NIGON WYRTA GALDOR

POPULARLY KNOWN AS THE NINE HERBS CHARM

A NEW ANNOTATED AND ILLUSTRATED TRANSLATION

Translation and notes by Joseph S. Hopkins for Mimisbrunnr.info, 2020. Art by Rim Baudey for Mimisbrunnr.info, 2020. Special thanks to Ann Sheffield and Danielle Cudmore for their assistance, recommendations, and feedback in preparing this translation. All mistakes are the translator’s own. Updated September 2023.

The Nigon Wyrta Galdor (NWG) or, popularly, the Nine Herbs Charm, is an Old English healing spell—a galdor—intended to remedy a wound of some kind. The charm is recorded in a single manuscript, Harley MS 585 (ff 160r—163r), commonly known today as the Lacnunga (Old English ‘remedies’), which the British Museum dates to the 9th or early 10th century. The topics, themes, and entities the charm touches upon, such as animism, emphasis on the numbers nine and other multipliers of three, and the invocation of the Germanic deity Odin (Old English Wōden) stem from the pre-Christianization beliefs of the Old English.

CONTENTS

1. Threefold Translation Approach

   A. Modern English: Stylized Translation

   B. Old English: Normalized from Manuscript

   C. Modern English: Direct Translation

2. Summary of Poem Contents

3. What’s in A Name?: Referring to the Text

4. Phantom Words & Ghost Wyrts

5. Structure & Form

6. The Vedic Connection: Germanic Worm Charms, Vedic India, & the Indo-Europeans

7. Deities Who Hang: Gallows Motifs, Suffering, & Syncretism

8. Other Translations: Always Compare

9. See Also

10. References

1. THREEFOLD TRANSLATION APPROACH

In the present edition, the translator has chosen to embrace a threefold approach, consisting of two different types of translation and a normalization of the manuscript’s Old English text:

1. Modern English, Stylized Translation: Intended to be as approachable as possible for new readers and includes ‘stylized’, ‘colorful’, and ‘poetic’ elements. The translator smooths away all complications found in the original text, saving discussion of the poem’s many complications for comparison between the normalized Old English text (2) and a more direct Modern English translation (3).

2. Old English, Normalized from Manuscript: A ‘normalized’ text of the Old English manuscript. The translator has made some emendations where deemed appropriate or necessary, and introduced commas to the Old English text for the convenience of readers.

   The translator maintains some of the grammatical indicators, symbols, and flourishes found in the Old English manuscript (such as dots and other items), and has also retained the scribe’s use of the Old English character wynn (Ƿ, ƿ). Wynn indicates a sound (phoneme /w/) represented in today’s English alphabet by the letter W, w. Wynn stems from a letter of the runic alphabet, ᚹ (a topic about which there is much to say but is beyond the scope of the present piece).

3. Modern English, Direct Translation: A translation that more closely follows the poem’s syntax and contents, while highlighting the text’s difficulties. The bolding in the ‘direct’ translation and ‘normalized’ Old English is the translator’s own, intended to aid readers in identifying mention of the plants. Many points raised in this translation are expounded upon in the supplementary material that follows.

Neither the stylized nor direct translations attempt to replicate the alliterative verse or meter of the original. This, along with various other topics, receives discussion in commentary, analysis, and tables following the translations.

A. MODERN ENGLISH STYLIZED TRANSLATION

Remember, Mugwort,
what you brought to pass,
what you readied,
at Regenmeld.

You’re called Una, that most ancient plant.
You defeat three, you defeat thirty,
you defeat venom, you defeat air-illness;
you defeat the horror who stalks the land.

And you, Waybread, plant-mother!
You’re open to the east, yet mighty within:
Carts creaked over you, women rode over you,
over you brides bellowed, over you bulls snorted!

You withstood it all—and you pushed back:
You withstood venom, you withstood air-illness,
you withstood the horror who travels over land.

