Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England: Volume 1

By Thomas Oswald Cockayne, Placitus Sextus Papyriensis, Apuleius, et al.

Book Overview

This three-volume work is a must for the bookshelf of anyone interested in Old English magic, medicine, folklore, and heathen practice. 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. Volume 1 begins with a substantial preface outlining the Anglo-Saxon reception of Greek and Latin medical texts. The main work in this volume is an Old English version of the late Latin Herbarium formerly attributed to Apuleius, augmented by material deriving from Dioscorides' De Materia Medica. The volume concludes with an Old English translation of the fourth-century Roman physician Sextus Placitus' writings on animal-derived medicines, and some short medicinal recipes in Old English and Latin taken from the fly leaves of manuscripts. 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1729166601
• ISBN13: 9781729166604
• Release Date: November 2018
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 516 Pages
• Weight: 2.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.5" x 11.0"