to admire, that even philosophers thought that they accounted sufficiently for the miracles of the Christian legislator, by referring them to magic. We will consider the Anglo-Saxon superstitions under the heads of their witchcraft, their charms, and their prognostics. Their pretenders to witchcraft were called wicca, scin-læca, galdor-craftig, wiglær, and morthwyrtha, Wiglær is a combination from wig, an idol or a temple, and lær, learning, and may have been one of the characters of the Anglo-Saxon idolatry. He was the wizard, as wicca was the witch. Scinlæca was a species of phantom or apparition, and was also used as the name of the person who had the power of producing such things: it is, literally, a shining dead body. Galdor-cræftig implies one skilled in incantations; and morthwyrtha is, literally, a worshipper of the dead. Another general appellation for such personages was dry, a magician. The laws notice these practices with penal severity. The best account that can be given of them will be found in the passages proscribing them. "If any wicca, or wiglær, or false swearer, or morthwyrtha, "or any foul, contaminated, manifest horcwenan (whore, quean or strumpet), be any where in the land, man shall "drive them out." 66 "We teach that every priest--shall extinguish all heathen"dom, and forbid wilweorthunga (fountain-worship), and 66 licwiglunga (incantations of the dead), and hwata (omens), "and galdra (magic), and man-worship, and the abomina"tions that men exercise in various sorts of witchcraft, and "in frithsplottum, and with elms and other trees, and with "stones, and with many other phantoms."+ From subsequent regulations, we find that these practices. were made the instruments of the most fatal mischief; for penitentiary penalties are enjoined if any one should destroy СНАР. XIV. BOOK another by wicce cræfte; or if any should drive sickness on a man; or if death should follow from the attempt.' They seem to have used philtres; for it is also made. punishable if any should use witchcraft for another's love, or should give him to eat or to drink with magic. They were also forbid to wiglian by the moon.' Canute renewed the prohibitions. He enjoined them not to worship the sun or the moon, fire or floods, wells or stones, or any sort of tree; not to love wiccecraft, or frame death-spells, either by lot or by torch; nor to effect any thing by phantoms. From the Pœnitentiale of Theodore we also learn, that the power of letting loose tempests was also pretended to.. Another name for their magical arts was unlybban wyrce, literally, destructive of life. The penitence is prescribed for a woman who kills a man by unlybban. One instance of their philtres is detailed to us. A woman resolving on the death of her step-son, or to alienate from him his father's affection, sought a witch, who knew how to change minds by art and enchantments. Addressing such a one with promises and rewards, she enquired how the mind of the father might be turned from the child, and be fixed on herself. The magical medicament was immediately made, and mixed with the husband's meat and drink. The catastrophe of the whole was the murder of the child; and the discovery of the crime by the assistant, to revenge the stepmother's ill-treatment." The charms used by the Anglo-Saxons were innumerable. They trusted in their magical incantations for the cure of disease," for the success of their tillage," for the discovery of lost property," and for the prevention of casualties." Specimens of their charms for these purposes still remain to us. 5 Wilk. Leg. Ang. Sax. p. 93. ? Spelm. Concil. 155. 13 Gale's Script. p. 439. • Ibid. Wilkins, p. 134. For incantations to cure various diseases, see Wanley's Catalogue of Saxon MSS. p. 44, 115, 231, 232, 234, 305. 12 For charms to make fields fertile, see Wanley, p. 98, 225. 13 For charms to find lost cattle, or any thing stolen, see Wanley, p. 114, 186. For amulets against poison, disease, and battle, see also Wanley. Bede tells us, that "many, in times of disease (neglecting CHAP. the sacraments) went to the erring medicaments of idolatry, XIV. as if to restrain God's chastisements by incantations, phylacteries, or any other secret of the demoniacal arts." " Their prognostics, from the sun, from thunder, and from dreams, were so numerous, as to display and to perpetuate a most lamentable debility of mind. Every day of every month was catalogued as a propitious or unpropitious season for certain transactions. We have Anglo-Saxon treatises which contain rules for discovering the future fortune and disposition of a child, from the day of his nativity. One day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals, was baleful to sow seeds. One day was favourable to the commencement of business; another to let blood; and others wore a forbidding aspect to these and other things. On this day you was to buy, on a second to sell, on a third to hunt, on a fourth to do nothing. If your child was born on such a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be sickly; if on another, he would perish early. In a word, the most alarming fears, and the most extravagant hopes, were perpetually raised by these foolish superstitions, which tended to keep the mind in the dreary bondage of ignorance and absurdity, which prevented the growth of knowledge, by the incessant war of prejudice, and the slavish effects of the most imbecile apprehensions.' 