Now, this plant is called Stune, she who grows on stone:
She defeats venom, she grinds away pain.

She’s called Stithe, she who withstands venom;
she chases away malice, casts out pain.

This is the plant that fought against the wyrm.
She is mighty against venom, she is mighty against air-illness;
she is mighty against the horror who travels over land.

You, Venom-loathe, go now!
The less from the great,
the great from the less,
until for both he receives a remedy.

Remember, Chamomile,
what you brought to pass,
what you accomplished,
at Alorford,
that no one should lose their life to disease,
since for him Chamomile was prepared.

Finally, this plant is known as Wergulu,
who a seal sent over sea-ridges,
to aid against venom.

These nine plants defeat nine venoms!

A wyrm came slithering, and yet he killed no one,
for wise Wōden took nine glory-twigs
and smote the serpent,
who flew into nine parts!
There, apple overcame venom:
There, the wyrm would never find shelter.

Fille and Fennel, a most mighty pair!
The wise lord shaped these plants,
while he, holy, hung in the heavens,
he sent them from the seven worlds, seven ages of man,
for wretched and wealthy alike.

She stands against pain, she stands against venom,
she is potent against three and against thirty,
against a foe’s hand, against great guile,
against malice and bewitchment
from animal and spirit.

Now! May the nine plants do battle against nine glory-fleers,
against nine venoms and against nine air-diseases,
against the red venom, against the running venom,
against the white venom, against the blue venom,
against the yellow venom, against the green venom,
against the black venom, against the blue venom,
against the brown venom, against the purple venom,
against wyrm-blister, against water-blister,
against thorn-blister, against thistle-blister,
against ice-blister, against venom-blister.

If any venom comes flying from the east,
or any comes from the north,
or any from the west over folk!

Christ stood over illness of every kind.
Yet I alone know water running
where the nine serpents guard.

Now, may all plants arise,
seas ebb, all salt water,
when I blow this venom from you.

Ingredients: Mugwort, Waybread open to the east, Lamb’s Cress, Venom-Loathe, Chamomile, Nettle, Sour-Apple-of-the-Wood, Fille, and Fennel. Old soap.

Prepare and apply the salve: Work these plants to dust, and mix them with apple mush. Make a paste of water and ashes. Take Fennel and mix the plant into the boiling paste. Bathe the wound with an egg mixture both before the patient applies the salve and after.

Sing the above galdor over each of the nine plants. Sing the galdor three times before the patient self-applies the salve, and sing the galdor three times on the apple. Sing the galdor into the patient’s mouth, sing the galdor into each of the patient’s ears, and—before the patient applies the salve—sing the galdor into the patient’s wound.

2. SUMMARY OF POEM CONTENTS

There are a variety of ways to interpret and understand this charm. From a comparative perspective, the present translator deems the following interpretation to be the most likely: A speaker is to use the charm to cure (or more appropriately, defeat) some kind of wound that involves infectious disease visualized as appearing in the air, onflyge—literally ‘on-fliers’ and geflog ‘infectious disease’, and across land, ‘the loathsome one who fares across land’ in the direct translation. The galdor-singer invokes the aid of an army consisting of nine mighty plants or, in the direct translation, worts. One by one, the speaker calls on each plant, addressing them as hardened and experienced troops.

After the speaker tallies the lineup of her forces, she identifies the retinue’s foe—the aforementioned loathsome one—as a ferocious wyrm, a serpentine creature that appears in ancient Germanic texts comparable to modern notions of a dragon, and calls upon the deity Wōden to lead her forces. Being a notable healer and military leader in the broader Germanic corpus, Wōden engages the monster before it can harm anyone and strikes first. Using his ‘wonder twigs’ (perhaps medical runic inscriptions, see discussion below), he causes the creature to split into nine portions. The portions become nine ‘on-fliers’, each with a different colored venom. They are then set upon by the nine plants and annihilated.

