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The History of English Podcast
Episode 63: Restorations and Remedies
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In this episode, we explore two different types of restorations. We begin with the restoration of the traditional West Saxon monarchy under Edward the Confessor. Edward’s nickname reflects his piety and his purported ability to cure sick people with h...
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Welcome to the History of English podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language. This is episode 63, Restorations and Remedies. In this episode, we're going to take the story of English to the eve of the Norman Conquest. The evil. The underlying theme of this episode is restorations and remedies. We'll begin with a political restoration, the restoration of the Wessex monarchy under Edward the Confessor. We'll examine the events which occurred during the first half of his reign, and we'll also look at a different type of restoration, the restoration of health. So this is sort of the second part of the last episode. Last time we looked at sickness and disease, so this time we'll look at the way the Anglo Saxons treated sickness and disease. But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com and some of you have been kind enough to visit the site and make a donation. I always try to send a personal note of thanks, but let me thank you here as well. And I also want to thank those of you who've posted a review or rating on itunes. I try not to harp on that too much, but that's probably the best way to get the word out about the podcast. There are so many podcasts out there these days that it's easy to get lost in the mix, and those reviews are a key tool used by itunes to feature certain podcasts and to encourage listeners to give them a try. So thanks again to those of you who have left reviews. Also, if you hate having to wait between episodes of the podcast, I wanted to let you know that starting this week, I'm going to be contributing a Word of the Week to David Crowther's History of England podcast. So be sure to check out that podcast for much more about the overall history of England and a little bit of etymology as well. So with that, let's turn to this episode. This time, we're going to cover the reign of Edward, known to history as Edward the Confessor. He reigned for nearly a quarter of a century, and his life and death set the stage for the Norman conquest in 1066. As we saw last time, Edward's rise was anything but a certainty. He was one of the five half brothers, or stepbrothers, who had some claim to the English throne when Canute died in the year 1035. But one by one, each of those brothers died. And the key to this story is that each of them died relatively young, without any children. The last two of those five children were Harthacanute and Edward, and they had the same mother, Emma. So Edward and Harthacanut were half brothers, and they were each other's closest male relative. So based on that relationship, Harthacanut brought Edward over from Normandy to be the designated heir to the throne. And in 1042, Harthacnut died at a wedding party after having a stroke or a seizure. So with Harthacnut's death, Edward became king. He was half Norman, but he was also half English. He was the son of Athelred the Unready. So that meant the Old West Saxon monarchy was restored. For the first time in over 25 years, a descendant of Alfred the Great sat on the throne. So let's stop here for a moment and consider that word restoration. It's the noun form of the verb restore. And those words came into English from French after 1066. The store part of restore comes from an Indo European root word which meant to stand or put in place. Of course, a place where you put things is a storeroom or storage closet. You store things there. A business has its shelves stored with goods. We call that place a store. So store is a Latin word which meant to put in place. And re is a very common Latin prefix. It meant to repeat or do again. So if you restore something, you put it back in place, but again, that's a French word. So what did the Anglo Saxons call the process of restoring something? Well, they basically used the word renew, or at least their version of the word renew. In fact, their word was really an early version of the word renew. New is an Old English word. So the word renew combines the Latin prefix re, which we just saw in restore. And. And the Old English word new, that construction was cobbled together shortly after the Normans arrived, when the Latin prefix re became common. But before re came into English, the Anglo Saxons used the prefix ed to mean the same thing. So the Anglo Saxons had the word ednew, and in 1066, Ed New became renewed. But the words meant basically the same thing. And a variation of ednu was ad niwiyon. And that word was used to mean restore or put back in place. And in the year 1042, that word Aednewion, was likely applied to Edward's selection as king, because Edward renewed or restored the traditional West Saxon bloodline. Now, this is actually an important point because that royal bloodline was the oldest in Europe. We'll look a little closer at the Normans next time. But they had been Viking raiders just over a century before. Also by this point, Carolingian rule had come to an end in France. The new ruling family there descended from Hugh Capet, who took power in 983, just over half century earlier. In the east, the ruling family of the Holy Roman Empire also came to power in the wake of the Carolingian collapse. So all of those ruling families were relatively new. But the West Saxon line of kings went back over 400 years. So there was a certain reverence for that bloodline even in continental Europe. And Edward's connection to that line carried some weight. Edward's coronation took place in the year 1043, and the Anglo Saxon Chronicle for that year reads, here was Edward Jeharga to Kinga. Here was Edward hallowed or consecrated as king on Winchester on Foruman ister die mid mutilem wordschipa at Winchester on the first Easter day with much worship or honor. Note that this passage says that Edward was crowned at Winchester, and that was probably no accident. It was the traditional capital of Wessex, and the coronation there helped to re establish that connection between Edward and the traditional West Saxon monarchy. But for all the efforts to re establish that link, Edward showed very little interest in his Anglo Saxon heritage. Remember, he was half English and half Norman, and he spent most of his life in his uncle's court in Normandy. So he really saw himself as more Norman than English. He preferred the Norman language and culture. And this preference for all things Norman would create problems throughout his reign. Also note that the excerpt from the Anglo Saxon