16 The same anticipations of futurity were made by noticing on what day of the week or month it first thundered, or the new moon appeared, or the new-year's day occurred. Dreams likewise had regular interpretations and applications; and thus life, instead of being governed by the councils of wisdom, or the precepts of virtue, was directed by those solemn lessons of gross superstition, which the most ignorant peasant of our days would be ashamed to avow. 15 Bede, 1. iv. c. 27. 16 See especially MS. Tiberius, A. 3. and Bede's works on these subjects. BOOK THLE CHAP. XV. Their Funerals. IIE northern nations, at one period, burnt their dead. But the custom of interring the body had become established among the Anglo-Saxons, at the æra when their history began to be recorded by their Christian clergy, and was never discontinued. Their common coffins were wood; the more costly were stone. Thus a nun who had been buried in a wooden coffin was afterwards placed in one of stone.' Their kings were interred in stone coffins; they were buried in linen,' and the clergy in their vestments. In two instances mentioned by Bede, the coffin was provided before death. We also read of the place of burial being chosen before death, and soinetimes of its being ordered by will. With the common sympathy of human nature, friends are described as attending, in illness, round the bed of the diseased. On their departure, we read of friends tearing their clothes and hair." One who died, is mentioned to have been buried the next day. As Cuthbert, the eleventh bishop from Augustin, obtained leave to make cemeteries within cities, we may infer that the more healthful custom, of depositing the dead at some distance from the habitations of the living, was the general practice; but afterwards it became the custom of England to bury the dead in the churches. The first restriction to this practice was the injunction that none should be so buried, unless it was known that in his life he had been acceptable to God. It was afterwards ordered that no corpse should be deposited in church, unless of an XV. ecclesiastic, or a layman so righteous as to deserve such a CHAP. distinction. All former tombs in churches were directed to be made level with the pavement, so that none might be seen : and if in any part, from the number of the tombs, this was difficult to be done, then the altar was to be removed to a purer spot, and the occupied place was to become merely a burying ground." Some of their customs at death may be learnt from the following narrations. It is mentioned in Dunstan's life, that Æthelfleda, when on her death-bed, said to him, "Do thou, "early in the morning, cause the baths to be hastened, and "the funeral vestments to be prepared, which I am about to wear; and after the washing of my body, I will celebrate “the mass, and receive the sacrament; and in that manner "I will die." 66 The sickness, death, and burial of archbishop Wilfrid, in the eighth century, is described with these particulars. On the attack of his illness, all the abbots and anchorites near were unwearied in their prayers for his recovery. He survived, with his senses; and power of speech returned, for a year and a half. A short time before his death, he invited two abbots and six faithful brethren to attend him, and desired them to open his treasure chest with a key. The gold, silver, and precious stones therein were brought out, and divided into four parts, as he directed. One of these he ordered to be sent to the churches at Rome, as a present for his soul; another part was to be divided among the poor of his people; a third he gave to some monasteries, to obtain therewith the friendship of the kings and bishops; and the fourth he destined to those who had shared in his labours, and to whom he had not given lands. 10 Wilk. Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 179. p. 84. "MSS. Cleop. B. 13. This life has been printed in the Acta Sanctorum for May, from a MS. brought from the Vedastine monastery at Rome. This MS. differs from the Cotton MS. in some particulars. It has the preface, which the Cotton MS. |