Once the wyrm and its portions are defeated, the plants arise, evidently in a gesture of victory, ending the verse section of the poem. A prose section follows that directs the reader to make a salve and instructs them on its application.

Some topics touched on in the poem are quite obscure—such as the role of the seal—but the impact of the charm is, as other commentators have noted, hypnotic and even trance-inducing. This text is likely one of the oldest items in the Old English textual corpus, and it provides an extraordinary window into a period of Old English history largely absent from the historic record. For a more detailed examination of aspects of the charm, see the discussion below.

3. WHAT’S IN A NAME?: REFERRING TO THE TEXT

Astute readers will note that the manuscript on which the above translation is based provides no title. As of 2020, the text is usually referred to as the Nine Herbs Charm, a name evidently stemming from the work of Henry Bradley (cf. Bradley 1904). This name isn’t exactly accurate, and a close look makes for a great place to begin considering the complexities of the charm:

• Nine: Like many other ancient Germanic texts, an emphasis on the number nine is quite evident in the poem (nine plants, nine wuldortānas, nine wyrm portions, and nine colored venoms) and so this aspect of the name raises no issues. While three also receives emphasis in the text—mention of ‘three and thirty’, placement of three dots (represented as asterisks in the text above)—it does not receive the emphasis of its multiplicand, nine. (For more information on the intense focus on the numbers three and nine in the ancient Germanic corpus, see Mimisbrunnr.info’s Kvasir Symbol Database entry on the topic here.)

• Herbs: The term herb as applied to the poem is not accurate—the poem references plants that we do not refer to as herbs in English today. For example, as various scholars have noted through the years, the text includes repeated mention of the fruit of the wild apple tree (Howard Moraney observes that the categorization of the items mentioned in the charm as herbs is “in violation of basic botany”; Maroney 1944: 160, cf. Payne 1904: 138 and Watkins 1995: 425).

  Translators often use the loanword herb to translate the native Old English word wyrt in the text. Wyrt is the ancestor of the element wort found in modern English plant names like St. John’s Wort (plants of the genus Hypericum) and mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris). Its meaning is essentially that of how modern English speakers use the word plant. For plant’s part, though it nowhere appears in the charm, the common noun plant—stemming from Latin planta—first enters the history of the English language during the Old English period. The noun then referred to a seedling, young tree, or a young shoot. Plant later widens to encompass all vegetation, in time superseding the native wyrt beyond scant suspended uses of wyrt’s descendant, wort. (For detailed analysis, see OED entry: “wort, n.”)

  The common noun herb enters the English language much later–first attested in the 14th century during the Middle English period–and today holds a comparatively narrow meaning, delineating a type of plant with non-woody stems, although older usages also included plants with medicinal leaves. In short, herb is not the appropriate term to use when referring to the plants mentioned in the text. (Compare OED entry: “herb, n.”.)

• Charm: A charm is a wide spanning category of items in folklore studies. Evidently universal among humankind, the category includes all sorts of objects, texts, and oral traditions, and from the perspective of folklore studies, the above text certainly falls into this genre (readers can find a concise introduction to the genre of charm by folklorist Ceallaigh S. MacCath-Moran here). However, the text tells readers what its author intended it to be understood as: It’s a song intended to be sung, but more specifically, it’s a special song—a galdor.

  A galdor is a sort of spell known among the ancient Germanic peoples with its own nuances, complexities, and history, well apart from modern classification systems. While details about the genre and its development are shadowy, it seems clear enough that the concept, in some shape or form, extends back early into the history of the ancient Germanic peoples, as comparative linguistic evidence indicates (compare Old English galdor to Old Norse galdr and Old High German galtar; all stem from Proto-Germanic *galđran—Orel 2003: 124).

  Readers familiar with the Old Norse record will note that the North Germanic extension of the god Odin, Old Norse Óðinn, is—like his Old English extension mentioned above, Wōden—srongly associated with this particular type of spell (see brief discussion in Simek 1996: 97-98).