Chronicle says that Edward was consecrated with much worshippa, the original form of our modern word worship. But that word had a slightly different meaning. In its original sense, werthshuppa was literally worth ship, the condition of being worthy or honorable. So it was a noun. And here the use of that word meant that Edward was recognized as being honorable or worthy of his new position. A couple of centuries later, worthship became a verb to describe the process of honoring someone. And it evolved from worthship to worship. And in the 1300s, it was used to refer to the process of honoring the divine or supernatural. And that's the sense in which we use the word worship today. Now, when it comes to Edward, that word worship is kind of important because Edward may be more famous for his worshiping than than his actual political leadership. He's generally considered to have been a good and honorable man, but he wasn't a very strong king. During his quarter century of exile in Normandy, England had changed a lot. Canute had created that new class of earls, and they largely ran their own territories. That system was well entrenched and firmly established when Edward returned to England. So he was always a bit of an outsider, even in his own kingdom. Even if he had been a young and strong king, it would have been difficult for him to change that system. But by this point, he was older and an outsider, and he never really had the inclination to wrestle power away from the earls. Instead, he generally let them do their own thing, and he focused on what he was good at. Worshipping and religious matters. As soon as he became king, Edward decided to build a new church. And being Norman, he wanted to build it in the Norman style. Now, St Paulsminster was the primary cathedral in London at the time. It had been started shortly after the first Christian missionaries arrived in the early 600s. But now Edward found a cleared area about a mile or so west of the city walls, and St. Paul's had been the Eastminster. So Edward's new church would be the Westminster, and it's still known by that name today, Westminster Abbey. That cathedral has actually been rebuilt and enlarged over the centuries. But Edward's original church was very impressive for its day. Its construction was a massive undertaking. Edward started it as soon as he became king, and it was finished right before his death in 1066, 24 years later. When it was finished, it was not only the largest church in England, it was the largest building of any kind in England. Going forward, Westminster played a central role in English history and politics. It was the place where English kings and queens were crowned and many important people were buried there. Kings, queens, poets and other prominent people. In fact, Geoffrey Chaucer was buried there, and that later led to the establishment of an entire section of the abbey known as Poets Corner, where prominent poets and playwrights were buried or interred, including Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling and Alfred Tennyson. So Westminster Abbey has a fundamental connection to the later history of English. Now, the original construction of that cathedral tells us a lot about Edward. As I said, he was primarily concerned about religious matters, and it was his religious devotion that produced his famous nickname, Edward the Confessor. Now, that name is a little confusing to modern English speakers, because the meaning of confess has changed a little bit over the centuries. The word confess is a French word which was introduced by the Normans after 1066, and it was the Normans who called Edward the Confessor. Today, the word confess has a bit of a negative connotation. We usually confess something we're ashamed of, but in old French, the meaning was more akin to profess. It had a more positive connotation. It referred to someone who professed or avowed his religious beliefs in spite of persecution or danger. If the person was killed due to his beliefs, he was a martyr. But if he lived his life without being martyred, he was called a confessor. And that's why Edward was known as the Confessor. In fact, after his death, Edward was recognized as a saint by Pope Alexander iii. So why was Edward considered so saintly? I mean, he built a great cathedral and he was regarded as a pious man. But was that it? Well, that was a big part of it. But there was something else about Edward that supposedly made him unique and special. According to legend, he had the ability to heal the sick by simply laying his hands on them. So he had the ability to restore health to those who were sick. And this is where the restoration of the Wessex bloodline connects with the restoration of health. According to the legend, Edward was walking down the street one day when he met a paralyzed man who was covered with sores. Edward felt sorry for the man, so he picked the man up to carry him to a church. But when he put the man down, the man's paralysis was cured and the man began to walk. His sores were also healed. After that, many sick people came to Edwards so he could cure them. And it was legendary miracles like that that led to Edwards later canonization. The historian William of Malmesbury lived shortly after the time of Edward, and he wrote that Edward cured blindness in several people. But Edward's alleged ability to heal the sick was primarily associated with one particular illness. That illness was scrofula. I actually mentioned that condition back in episode 40. You might recall that scrofula was a common type of tuberculosis which affected the lymph nodes in the neck. It was a nasty and ugly condition, and it was said that Edward could cure the disease. Victims reported that their swellings decreased after Edward touched them. Supposedly, Edward's power was imbued by God, and it passed to later English kings and queens as well. Since most people who suffered from scrofula never got to meet the king, sufferers would take a coin with the king's image on it, and they would rub it on the affected area. In later generations, the preferred coin was one with an image of the Archangel Michael. This coin was called an angel noble in English, and the process of rubbing that coin on the affected area led to the phrase to touched by an angel. So you might remember all of that from that prior episode. In England, the whole idea that a king's touch could cure scrofula began with Edward The Confessor, and in fact Scrofula became known over time as the king's evil. Now, the legend of Edward's healing touch endured through the centuries, and it was even picked up by Shakespeare in the play Macbeth. And I should mention Macbeth here because Macbeth was actually a real person. He was the king of Scotland from 1040 until 1057. So he ruled Scotland during the same general time period that Edward was king of England. And Edward probably played