An Old English metrical charm against a sudden sharp pain, preserved in the Lacnunga, a collection of medical material in a single manuscript now in the British Library. The verse is unusually vivid: it describes the pain as a projectile, loud riders passing over a mound, mighty women who sent a spear, and smiths at work forging small iron. It then turns the projectile back. It is the most discussed of the Old English charms and one of the very few Old English poems in which pre-Christian material appears without an obvious Christian frame around it.
Facts
Disputed
Power InvokedThe shot is attributed to ese (gods), ylfe (elves) and haegtessan (hags), and turned back 1 One reading takes this as evidence of a settled aetiology in which elves caused illness by shooting invisible darts, connecting it to later folklore in which flint arrowheads were called elf-shot. The opposing reading, argued at length by Alaric Hall in 2007, holds that the evidence for such a systematic model is thinner than it requires and that the language of shooting may be figurative. Karen Jolly's earlier work reads the charms as a Christian vernacular tradition rather than as pagan remnants. All are current positions. The Witness
Surviving WitnessA single copy in the Lacnunga 2 Writing MediumInk on parchment; British Library, Harley MS 585 2 FindspotThe manuscript's own origin before the seventeenth century is unrecorded; the Lacnunga is first documented in the possession of Barbara Crokker of Lyneham, Devon, before passing via Humfrey Wanley into the Harley collection now in the British Library. 2 Origins
Language of Composition Purpose and Target
Purpose ClassRelief of a sudden sharp localised pain 2 Scholarship
Critical EditionPrinted by Cockayne in the 1860s; edited among the metrical charms in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, 1942 1 Learn More
A Pain Described as a Shot
The charm is short and its imagery is concentrated. A pain arrives suddenly and sharply. The verse says that they were loud as they rode over the mound, that mighty women sent their spears, and that the speaker will send another back. It names three sources for the shot, in a sequence: the ese, meaning gods; the ylfe, meaning elves; and the haegtessan, a word usually rendered as hags or witches. It also has smiths sitting and forging small iron, which is either where the shot came from or where the countermeasure does.
The manuscript sets the verse beside a herbal preparation, in the ordinary manner of the Lacnunga, which does not separate plant medicine from charm and prayer. This atlas does not reproduce that preparation. What is worth recording is the arrangement itself: the compiler saw no boundary between the plants and the words, and a modern reader who separates them is imposing a distinction the source does not make.
The three named sources of harm are the reason the charm is quoted so heavily. Elsewhere in Old English, elves are shadowy. Here they appear in a working medical text, alongside gods and hags, as a recognised cause of a specific complaint, which is a far stronger kind of evidence than a poetic mention.
The Elf-Shot Question
For most of the twentieth century the charm supported a tidy model of Anglo-Saxon medicine in which elves were held to shoot invisible darts that lodged in the body and caused sharp internal pain, with elf-shot as a recognised diagnosis. The model was attractive because it explained the imagery directly and because it connected to later folklore in which prehistoric flint arrowheads were called elf-shot.
That reading has been substantially questioned. The objection is that the evidence for a systematic elf-shot aetiology is thinner than the model requires, that the Old English words for elves carry a wider range of meaning than the model allows, and that the charm's language of shooting may be figurative in the way that a sudden pain is a stab in modern English without anybody believing in a knife. Alaric Hall's study of elves in Anglo-Saxon England, published in 2007, set out the case for reading the vocabulary more carefully; Karen Jolly's earlier work on popular religion in late Saxon England argued that the charms are best read as a Christian vernacular tradition rather than as pagan remnants.
The atlas records the elf-shot reading as debated rather than as either fact or error. Both camps are live, both are arguing from the same small body of text, and the disagreement is genuinely about interpretation rather than about evidence either side lacks. What is not in dispute is that the charm names elves as a cause of illness. What is in dispute is what an eleventh century compiler meant by that.
Sources Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of Belief, Health, Gender and IdentityAlaric Hall with Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in ContextKaren Louise Jolly
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Why this is disputed. Wid Faerstice survives inside a Christian medical manuscript, and it is read by scholars of Anglo-Saxon literature as evidence of pre-Christian belief embedded within an otherwise Christian healing text, but how much of a genuinely older, pre-Christian worldview it actually preserves, as opposed to reflecting later folk practice already comfortable existing alongside Christianity, is argued rather than settled. The charm's mention of mysterious riding women and a smith forging tools for the affliction has been read as evidence for surviving belief in supernatural assailants, a reading other scholars treat with more caution given how thoroughly Christianized the manuscript around it otherwise is.
Preserved in a medical collection that does not separate plant remedies from charms.
Related To
Both belong to the small group of Old English metrical charms.
Both are preserved in the Lacnunga, in the same manuscript and the same collection.
Sources
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