It is for these reasons that some scholars refer to the poem as the Nigon Wyrta Galdor. While an Old English name presents an initial hurdle that requires some explanation for readers, it sidesteps all of the above listed problems. (Other proposed titles include A Lay of the Virtues of Worts (Payne 1904: 137) and one could conjure up a variety of other names.) For the purpose of this translation, we hereafter refer to this galdor as the Nigon Wyrta Galdor (NWG).

4. PHANTOM WORDS & GHOST WYRTS

The NWG mentions at least nine plants. Old English speakers no doubt conceptualized plants in a manner far different than today’s Linnean taxonomy-informed views provide, and as a result, modern readers hoping for cut-and-dry definitions of plants are not likely to find them. All plant identifications below are therefore ultimately tentative.

Due to the scarcity of what comes down to us from the Old English record, researchers in many cases have little to work with when attempting to identify the plant behind the name with certainty. Some plants names mentioned in the NWG are clear etymological precursors of modern English plant names, but others are mysteries.

Additionally, attentive readers will note something of a disconnect in plant mentions between the verse and the prose that follows it. Some of these words are what historical linguists refer to as hapax legomena (singular hapax legomenon), words that only occur once in a given context, in this case in the Old English corpus. Compare the plants mentioned in the NWG’s prose and verse sections:

C. ANALYSIS

Considering the poem explicitly tallies nine plants, attentive readers may be surprised to find that the tallied plants of the poem do not clearly make for nine, unless stune and stiðe are considered to be separate plants. Additionally, when comparing the order of the plants mentioned in the prose to that of the verse, the plants largely align with a few exceptions, as outlined below:

1. Mucgcwyrt:

   Mugwort; Artemisia vulgaris (OED entry: “mugwort, n.”). The plant appears to also be referred to as una, which only occurs here. Its meaning is unknown. Likewise, the apparent place name Regenmeld is also otherwise unknown.

2. Wegbrade:

   Waybread; plantain; Plantago major (OED entry: “waybread, n.”)

3. Lombescyrse:

   Lamb’s cress, Cardamine hirsuta (OED entry: “lamb’s cress, n.”). This item receives mention in the prose of the poem, but seems to have no clear equivalent.

4. Attorlaðe:

   A compound meaning ‘venom-loathe’, identity of plant unclear. On attor—‘venom’—more broadly, see discussion at OED: “attor, n”.

5. Mageðan & Mægðe:

   Maythe; chamomile; Asteraceae (OED entry: “maythe, n.”). Similar to Mugwort above, the apparent place name Alorford remains otherwise unknown.

6. Netelan & stune, stiðe:
   * Netelan: Nettle; Urtica dioica (OED entry: “nettle, n.”)
   * Stune, stiðe: These words only occur here. Any meaning they once had is now lost to us. With their placement in mind when compared to the prose section of the charm, both may refer to the nettle, or perhaps one refers to the Lombescyrse mentioned in the prose section (and discussed above).

7. Wudusuræppel & wergulu:
   * Wudusuræppel: Wood-sour-apple, forest-sour-apple; crab-apple; Malus sylvestris. (See Kvasir Symbol Database’s “Apple & Apple Tree” entry for broader context.)
   * Wergulu only occurs here. Its meaning is unknown. When compared to the prose section, the placement of this word may imply that we are to understand it as referring to the crab apple.

8. Fille:

   The identify of plant is unclear; perhaps chervil (Old English cerfille); Anthriscus cerefolium. This noun occurs only twice in the Old English corpus—see discussion in OED entry: “fille, n.”.

9. Finul:

   Fennel; Foeniculum vulgare (OED entry: “fennel, n.”)

5. STRUCTURE & FORM

M. L. Cameron notes that the NWG text “is very corrupt, there being omissions and transpositions of existing parts … because of the corrupt condition of the charm in the manuscript, any translation of the charm must be tentative.” Yet as Cameron observes, “the general meaning is clear … anyone who doubts the psychological value to the patient of this .. charm, should try chanting [it] aloud; [it has] a marvellously incantatory effect” (Cameron 1993: 144). The NWG is certainly enigmatic.