a role in Macbeth's ultimate defeat and murder. Macbeth became king upon the death of the prior king, Duncan, and the prior king's son Malcolm fled into exile. And this is where there are different historical accounts of exactly what happened. But one version of the story is that Malcolm headed south to England, specifically to Northumbria, and it was there that he convinced the Northumbrian earl to launch an invasion of Scotland. Supposedly, this invasion had the support of Edward the Confessor, and that invasion ultimately led to the defeat and death of Macbeth. Now, again, this is one version of the story, but it's the version which Shakespeare apparently liked because his play is roughly based around that version. So in the play, while Malcolm is in Northumbria planning that invasion of Macbeth's kingdom, Shakespeare writes that King Edward arrived. Malcolm is having a conversation with a Scottish thane named Macduff, and they're discussing their mutual hatred of Macbeth when a doctor arrives. Malcolm asks the doctor if the king is coming out. The doctor replies that there are a crew of wretched souls waiting for the king to touch them and cure their disease. Then the doctor leaves. Macduff then turns to Malcolm and asks what disease the doctor was referring to. Malcolm replies, tis call'd the evil, a most miraculous work in this good king, which often since my here remain in England, I've seen him do, how he solicits heaven himself best knows, but strangely visited people, all swollen and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, the mere despair of surgery he cures. So in Shakespeare's world, Edward cured those sick people with his miraculous touch. And with legendary abilities like that, you can see why later generations revered Edward and considered him a saint. Of course, most sick people never had the opportunity to receive the king's magic touch, so they had to resort to the next best option, which was medicine. And having mentioned Macbeth, you may see another link between that play and Anglo Saxon medicine. If you're familiar with Macbeth, you know that it features witches who make potions and predict the future. Well, those witches potions and brews weren't all that different from Anglo Saxon medicine. A couple of surviving manuscripts from the late Anglo Saxon period contain a long list of cures for a variety of medical conditions. They even have purported medical cures for scrofula. According to a 19th century translation, you could treat the condition by mixing together coriander and beans and placing that mixture on the tumor. Or you could use water, crab and honey. Another concoction was barley meal, clear pitch, wax and oil. If none of those options worked, you were to make a salve. According to the translation, take swine's fat, smear the inside of a broad pan with the fat, boil up, then ease goose charm into the pan and make lukewarm. And when it be melted, then put it on a linen cloth, lay it on the sore and swathe up. Apply that pretty often in a day. Now, these types of salves and potions and other concoctions were the standard medical treatments of the day. And I think you can start to see why people put so much faith in the idea of a king's magic touch. Because many of these medical cures didn't really cure anything. So for most people, a supernatural cure was the only chance they had. But let's be clear, the Anglo Saxons didn't make the distinction between faith and science that we make today. The fact is that Anglo Saxon medical treatments always had an element of the supernatural built into them. And to see that, we only have to look at the Old English words for doctor. Medicine. The Old English word for a physician or a doctor was alacha. And as we look a little closer at that word, we can see a connection between medicine and the supernatural and language. And that's because alacha was originally a charmer, one who used words and charms to cure people. So let's explore that etymology. The word lache had Indo European origins. It was lech. In the original Indo European language, that word meant to collect or gather or consider or choose. In fact, the lect part of words like collect and select, elect and neglect come from the same root via Latin. Of course, we are always selecting some things and neglecting others. But one situation where we do that is when we speak. Whenever we speak, we select some words from our overall vocabulary and we neglect other words. So that same root word also came to refer to this process. Basically, the process of speaking. That meaning passed into Latin. And it gave us lots of words related to speech. It gave us lecture, the speech of a teacher or professor. A speaker might speak at a lectern, Another word from that same root. If we attend that lecture, we might be taught a lesson Lesson also comes from that root. If words are written down and you can read them, they are legible. From that same root, when people recite an old story, it becomes a legend. Also from that root, that Indo European root also passed into Greek and gave us the word lexicon, meaning our vocabulary or collection of words. Our particular manner of speech is our dialect. The lect part comes from that same root. And some people who have a problem reading are said to have dyslexia from the same root. When we speak to each other, we carry on a dialogue. The log part also comes from that root, as does the word logic. The same root also passed into the Germanic languages, where it came to mean one who speaks magic words. So it was an enchanter. And that word passed into Old English as lache. So a lacha was originally an enchanter, but it came to mean a healer or a doctor. And that shows how important words and chants were in early healing and cures. So the primary tool of an Anglo Saxon doctor wasn't necessarily his instruments or his potions. It was his words. And in fact, the Anglo Saxons believed that sickness and disease could be cured with words. They used charms or short poems to ward off evil spirits and to cure sickness. It was believed that those charms had the magical ability to heal the sick. Sometimes the charms were used in connection with a potion or brew or other concoction. One of those charms was a charm against a wind. Now, that sounds like a charm against a magical creature, but a wen was just an Old English word for a wart or a lump on the skin. It's actually cognate with the word wound. But a wind occurred naturally. Now, I said that the charm against the wind sounds like a charm against the magical creature. And that's basically how the charm worked. It treated the wart as a magical creature which had suddenly appeared on the skin. So the charm encouraged the wind to leave and return home to its brothers in the hills. In modern English, the charm reads, when, when, little wind, here you must not build here, have no home, but you must go