Lacnunga

First page of Lacnunga, beginning Ƿit heafodwræce

The Lacnunga ('Remedies') is a collection of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers, written mainly in Old English and Latin. The title Lacnunga, an Old English word meaning 'remedies', is not in the manuscript: it was given to the collection by its first editor, Oswald Cockayne, in the nineteenth century.[1] It is found, following other medical texts, in the British Library's Harley MS 585, a codex probably compiled in England in the late tenth or early eleventh century. Many of its herbal remedies are also found, in variant form, in Bald's Leechbook, another Anglo-Saxon medical compendium.

  1. ^ Alaric Hall, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender, and Identity, Anglo-Saxon Studies, 8 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), p. 1.