In the alliterative lay of the nine healing herbs this is very conspicuous. Woden, we are told, smote the serpent with nine magic twigs, the serpent was broken into nine parts, from which the wind blew the nine flying venoms. There are numerous instances of the patient being directed to take nine of each of the ingredients or to take the herb potion itself for three or nine days. Or it is directed that an incantation is to be said or sung three or nine times, or that three or nine masses are to be sung over the herbs. This mystic use of three and nine is conspicuous in the following prescription:—
“Against dysentery, a bramble of which both ends are in the earth take the newer root, delve it up, cut up nine chips with the left hand and sing three times the Miserere mei Deus and nine times the Pater Noster, then take mugwort and everlasting, boil these three worts and the chips in milk till they get red, then let the man sip at night fasting a pound dish full … let him rest himself soft and wrap himself up warm; if more need be let him do so again, if thou still need do it a third time, thou wilt not need oftener.”—Leech Book, II. 65.
The leechdom for the use of dwarf elder against a snake-bite runs thus:—[34]
“For rent by snake take this wort and ere thou carve it off hold it in thine hand and say thrice nine times Omnes malas bestias canto, that is in our language Enchant and overcome all evil wild deer; then carve it off with a very sharp knife into three parts.”—Herb. Ap., 93.
Some of the most remarkable passages in the manuscripts are those concerning the ceremonies to be observed both in the picking and in the administering of herbs. What the mystery of plant life which has so deeply affected the minds of men in all ages and of all civilisations meant to our ancestors, we can but dimly apprehend as we study these ceremonies. They carry us back to that worship of earth and the forces of Nature which prevailed when Woden was yet unborn. That Woden was the chief god of the tribes on the mainland is indisputable, but even in the hierarchy of ancestors reverenced as semi-divine the Saxons themselves looked to Sceaf rather than to Woden, who himself was descended from Sceaf. There are few more haunting legends than that of our mystic forefather, the little boy asleep on a sheaf of corn who, in a richly adorned vessel which moved neither by sails nor oars, came to our people out of the great deep and was hailed by them as their king. Did not Alfred himself claim him as his primeval progenitor, the founder of our race? There is no tangible link between his descendant Woden and the worship of earth, but the sheaf of corn, the symbol of Sceaf, carries us straight back to Nature worship. Sceaf takes his fitting place as the semi-divine ancestor with the lesser divinities such as Hrede and Eostra, goddess of the radiant dawn. It is to this age that the ceremonies in the picking of the herbs transport us, to the mystery of the virtues of herbs, the fertility of earth, the never-ceasing conflict between the beneficent forces of sun and summer and the evil powers of the long, dark northern winters. Closely intertwined with Nature worship we find the later Christian rites and ceremonies. For the new teaching did not oust the old, and for many centuries the mind of the average man halted half-way between the two faiths. If he accepted Christ he did not cease to fear the great hierarchy of unseen powers of Nature, the worship of which was bred in his very bone. The ancient festivals of Yule and Eostra continued under another guise and polytheism still held its sway. The devil became one with the gloomy and terrible in Nature, with the malignant elves and dwarfs. Even with the warfare between the beneficent powers of sun and the fertility of Nature and the malignant powers of winter, the devil became associated. Nor did men cease to believe in the Wyrd, that dark, ultimate fate goddess who, though obscure, lies at the back of all Saxon belief. It was in vain that the Church preached against superstitions. Egbert, Archbishop of York, in his Penitential, strictly forbade the gathering of herbs with incantations and enjoined the use of Christian rites, but it is probable that even when these manuscripts were written, the majority at least of the common folk in these islands, though nominally Christian, had not deserted their ancient ways of thought. [35] When the Saxon peasant went to gather his healing herbs he may have used Christian prayers[36] and ceremonies, but he did not forget the goddess of the dawn. It is noteworthy how frequently we find the injunction that the herbs must be picked at sunrise or when day and night divide, how often stress is laid upon looking towards the east, and turning “as the sun goeth from east to south and west.” In many there is the instruction that the herb is to be gathered “without use of iron” or “with gold and with hart’s horn” (emblems of the sun’s rays). It is curious how little there is of moon lore. In some cases the herbs are to be gathered in silence, in others the man who gathers them is not to look behind him—a prohibition which occurs frequently in ancient superstitions. The ceremonies are all mysterious and suggestive, but behind them always lies the ancient ineradicable worship of Nature. To what dim past does that cry, “Erce, Erce, Erce, Mother of Earth” carry us?
“Erce, Erce, Erce, Mother of Earth!
May the All-Wielder, Ever Lord grant thee
Acres a-waxing, upwards a-growing
Pregnant [with corn] and plenteous in strength;
Hosts of [grain] shafts and of glittering plants!
Of broad barley the blossoms
And of white wheat ears waxing,
Of the whole earth the harvest!
Let be guarded the grain against all the ills
That are sown o’er the land by the sorcery men,
Nor let cunning women change it nor a crafty man.”
And that other ancient verse:—
“Hail be thou, Earth, Mother of men!
In the lap of the God be thou a-growing!
Be filled with fodder for fare-need of men!”
It is of these two invocations that Stopford Brooke (whose translations I have used) writes: “These are very old heathen invocations used, I daresay, from century to century and from far prehistoric times by all the Teutonic farmers. Who ‘Erce’ is remains obscure. But the Mother of Earth seems to be here meant, and she is a person who greatly kindles our curiosity. To touch her is like touching empty space, so far away is she. At any rate some Godhead or other seems here set forth under her proper name. In the Northern Cosmogony, Night is the Mother of Earth. But Erce cannot be Night. She is (if Erce be a proper name) bound up with agriculture. Grimm suggests Eorce, connected with the Old High German ‘erchan’ = simplex. He also makes a bold guess that she may be the same as a divine dame in Low Saxon districts called Herke or Harke, who dispenses earthly goods in abundance, and acts in the same way as Berhta and Holda—an earth-goddess, the lady of the plougher and sower and reaper. In the Mark she is called Frau Harke. Montanus draws attention to the appearance of this charm in a convent at Corvei, in which this line begins—‘Eostar, Eostar, eordhan modor.’ … The name remains mysterious. The song breathes the pleasure and worship of ancient tillers of the soil in the labours of the earth and in the goods the mother gave. It has grown, it seems, out of the breast of earth herself; earth is here the Mother of Men. The surface of earth is the lap of the Goddess; in her womb let all growth be plentiful. Food is in her for the needs of men. ‘Hail be thou, Earth!’ I daresay this hymn was sung ten thousand years ago by the early Aryans on the Baltic coast.”
Even in a twelfth-century herbal we find a prayer to Earth, and it is so beautiful that I close this chapter with it:—
“Earth,[37] divine goddess, Mother Nature who generatest all things and bringest forth anew the sun which thou hast given to the nations; Guardian of sky and sea and of all gods and powers and through thy power all nature falls silent and then sinks in sleep. And again thou bringest back the light and chasest away night and yet again thou coverest us most securely with thy shades. Thou dost contain chaos infinite, yea and winds and showers and storms; thou sendest them out when thou wilt and causest the seas to roar; thou chasest away the sun and arousest the storm. Again when thou wilt thou sendest forth the