsal muscle.
If a heel-sinew be broken, take Fornet’s palm, seethe it in water, foment the limb with
it, and wash the limb with it; and make a salve of butter; anoint after the fomentation.

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At which time blood-letting is to be avoided, and at which to be allowed. Blood-
letting is to be avoided for a fortnight before Lammas and for thirty-five days
afterwards, because then all poisonous things fly and injure men greatly. Those
doctors who were wisest taught that no one should drink a potion in that month, nor
anywhere weaken his body, unless there were great need for it – and then to stay inside
during the middle of the day, since the air is most infected then. Therefore the
Romans and all southern people made earth-houses for themselves because of the
air’s heat and poisonousness. Doctors also say that flowering herbs are then best to
work, both for potions and salves and powder.

How one should avoid blood-letting on each of the six fives of the month; and when it
is best. Doctors also teach that no one should let blood at a five-night old moon, and
again at a ten-night, and fifteen and twenty and twenty-five and a thirty-night old
moon, but between each of the six fives. And there is no time so good for blood-letting
as in early spring when the evil humours which are imbibed during winter are gathered
together, and best of all in the month of April, when trees and plants first sprout,
when the bad pus and the bad blood increases in the cavities of the body.

If a bloody wound in a man should turn bad, then take mallow, boil it in water, foment
with that; and pound the lower part – apply that. If you wish to prevent blood in a
cut, take cauldron soot, rub it to powder; sprinkle on the wound. Again: take rye and
barley straw; burn it to powder. If you cannot staunch a bloody wound, take new
horse-dung; dry it in the sun or by the fire; rub it to powder very thoroughly; lay the
powder very thick on a linen cloth; bind the bloody wound with that for a night. If
you cannot staunch a flowing vein, take the same blood which runs out, burn it on a
hot stone and rub it to powder; lay that powder on the vein and bind it up tight. If
one cut into a sinew while blood-letting mix together wax and pitch and sheep’s
grease; lay it on a cloth and on the wound.

If a man’s hair fall out, make him a salve; take great hellebore and viper’s bugloss,
and the lower part of burdock, and gentian; make the salve from that plant and from

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all these, and from butter on which no water has come. If hair fall out, boil the
polypody fern, and foment the head with that very hot. If a man should be bald, the
great doctor Pliny prescribes this remedy: take dead bees, burn them to ashes – linseed
also – add oil to it; seethe very long over the coals, then strain and wring out; and take
willow leaves, pound them, pour into the oil, boil again for a while over the coals, then
strain; anoint with it after the bath.

A head-bath for that: boil willow leaves in water; wash with that, before you anoint
it; and pound the leaves strongly boiled; bind on at night, until it be dry, so that you
can afterwards anoint with the salve; do so for thirty nights, longer if there be need of
it.

In order that hair should not grow: take ants’ eggs; rub them down; smear on the
place; no hair will ever come there. If hair should be too thick take a swallow, burn it
to ashes under a tile and have the ashes sprinkled on.

Make thus a salve against the race of elves, goblins and those women with whom the
Devil copulates; take the female hopplant, wormwood, betony, lupin, vervain,
henbane, dittander, viper’s bugloss, bilberry plants, cropleek, garlic, madder grains,
corn cockle, fennel. Put those plants in a vat; place under an altar; sing nine masses
over it; boil it in butter and in sheep’s grease; add much holy salt; strain through a
cloth; throw the herbs into running water. If any evil temptation come to a man, or elf
or goblin, anoint his face with this salve, and put it on his eyes and where his body is
sore, and cense him and frequently sign him with the cross; his condition will soon be
better.

Against a woman’s chatter: eat a radish at night, while fasting; that day the chatter
cannot harm you.

Charms and Remedies from

The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology
Translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland

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 Penelope’s Organ Bank

Petrified Acromantula Occuli

Dryades’ All organ donations submitted voluntarily
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Delicacies

Wallow Worms
and Swamp
Nymph Hair
Fowl Is Fair
Collected at full moon
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Best if used by winter solstice
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Precocious Pixie Prisons

Do not release before observed success of good behavior
charm and community service complete

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