Not all of the most important aspects of the NWG make it through translation. One core element lost in the present translation is alliterative verse. Alliterative verse is common in ancient Germanic poetry, and the NWG is itself one example of about a dozen similar texts that survive into the present day commonly referred to as the Anglo-Saxon Metrical Charms, Old English Metrical Charms, or similar. These charms make mention of Old English extensions of various entities known in the broader Germanic record, including the dwarf (Old English dweorg) and elf (Old English ælf).

The present translator has made no attempt at replicating either the meter or alliterative structure of the Old English text. Doing so may well be impossible: Over time, the English language has been the subject of great change, including its core syntactic structure, which does not lend itself to the poetic approach of its Old English ancestor and ancient sister languages. Modern English word-order dependence does not allow the positional freedom that Old English composers enjoyed, making a one-for-one replication of the alliterative verse an unrealistic goal.

Nonetheless, an alliterative verse is, as mentioned, core to the NWG and ancient Germanic poetry more broadly. To get an idea of the importance of alliterative verse in the Old English original, consider the section describing colored venom: Careful readers will notice that the section employs a term translated above as the adjective blue twice, wedenan. This placement is quite intentional, as the poet employs the term to alliterate with two other colors of venom: hwītan/wēdenan, wonnan/wēdenan. By listing blue twice, the poet skillfully meets the demands of the poem’s alliterative structure while also retaining the numerical significance of the poem—the author lists nine colored venoms rather than the ten an audience might expect from the poem’s structure.

Of course, some brave translators of alliterative verse have made an attempt to mimic or even replicate aspects of alliterative verse in other ancient Germanic poetry. As always, the author recommends comparing the present translation to that of others whenever and wherever possible (see Other Translations section below).

6. THE VEDIC CONNECTION:
GERMANIC WORM-CHARMS, ANCIENT INDIA, AND THE INDO-EUROPEANS

Nigon Wyrta Galdor is not the only Old English charm that mentions disease-carrying wyrms, nor is it the only charm in ancient Germanic languages that does so: It is a notable example of a broader genre of charms known to scholars as worm-charms. Items in this genre occur in both the continental Germanic record and among the North Germanic peoples of Northern Europe, which together suggest an early Germanic belief in these topics. However, close parallels are also found much further afield from a source that many readers may find surprising: The Vedas of India.

Consisting of bodies of religious texts in circulation in some form since around 1,500 BCE, the Vedas provide insight into what would eventually develop into modern Hinduism. As philologists have long demonstrated, the Vedic texts often mention various deities who stem from the same linguistic origins as that of various ancient Germanic deities and many of their neighbors, a common linguistic ancestor known to scholars today as Proto-Indo-European. Since the dawn of the humanities as an academic discipline, scholars have noted strong parallels among the linguistic and cultural descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the speakers of early Indo-European languages.

As in the invocation of Odin in Nigon Wyrta Galdor, deities such as Indra may be called upon to defeat these disease-worms in Vedic texts. Kenneth Zysk (University of Copenhagen) summarizes academic reception of these parallels as follows:

It was not only among the people of ancient India that worms were considered to be an important cause of disease. In the Germanic tradition, also, worms or vermin were looked upon as harmful to bodies of both men and animals. [Germanic philologist] A. Kuhn has examined the charms from both of these traditions and has noticed some interesting similarities between them: 1. In both traditions, the worm was considered to be a disease; 2. there was a common belief in the color of the worms; and 3. the notion of the toothworm […] is recorded in both. (Zysk 2018 [1992]: 68)

Kuhn saw these similarities as simply too strong to be a coincidence. While it does seem likely that a belief in disease-causing worms stems from Proto-Indo-European influence, diffusion can be a complicated phenomenon, particularly over a thousands of years. Unfortunately, we lack worm-charm examples beyond Vedic and Ancient Germanic material that would provide a fuller picture and potentially confirm an origin in Proto-Indo-European folk belief. A similar situation exists with the so-called blood-charms also known among the ancient Germanic peoples and others, which also contains strong parallels with Vedic material as well (see discussion at Mimisbrunnr.info’s Merseburg Charm II translation).