north to the nearby hill where you have a wretched brother. He will lay a leaf at your head. Under the foot of the wolf, under the eagle's wing, under the claw of the eagle, may you ever wane, Shrink like coal on the hearth, wither like filth on the wall, evaporate like water in the pail, as you become as small as a grain of linseed and far smaller than a handworm's hip bone, and so very small that you Are at last nothing at all. Now, here's the same charm against the wind, broken down into the original Old English and a literal translation. Wena, wena wen kayana. When, when. O little wen herne shout du timbrian. Here you shall not timber or build. Timber was actually an Old English word for build, and it still survives in the word timber as wood used for building. Nene tund haben no, none, town have so no, none is a good example of Old English double negatives, which were quite common, and town originally meant a homestead or home, but it still survives today as the word town, but in Old English it was tun. So once again, nene tun haben no, none, town have. Ach, thus sheilt north geonen, but you shall north. Go yonder tutha nihen birche to the near bright burgs or mountains or hills. Deir thu habes ermich There thou have something wretched. Any brother, a brother. He who shall lay layf et hevda leaf at your head Unterfot woves under foot of wolf undeve the ernest under feather or wing of an eagle or sea urn under erinus klea under an eagle's claw Athu jewerni Ever you wane kling clump or cling you al sua kolon hirtha Just as kol on the hearth shrinthu shrivel or shrink you al su just as filth on a wall and werna and wane or decline Al su veteran ambra just as water in a pail or bucket made of amber Swa litu thuyewertha as little you become al sua lenset corn just as linseed corn an micla lessa and much less al sua annas handwarumes huppeban just as a handworm's hip bone and al suah little thujurtha and just as little you become tet thu nawicht jewrtha that you nothing become. So charms like these reflect a time before modern science when it was believed that most sickness was caused by spirits or elves or other supernatural creatures. So these remedies worked the same way. They had a mystical aspect to them, which was supposed to ward off evil spirits. Now, I should note that this charm, along with a handful of others, about a dozen in total, survive in their original Old English. And we not only have these charms, but we also have a collection of potions, brews and salves which were designed to cure all types of illnesses. All of these remedies survive in Two separate books which were compiled in the late Anglo Saxon period. These two books are known as Bald's Leech Book and the Lok Nunga. So let me tell you a little bit about these two books. The Lok Nunga is a collection of herbal remedies, charms and prayers which was compiled in the late 10th century or early 11th century. So that means it was compiled shortly before Edward the Confessor became king. Now, that title Loknunga doesn't actually appear in the manuscript. The title was created by its first editor, Oswald cockaine, in the 1800s. Loknunga was an Old English word which meant remedies or medicine. And that root, lock, is the same root which gave us the word lacha, the Old English word for a doctor. Now, let me digress here for a second and revisit a sound change that we've seen lots of times before. Going all the way back to episode five. You might remember that the K sound became a ch sound in Old English when it appeared before a front vowel like e or f. Well, that sound was a common Old English inflectional ending. So whenever that ending was put on the end of one of those words, the final consonant would shift to the ch sound. So you had a word like lak. And when you put that E inflection on the end, instead of it becoming laka, it became lacha, the word for a doctor. Since this happened a lot in Old English, a lot of pairs were created where one version of the word ended in a k sound and the other ended in a ch sound. One example of this is the modern words lock and latch. Now, this is actually a separate root word, but it worked the same way. To lock or lok in Old English was to fasten or grasp. And latch was a variation which we still use in the sense of latching on to something. Along the same lines, you might bake a batch of cookies. Again, it works the same way. Bake and batch were variations of the same word. Wake and watch are the same. When you're awake, your eyes are open, and when your eyes are open, you watch things around you. Other pairs include make and match, dike and ditch, bank and bench. We've also seen the connection between stick and stitch, so this was very common in English. And loch, meaning to heal or enchant, also produced lache, meaning a healer or enchanter. In later English translations, lache was usually rendered as leech, and that forms the name of the other surviving Anglo Saxon medical manuscript. It's called the Leech Book from Lacheboc, meaning the medical book, and more specifically, it's known as Bald's Leech Book because it has a Latin inscription on it that says the book belonged to a man named Bald. This particular medical book is a little bit older than the Loknunga. It was likely compiled in the nine hundreds. Now, I should note here that the name of Bald's Leech Book has created some linguistic confusion through the years. When people hear of an Anglo Saxon medical book called the Leech Book, they often assume that it has to do with leeches. You may know that leeches were once used as a form of bloodletting, and it was thought that they could be used to cure sick people. So a lot of people think the Leech Book is a book about leeches. But again, leech referred to a doctor, a lache, not a parasite. Now, I should note that some scholars think that there's a connection between the two versions of that word leech. Both words existed in Old English, and sometimes they were spelled the same way, which implies that they were pronounced the same way. But most scholars think that the word for the parasite was a distinct word with a different root, and they think the two words merged together over time thanks to folk etymology. I mentioned folk etymology last time. That's where a word changes its pronunciation or meaning over time, because people confuse it with another word and they assume a connection which isn't really there. So as the use of leeches became more common in later centuries, people confused the word lache meaning doctor and lache meaning leech. And it was thought that one word derived from the other, but it actually appears that they were distinct in Old English. At any rate. This is still a matter of some debate, but there is no debate about the actual practice of bloodletting. Bloodletting was a common medical treatment during this period throughout much of Europe. And it appears that