The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser].

  • Bonser, Wilfrid, 1887-1972.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The medical background of Anglo-Saxon England : a study in history, psychology, and folklore / [Wilfrid Bonser]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    198/492 (page 158)
    CHAPTER IX Elves, Elf-shot, and Nightmare 1 I N Anglo-Saxon times diseases were erroneously attributed to many causes which were usually of a supernatural nature. The object was malevolence, with or without provocation. The evil was most usually attributed to the elves (who attacked with their arrows) or to ‘flying venom’; these may be taken as the equivalents of sudden illness and of infection respectively. A spirit might also act at the suggestion and through the instrumentality of a human enemy: this last comes under the head of sorcery or witchcraft. These beliefs were widely spread throughout northern Europe. The flEsir themselves, at any rate after the coming of Christianity, were accredited with such malevolence. The passage in the Lacnunga Were it iTsir shot, or Elves’ shot Or Hag’s shot, now will I help thee. 1 2 shows the descending stages of powers—the /Esir, the smaller but still supernatural elves, and the human witch or hag. The Irish Lorica of St. Patrick (? fifth or sixth century a.d.) offers protec tion ‘against incantations of false prophets . . . and against spells of women, and smiths, and druids’, thus sub-classifying the human element. ‘Anglo-Saxon, and even Middle-English, literature’, says Singer, ‘is replete with the notion of disease caused by the arrows of mis chievous supernatural beings.’ This is called elf-shot, and, accord ing to the same writer, 3 is a characteristic of native Teutonic —whether Anglo-Saxon or continental—as opposed to imported magic. It is, however, equally characteristic of Finnish magic. The compound word ‘elf-shot’ appears to signify an elf’s arrow, but, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘shot’, 1 The substance of this chapter was read before the Oxford Meeting of the British Association, n August 1926, and published in Folk-lore, 1926, xxxvii. 350--63, under the title ‘Magical practices against elves’. 2 Lacn. 76 (cxxxv). 3 See p. 43.