7. Deities Who Hang:
GALLOWS MOTIFS, SUFFERING, & SYNCRETISM

The NWG has received much attention because it is one of two extant Old English items that mention the deity Wōden outside of genealogies. Wōden’s appearance in genealogies may be a byproduct of the process of euhemerism (in short, ‘rationalizing’ deities into people), but traditional narratives like the Old Norse Vǫlsunga saga indicate that a broader tradition of great heroes and leaders descending from the deity existed in at least the North Germanic branch. Whatever the case, although references to the deity are few in the textual record as it comes down to us, it’s clear that the deity was known to the Old English from an early date, as indicated by these references and by way of the Old English weekday name ancestral to modern English Wednesday (‘Wōden’s day’) and other sources.

Old English Wōden and Old Norse Óðinn both developed from the Proto-Germanic deity *wōđanaz, and scholars generally refer to this collective of extensions as simply Odin. As readers familiar with the North Germanic record are aware, Óðinn is strongly associated with hanging, death, and the gallows (compare the Óðinn names Hangaguð ‘hanging god’, Hangatýr ‘hanging god’, and Hangi ‘the one who hangs’; cf. Simek 2007 [1993]: 129-130, 58-5—see the latter two pages for discussion on hanging as a means of execution). This association with Óðinn hanging extends to his hanging from a tree for nine nights. The god hangs, pierced by his spear, and during suffering gaining knowledge of the runic alphabet—the gift of writing— which he subsequently passes on to mankind. (This tree is generally assumed to be Yggdrasil, but trees play an intensely central role among the ancient Germanic peoples in the form of, for example, sacred trees, holy groves, and even how the ancient Germanic peoples thought of themselves. From the record’s animist perspective, it is also reasonable to read this text as Odin receiving the knowledge of runes—letters intended to be carved, generally in wood—from the tree.)

The motif of a hanging, bound, or otherwise restrained deity is quite old, and occurs among a great variety of peoples under a wide variety of contexts. This can either result in or be the result of a gift to mankind. For example, consider the suffering of the Greek deity Prometheus in the ancient Greek play Prometheus Bound (~500 BCE): The titan is bound to a peak of jagged rocks, fully exposed to the blazing elements. He meets this painful fate because he saved humanity, and provided it many gifts, including flame hidden in fennel and writing. This saves them from being annihilated by Zeus (in one of Zeus’s regular purges of humankind, which had to date resulted in various ages, according to Hesiod’s Works and Days).

Prometheus is also wounded: According to Hesiod, the titan’s liver is consumed by an eagle on a daily basis, and a chorus of water-women, daughters of Ocean, take pity on him. (Notably, Prometheus Bound seems to have originally been the first of three parts, but the latter two books are now lost.) In the Prometheus complex, we find a cluster of motifs quite similar to the Odinic hanging narrative: Summarized, a deity suffers from a means of execution, a result of—or resulting in—an important gift for humanity that aids them in their survival. Among the ancient Greeks, the landscape sounds comparable to the sun-bleached islands of the Mediterranean Sea, but for a tree-centered culture, a tree makes for an appropriate place of suffering. (For an approachable compilation of 16 of the most well known ancient Greek plays, including Prometheus Bound, see Lefkowitz & Romm 2017.)

