Volume 3

Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England : being a collection of documents, for the most part never before printed, illustrating the history of science in this country before the Norman Conquest / collected and edited by Oswald Cockayne.

Date:
1864-1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England : being a collection of documents, for the most part never before printed, illustrating the history of science in this country before the Norman Conquest / collected and edited by Oswald Cockayne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    441/514 (page 401)
    PREFACE. I HAVE sought permission to print the following hitherto ine^ited fragmeiits, lest no future opportunity should occur of rescuing them from the obscurity of their manu- script condition and the danger of destruction by fire. They are in the first place proofs that, besides the Chi'onicle, other and independent native histories in the English tongue were composed and cared for; next, they are earlier records of the events they narrate than any others now known; and lastly, they speak not in an in- flated and impm-e Latinity, but in the dignity and simple grace of the Old English language. The first fragment, relating to the endowment of the St. Mildri«s, Abbey of St. Mildred, in the Isle of Tanet, ofiers no new facts to the historian. Its narrative is to be found in the Latin of WiUiam of Malmesbury, of Simeon of Dur- ham, of Thomas of Elmham, of Florence of Worcester, in the life of St. Mildred by Goscelin, and in other places. Strange as the tale is, it seems in its main features Tale probably purely historical. In the Corpus copy of the Chronicle, under the year 640, is an interlinear sentence about Ead- bald, king of Kent. hsepbe cpejene j'unu Epmenpeb •j Epcenbejiht. -j j^ej* Epcenbejiht jxixobe reftep hif j:£e- bejx. -j Epmenped jefCjiynbe tpe^en j-unu ];a j-ySSan pupSan ^emaptipobe op -(Sunope. He had two sons, Erraenred and Ercenherht, and this Ercenberht reigned after his father, and Ermenred begat two son^, who ivere subsequently martyred by Thunor. In a charter of Edward the Confessor the story is recited, with Gods