the Anglo Saxons borrowed some of the ideas behind bloodletting from continental Europe. But unlike doctors in continental Europe, who often used bloodletting as a cure, all the Anglo Saxon doctors only used it in limited situations. They actually seemed to prefer their charms in potions and medical concoctions. Now, bloodletting has a long history, but many of the basic medical notions behind the practice originated with the ancient Greeks, and it was once tied to the Greek idea of the four humors. According to the Greeks, there were four basic bodily blood, phlegm, and two kinds of bile, yellow bile and black bile. It was thought that the fluids combined in the body in varying proportions, and those proportions determined a person's emotional and Physical state if those fluids got out of proportion. So if you had too much or too little of one of them, then it affected your mood or your health. So let's look a little closer at those four fluids because they give us some interesting etymology. As I said, the four fluids are humors, where blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Now, we know about blood. We saw that in the last episode. We know that it's an old English word. So Greek would have used a different word. But blood is native English. And as we saw last time, it comes from an original root word which meant to swell or expand or gush. And we saw that that root word produced a lot of words related to the body in modern English, words like boil and bladder and bullocks. Well, that's blood. Then we have the second humor, which was phlegm. And believe it or not, phlegm actually comes from the same Indo European root word meaning to swell or gush. You might remember that within Greek and Latin, the root word produced a lot of words which began with an F sound. Words like phallus and fluid. Well, it also produced this Greek word fluid, phlegm. So blood and phlegm are actually cognate, and they were two of the four humors or bodily fluids. The other two humors were yellow bile and black bile. Yellow bile was called chola in Greek. It's actually derived from the same Indo European root word which produced the English words gold and yellow. It also produced English words glow and yolk, as in an egg yolk. We've actually seen that word before. Well, in Greek, it produced this word chola, which meant yellow bile. That same word eventually passed into English and gave us the word cholera for a specific type of disease which was originally believed to be caused by bile. The word cholah also gave us the word cholesterol, which was a different type of substance found in the body. So that was the yellow bile. But then there was the fourth humor or fluid, which was the black bile. And for black bile, the Greeks took that word chola, meaning bile, and they put the word melus in front of it. Now, melus meant black, and it's the same root word which gives us the word melanin, a type of skin pigment. So melus and cola produced the word black bile. And that word has actually passed down into modern English as the word melancholy. So melancholy is literally black bile. But remember that all of these fluids had to be in balance, and if you had too much of one, it affected your mental or physical health. And if you had too much melancholy or black bile. It was thought that it made you depressed and sad. And that's how the word melancholy, meaning black bile, came to mean gloomy or depressed in modern English. Now, I've noted that all four of these essential bodily fluids were called humors. Well, that's actually a Latin term which the Romans applied to this Greek medical concept. Humor was a Latin word for fluid. So the four humors just meant the four fluids. And that term humor originally passed into the English language meaning the same thing. But remember, the balance of the humors in the body affected a person's state of mind or overall state of health. If a person had too much of a given humor, the condition came to be described as humorous. Over time within English, the word humor came to be used as a general term to describe a person's mood or state of mind a person might be in good humor or bad humor. And then it came to be used in a more limited sense to mean a peculiar, odd or cranky mood. And from its sense of someone in an odd or peculiar mood, it came to describe a funny or light hearted mood. And that's the sense of the word. Today. When we use the word humor to refer to something, we're generally referring to something that's amusing, funny or lighthearted. The specific balance of the humors in the body was called the temper or temperament, using the Latin word temper. And that's why we refer to someone's general attitude today as their temperament. And it's also why we describe someone who's easily agitated as having a bad temper. Another Latin word to describe the balance of the humors was the complexio, and that produced the word complexion. So complexion and temperament were synonymous. If a person had a bad temper and became angry, or if they felt sick or nauseous, their skin color would sometimes reflect that. So the word complexion was eventually applied to describe the hue or appearance of a person's skin. So all of that means that words like humor, complexion, temper, temperament, melancholy, cholera, cholesterol and phlegm all ultimately derive from this theory of the four humors. Now, I said earlier that there was a link between the four humors and bloodletting. So let me make that connection. The theory of the four humors said that many emotional or physical problems were caused by an imbalance of the four humors. You had too much or too little of one of the fluids, and remember that one of those fluids or humors was blood. It was thought that too much blood in the body led to fevers and other disorders. And so it was important to remove that excess blood in order to get the humors back into proper balance. Now, all this sounds crazy to us today. Thanks to modern science, we know that the loss of blood is often counterproductive. It often serves to weaken the body further. But people didn't really understand that in the 11th century. So bloodletting was a common practice. It was usually done by slicing open the veins, but some doctors used leeches because they had a natural coagulant. So you could just put them on a person's skin and they would suck out the required amount of blood, and you could just take them off when you were done. You didn't have to cut the person open and drain them. So leeches were considered a major medical advancement, but their heyday didn't really come until the 1800s. That's when leeches really became popular. During the early Middle Ages, especially in England, it was much more common to just slice someone open. Now, this idea of bloodletting was imported from the continent, and it appears that the Anglo Saxons were a little bit reluctant to use it