Readers today are likely to know this motif complex of ‘hanging’ associated with a deity—or a demigod—in the form of the death of Christ, hanging from a cross, a particular type of gallows associated with Roman capital punishment, evidently to save mankind from Yahweh’s anger. The NWG explicitly mentions ‘the hanging lord’ in the heavens, which may be read as referring to either Odin or Christ, both dwellers of the heavens in their respective myth bodies. This is perhaps an intentionally ambiguous choice on the part of the author, potentially demonstrating a form of syncretism we see elsewhere in the ancient Germanic record: The author or compiler appears to see both of these entities as divine healing figures, and therefore calls on them both. The situation is comparable to the Old English poem Dream of the Rood, a similarly animistic Old English poem that discusses the hanging of Christ from a rood (Old English ‘tree’), a poem so enigmatic that it has resulted in some scholars proposing a pre-Christianization reconstruction (cf. Cusack 2011: 129-130). Worth considering in this light is the potential of an earlier version of NWG that made no mention of Christian figures at all, proposed for example by Robert Kay (cf. Gordon 1957 [1922]: 92-93).

Odin is attested as a healing figure elsewhere in the ancient Germanic record. In the Old Norse Ynglinga saga, Odin embalms a head with herbs so that it may speak (Mímir’s head), and the Old High German Merseburg Charm II, where Odin and five other deities heal a hurt horse on their way to a wood, perhaps to Yggdrasil. The motif of Odin as healer appears to be have been well-established and celebrated among the ancient Germanic peoples.

Odin’s wuldortānas—glory twigs—raise other potentials. First there’s the issue of what these twigs are, exactly. In North Germanic sources, as we’ve discussed, Odin gains knowledge of the runic alphabet from hanging on a tree. The runic alphabet was known to (and presumably developed by) Proto-Germanic speakers, its characters easily carved into wood. In Tacitus’s Germania (1 CE), an ethnographic work on the ancient Germanic peoples, the Roman senator mentions the use of slips of wood by the ancient Germanic peoples for the purpose of divination. These wuldortānas have frequently been understood by scholars as runic inscriptions, comparable runic inscriptions calling upon deities to eliminate disease (On the wuldortānas as rune-inscribed twigs, see discussion in Storms 1948: 195 & MacLeod & Mees 2006: 32 & 127). Examples of healing runic inscriptions include the Canterbury Charm, an Old English runic text that calls on the Old Norse extension of the god Thor to defeat an illness (DR 419; cf. MacLeod & Mees 2006: 120).

Wōden’s role in the poem as leader of an army of healing plants is much in line with the martial characteristics we see associated so strongly with the deity throughout the North Germanic record. This association is evident in, for example, names such as Herjan, Herjafǫðr, Heráss, and Hertýr (meaning ‘warrior’, ‘army-father’, ‘army-god’, and ‘army-god’, respectively; cf. 2007: Simek 142-143, 145), among others, and potential earlier names, such as the Proto-Germanic Harigast (‘army spirit, ferocious retinue spirit’; Simek 2007: 132). The deity’s role as a healer and as a leader of armies appear to be combined in the NWG. Interestingly, Odin is also associated with the apple in the Old Norse Vǫlsunga saga, where he and the goddess Frigg send it to a royal couple as a remedy for their inability to conceive. (For a deeper dive on this topic, see the Kvasir Symbol Database entry “Apple & Apple Tree”)

Other notable aspects of the poem include the mention of seven worlds (seofun worulde). While we use the term world today in a sense that refers to, for example, the planet Earth, the etymology of the word raises other questions. Old English worulde, precursor to modern English world, is in fact a compound that directly translates to ‘age of man’. The term and accompanying concept was not restricted to the English language, and cognates to these terms are common in other Germanic languages (such as modern German Welt). All of these terms stem from Proto-Germanic *wira-alđiz (reconstruction from Orel 2003: 462), which has no known cognates beyond the Germanic languages.