as a medical treatment. Their tradition relied more upon charms and potions. Now, those charms and potions might not heal you, but they probably wouldn't kill you either. But when it came to bloodletting, the Anglo Saxons treated as a much more radical procedure. They also seemed to struggle with the overall concept of the humors, which was a bit foreign to them. Now, Latin medical texts were highly developed on the practice of bloodletting. But Bald's leech book, the Anglo Saxon medical text, only mentions bloodletting. In passing, the book says that bloodletting is a remedy in certain cases, but. But it shouldn't be misused, and it should only be done at certain times of the year and a certain time of the month and a certain time of the day. The best time is early spring. The best time of all is the first day of April. The leech book says that it's a good time because Thyufelin Wetan, literally the evil wetness, or the evil flow, has been drunk in winter and are then gathered together. Now, it isn't exactly clear what that means, but it's interesting that the book uses the phrase, thy jufulen wetten the evil wetness or the evil flow. It's usually translated into modern English as the evil humors. So this is the only possible mention of the humors in the book, and it speaks of them as the evil humors. So the book doesn't really use the original idea of the humors. Being out of balance. According to the Greeks, the humors were not inherently good or bad. They were just in balance or out of balance. But Bald's Leach book says that sickness is caused by evil humors, and those evil humors sometimes need to be drained from the body. So the book mixes this continental idea of the four humors with this Anglo Saxon idea that sickness was caused by evil spirits. Now, the important thing to take from these two Anglo Saxon medical books is that continental remedies like bloodletting might be used from time to time. But if you really wanted to get healthy, what you needed to do was use a charm or whip up a potion. In fact, there's some overlap between the two books, with similar remedies being found in both. But Bald's Leech book is the most exhaustive in its treatments and remedies. It takes the form of a physician's manual. It has drawings and commentaries, and its remedies are listed in descending order from head to toe. It covers everything from shingles to infections to spider bites and hair loss and headaches and much, much more. Most of the remedies involve potions or salves or herbal remedies. The remedy for shingles required the preparation of a potion containing the bark from 15 different varieties of trees. For chapped or sore lips, you are supposed to smear honey on the lips. Then take the film of an egg, add pepper and apply to the honey coating. For dandruff, make a salve from watercress seeds and goose grease. Pimples could be cured with a salve of Great Wartroot stirred into oil. If you were bitten by a poisonous spider, you were to fry black snails in a hot pan and ground them to a powder with pepper. Then eat the powder or add it to a liquid and drink it. Now, here's a cure for warts in the original Old English. Take a dog or hound's urine, janim hun and a mouse's blood an musablod mingle together mengtosomna. Smear the warts with it and they will go away. Smir mirta verzen hiya vi tath sona away. The Leech Book also includes several remedies for a stye or infection in the eye, what the Leech book calls an eye win or an eyesore. According to one of the remedies, if you had that condition, you were to make a salve from leeks and garlic in equal amounts. You are to pound them together very well. Then take wine and bullock's gall, so bile from a cow's stomach in equal amounts and mix that with the leek and garlic concoction. You are then to put this mixture into a brass vessel and. And let it stand for nine days, then wring it out through a cloth, put it into a horn and apply it to the eye with a feather at nighttime. Of all the remedies for an eye infection, the Leech Book says that this is the best leechtom or cure. Now, it all sounds very funny, almost like Macbeth's witches. Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. But you see, here's the thing. It wasn't always as crazy as it sounds. And we know that in part thanks to the University of Nottingham in England. Their Centers for Biomolecular Sciences recently studied that recipe which I just gave for a stye, or eye infection. Now, the University of Nottingham is well known for two the study of Anglo Saxon and Viking history and the study of microbiology. And Christina Lee, an expert on the Anglo Saxons from the School of English, recently consulted with Freya Harrison from the School of Life Sciences. Dr. Lee translated that recipe which I just gave you from Bald's leech book, and Dr. Harrison assembled the concoction in the lab. The bacteria which causes a stye is essentially the same as the bacteria which causes mrsa, which you may know is a very serious type of infection which is difficult to treat with conventional antibiotics. So they were looking to see if this old Anglo Saxon remedy would have any effect on the treatment of mrsa. And earlier this year, back in March, it was announced that the tests were successful, actually very successful. And this was big news at the time, and several of you were kind enough to forward some of the news articles to me. So let me play a short interview here with Dr. Lee and Dr. Harrison which discusses how they went about testing this old Anglo Saxon remedy. The first voice you will hear is Christina Lee, the Anglo Saxon scholar. The second voice you'll hear is Freya Harrison, the microbiologist.
- [48:12]
B
We chose this recipe in Bold's Leech Book because it contains ingredients such as garlic, that are currently investigated by other researchers on their potential antibiotic effectiveness. And so we looked at a recipe that was fairly straightforward. It's also a recipe where we're told it is the best of legendums. How can you not test that? So we were curious. So Christina worked to translate the recipe. And there were several things we really needed to think carefully about. There were a couple of words, for instance, that were ambiguous, and we had to think about what ingredient was meant by those words. Wirk, earself, withene, ginnem, kropliads. That is a type of allium garlia, which is modern English garlic, beria, irmfiller, both of the same amount. You canoe the world to summer, pan them well together. We reconstructed the recipe as faithfully as we could, and we simply grew these by bacteria, added the recipe to them like a topical ointment, left it for 24 hours, and then just recovered the cells and counted how many bacteria were still alive. And what we found was very interesting. We found that bald eye salve is incredibly potent as an antistaphylococcal antibiotic in this context.
- [49:35]
A
So it turns out that this Anglo Saxon recipe kills up to 90% of the MRSA bacteria. The researchers are not exactly sure why it works. There are probably some active components in the mixture that naturally fight bacteria, and steeping that mixture in alcohol may enhance that potency. Whatever the cause, the larger point here is that even though many of these old remedies seem a little wacky, at least some of them probably did work for whatever reason. And those two medical books, the Leech Book and the Loknunga, were likely a collection of all the known medical knowledge of the day. Some of it was superstitious, and some of it actually had medicinal value. As a result, a closer look at each book reveals some sage advice which even modern doctors would give their patients. For example, Bald's Leach book advises pregnant women to avoid drunkenness. They were told not to ride on horseback. The book also describes in detail how the liver works. And the book has the oldest known description of plastic surgery in the English language. It describes how to correct a hair lip by cutting the affected area and sewing it back together with a special concoction, presumably to minimize infections. And as we just saw, the remedy for a stye has actual antibiotic properties. And it's also interesting that many of the concoctions in the Leech Book require the use of honey. I noted earlier that a treatment for chapped lips required the use of a honey salve. Honey in combination with other ingredients, was also used to treat cuts and incisions, blisters and boils, spider bites, dog bites, and many other conditions, including headaches. Now modern medicine has rediscovered the medicinal value of honey. Honey actually has antibiotic properties. And believe it or not, some modern hospitals are actually using honey to treat infections that are difficult to fight with conventional medications. Honey was not only a common ingredient in medical remedies, it was also the primary ingredient in something else. Mead and Mead is important to our story because certain types of mead were also thought to have medicinal value. And this isn't really surprising because mead was a type of alcohol, and that meant that it could dull certain aches and pains. Now, mead was sweet, but it was also very potent. I've noted before that mead goes back to the original Indo Europeans. The Indo European root word was medhu, and that drink must have been extremely popular because that root word is well attested throughout the various Indo European languages. Of course, that original root word produced the word mead. In English, the root also passed into Greek where it produced the word methi, whereas mead was made with honeycombs. The Greeks had access to lots of grapes, so they began to make wine instead of mead, but they continued to use that same word, methy, for this new fruity alcoholic beverage. So the word methy came to mean wine in Greek. A variation of that word was mephistos, which meant drunk or intoxicated. Now, the Greeks would put an A at the front of a word to mean not or to mean the opposite. We still do that when we convert moral into amoral and typical into atypical. Well, the Greeks converted mephistos to meaning drunk into amethystos, which meant not drunk. Now, within ancient Greek culture, it was thought that you could drink wine without getting drunk if you wore a purple or wine colored gemstone around your neck. In other words, if you wore this particular gemstone, you would remain amethystos, not drunk. And that particular gemstone became known as amethyst. So amethyst comes from the same root as the word mead. They both have a connection to drinking and getting drunk. Now, in later centuries, people began to burn and distill wood, and it produced a lot of byproducts like tar and turpentine and charcoal. But it also produced a gas. And when that gas was distilled and turned into a liquid, it actually resembled the type of alcohol that people drank. In the 1800s, a couple of French scientists worked with this compound in its gas form, and they called it methylene, which combined that Greek word methy for wine or alcohol, and the word hula, which meant wood. Since it was related to this type of alcohol derived from wood, the liquid form became known as methanol. Now, when chemists studied methylene closely, they discovered that it had a single carbon atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms. So its chemical formula was CH2. Well, chemists began to apply this root, meth, to other compounds which had a single carbon atom bonded to two or more hydrogen atoms. So CH4 had one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms, and that became known as methane. Another group of methyl compounds arose when there was one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms. One of those compounds was a powerful stimulant called methamphetamine, and it was actually approved as a drug to treat certain modern illnesses and conditions like ADHD and obesity. It's also sold in one form as a decongestant, but it's probably most famous today as a very powerful and destructive illegal drug, usually going by the name crystal meth or just meth. But all of that means that the meth in crystal meth is related to the word amethyst. And both are ultimately derived from the Greek version of the word mead. Now, I noted that honey and mead were used for medicinal purposes. And in the late Middle Ages, one particular type of meadow was developed as a drug to treat sickness. It was called metheglin. Now, this type of mead was originally produced in Wales, and it was produced by brewing mead with a variety of herbs or spices. One old recipe required the use of thyme, sage, oregano, rosemary and other herbs. And another recipe used spices like ginger, cloves and cinnamon. And as I said, it was specifically used as a type of medicine. And in fact, there's a linguistic connection between metheglin and medicine. I said that the concoction first developed in Wales and metheglin was a Welsh word. The last part was lyn, which meant liquor in Welsh. But what about the first part, meth? Well, it was derived from the Welsh word met, which. Which had two different meanings in Welsh. One was mead from that same Indo European root. And some scholars think that methglan was based on that root word. So it meant mead or honey liquor. But I said that med had another meaning in Welsh, and most scholars think that metheglin was actually derived from this other root. This other root was med or medi, and it was borrowed from Latin. It meant healing. So metheglin meant the healing liquor. Now, here's the important point. That Latin word med passed into Welsh and gave us metheglin, but it also passed into English and gave us the med part of medicine and medical. And it also gave us the med in the word remedy. So metheglin is actually cognate with medicine, medical and remedy. And those words bring us full circle back to the beginning. So we've taken a close look at remedies and the restoration of health. But as we saw earlier, if none of those remedies worked and you were living during the middle part of the 11th century, you only had one other option. You could follow around Edward the Confessor and hope that he healed you with his magic touch. Now, even though Edward supposedly had a magic touch when it came to healing, he didn't have a magic touch when it came to ruling. For the most part, he let the local earls run their own