It is tempting to compare this notion to, for example, the ages of humankind mentioned in Hesiod’s Works and Days. The unexpected and single instance of the number seven here rather than nine or some other division of three also raises questions, and the intended sense of the phrase may not have been ‘ages of man’ but rather some kind of state of existence, similar to the ‘nine worlds’ (Níu Heimar) mentioned in North Germanic texts. In a poem crowded with multiples of threes—three by three, nine, in particular—the number seven occurs a single time, it’s understandable for one to wonder if an earlier version of the poem once referred to Nine Worlds. Such are the challenges of looking back at one world from another.

Another important matter to consider is the topic of the plants themselves, and how they were viewed from an ancient Germanic animist perspective. The core concept of animism is that life, in some sense, exists in all things, including in what we today consider ‘inanimate objects’, like stones or water. Of course, humankind is but one species of life on the planet, and we do today understand plants to be very much alive. However, as the ancient Germanic peoples saw themselves as descendants of trees and their beliefs and practices centered around sacred groves and holy trees, it seems quite likely that they conceived of plants quite differently than we do today. In turn, the NWG’s recollection of what plants have experienced, endured, and waged battle upon, in which the author addresses plants as in a manner in which today we would discuss people or animals, provides a window into a world quite unlike our own, wherein plant life is viewed as something more than a potential product, resource, or simple organic matter.

8. OTHER TRANSLATIONS: ALWAYS COMPARE

The NWG has been the subject of a fair amount of translations, and readers are wise to compare them wherever possible: Remember, the present translation is only one of many! Listed from oldest to newest, consider the following sample of translations of the poem, some in public domain:

• Cook, Albert S. & Chauncey B. Tinker. 1902. Select Translations from Old English Poetry, pp. 169-170. Ginn and Company. Public domain: Viewable online at Archive.org.

• Grendon, Felix. 1909. The Anglo-Saxon Charms, pp. 190-195. Columbia University Press. Public domain: Viewable online at Archive.org. (Originally published in The Journal of American Folk-Lore, 1909, vol. XXII, no. LXXIV)

• Gordon, R. K. 1957 [1922]. Anglo-Saxon Poetry, pp. 92-94. Public domain: Viewable online at Archive.org. J. M. Dent & Sons, LTD.

• Black, Joseph. 2009. The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1: The Medieval Period, pp. 42-43. 2nd edition. Broadview Press.

Many of these translations are clearly dated in a variety of ways and some are of more value than others, particularly when it comes to notes and other supplementary material. Nonetheless, to truly know a text is also to know its history of study, and the insight contained in older translations can be quite valuable to any student.

9. SEE ALSO

• Web of Wyrd, a modern symbol potentially drawing inspiration from the Nigon Wyrta Galdor

10. REFERENCES

• Bradley, Henry. 1904. “The Song of the Nine Magic Herbs (Neunkräutersegen)” in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Literaturen 113 (1904): 144-145.

• Cameron, M. L. 1993. Anglo-Saxon Medicine. Cambridge University Press.

• Cusack, Carole M. 2011. The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

• Gordon, R. K. 1957 [1922]. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. J. M. Dent & Sons, LTD.

• Lefkowitz, Mary & James Romm. 2017. The Greek Plays. Modern Library.

• Lindow, John. 2001. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford University Press.

• MacLeod, Mindy & Bernard Mees. 2006. Runic Amulets and Magic Objects. Boydell & Brewer.

• Meroney, Horward. 1944. “The Nine Herbs”. Modern Language Notes. Vol. 59, No. 3 (Mar., 1944), pp. 157-160. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

• Orel, Vladimir. 2003. Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Brill.

• Payne, Joseph Frank. 1905. English medicine in the Anglo-Saxon times. Clarendon Press.

• Simek, Rudolf. 2007 [1993]. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

• Storms, Godfred. 1948. Anglo-Saxon Magic. Springer-Science + Business Media, B. V.

• Watkins, Calvert. 1995. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. University of Oxford Press.

• Zysk, Kenneth. 2018 [1992]. Religious Medicine: The History and Evidence of Indian Medicine. Taylor & Francis.