territories. Not that he had much choice in the matter. In many respects, they were the real power in England, and even Edward understood that. And the most powerful earl of all was Godwin down in Wessex. So I want to conclude this episode by looking at Edward's turbulent relationship with Godwin, because that relationship played a key role in the Norman conquest in 1066. Edward's selection as king in the year 1042 had come with the support of Godwin, as well as the other prominent earls of the day, Leofrich of Mercia and Siward of Northumbria. Of all the earls, Godwin was the wealthiest and most powerful, in part because his power base was in Wessex, and in part because he was a shrewd politician who constantly made political moves to enhance his position. We saw last time that he had supported Emma and Harthacnute early on. Then he flipped to Harold Harefoot when it became apparent that Harold had secured his position as King of all England. And when Harold died, Godwin flipped back to Harthacanute. And when Harthecanut died, he supported the somewhat naive Edward, in part because Edward wouldn't rock the boat. Well, three years later, Godwin secured his position by arranging a marriage between his daughter Edith and Edward the Confessor. It was strictly a political marriage, used to establish an alliance between Godwin and Edward. Edward now had Godwin's loyal support, but Godwin had eyes on the throne, not necessarily for himself, but for his descendants. If Edward and Edith had a son, that son, Godwin's grandson, would be King of England. So this was a very strategic marriage, but it was also apparently a loveless marriage. No child was ever born to the marriage, and in fact, it appears likely that the marriage was never even consummated. Nevertheless, that marriage between Edward and Edith ensured Godwin's position as the most powerful earl in the land. Having married his daughter to the king, Godwin now arranged to have his son Harold appointed as the Earl of East Anglia. Godwin's power continued to grow over time and he continued to put his children in strategic positions. Another son, named Tostig, will eventually become the Earl of Northumbria. But as Godwin's Power grew. Edward's relative status in power declined. He was increasingly playing the role of figurehead. Edward did retain some authority as king. Unfortunately, he squandered much of that authority. By the year 1051, he had decided to disband the small permanent naval fleet which protected England's coast. And he also abolished the hare geld, the army tax, which was required to pay his own retainers. Now, it was a popular decision with his subjects. Lower taxes are always popular. But those decisions weakened his military position. Meanwhile, Edward and Godwin were operating in completely different social circles. Godwin operated in the Anglo Saxon tradition, surrounding himself with loyal West Saxon supporters. But Edward continued to surround himself with Normans who spoke a different language, dressed differently, wore their hair in a different style and had different customs and sensibilities. So as we enter the year 1051, we have this increasing divide between Godwin and Edward. Godwin was exercising a lot of power behind the throne and Edward was starting to resent Godwin's power. There was also the problem of the heir. Edward was an older man when he became king. He was probably about 37 or 38 years old at the time. Well, now he was approaching the age of 50 and he and Edith still had no children. Godwin had waited patiently for that grandson to be born, but that hadn't happened, and it was starting to be clear that it wasn't going to happen. Remember that Edward was the last of those five children who had a claim to the throne at Canute's death. Every one of them had died without children. And now it was becoming apparent that Edward would continue that tradition. There would not be any obvious heir when Edward died. And given his age, that could happen at any time. Godwin was certainly aware of that dilemma, and there's little doubt that he had his own ideas about the succession. If Edward wasn't going to give Godwin a grandson to sit on the throne, then the Godwins might just have to force the issue. Because in Godwin's mind, the next king needed to be a Godwyn. And as we'll see next time, he was right. Meanwhile, over in Scandinavia, there were others keeping a close eye on England and the lack of a male heir to the throne. You might remember from the last episode that Cnut's son, Harth Canute, had been the king of Denmark when Cnut died. And Harth Canute couldn't return to England at his father's death because he was fighting with the Norwegian King Magnus. Well, those two leaders made that agreement where they agreed to stop fighting with each other. But whenever one of them died, the survivor would get to keep both kingdoms. Well, that freed up Harthacanute to return to England. And then Harthacnut died first. So he had added England to his realm when he died. And that meant that Magnus, back in Norway, claimed both Denmark and England when Hartha Canute died. But then Magnus himself died in 1047, and he was succeeded by his uncle, Harold Hardrada, literally, Harold Hard Ruler. And Harald Hardrada maintained his nephew's claim to both Denmark and England under that earlier agreement. So as Edward the Confessor grew older and as it became increasingly apparent that there was not going to be an heir, Harold Hardrada began to make his plans for a conquest of England to enforce his inherited claims. But there was someone else who was also keeping an eye on developments in England. That was the leader of Normandy, one William, Duke of Normandy. He was Edward's cousin. Edward's mother, Emma, was William's great aunt. They'd actually grown up together in the Norman court, and Edward had maintained a close relationship with Normandy. William was one of Edward's closest living male relatives, and William certainly thought that he was the one most capable of succeeding Edward when Edward died. And more importantly, it appeared that Edward actually felt the same way. It's believed that Edward promised the English throne to William during this period in the early 1050s. So we now have all of the important players at the table. They're all ready to fulfill their destinies to shape the future of England and the English language. Will the Godwin family continue the Anglo Saxon tradition? Will Harald Hardrada continue the Scandinavian legacy of Sweyn, Forkbeard and Cnut? Or will William of Normandy send England in a completely different and new direction under his Norman rule? Well, we already know the answers to those questions, but next time, we'll see how it all played out. We'll begin by taking a closer look at the situation in Normandy. We haven't really looked at events on the ground in northern France since the founding of Normandy in the year 911. I covered that back in episode 49. Well, next time, we'll see how the Norman state had evolved over the prior century and a half to become one of the most powerful regions of France. We'll also take a look at at how the Norman language had evolved during that time. And then we'll explore the last few years of Edward the Confessor's life to see how those three claimants to the throne jockeyed for position and then settled their respective scores with two major battles in the year 1066. So until next time, thanks for listening to the History of English podcast SA.