From the chapter - Precious Eggs and Vegetables Vegetable and Egg Dishes There was little distinction between herbs and vegetables during the Anglo-Saxon period and many varieties of both found themselves in the cooking pot, be it for medicinal or culinary purposes. While wild carrots might have made an excellent broth, the popular translated Anglo-Saxon authority on herbal medicines The Herbarium of Apuleius also recommended bathing in boiled carrots or parsnips to stimulate labour in child birth.1 From the tenth century monk Aelfric Bata, we learn that the following produce grown in the monastic school garden at Winchester was eaten daily. It included cabbage, parsley, mallow, thyme, celery, garlic, mint, dill, and savory. He lists additional crops in the garden as lovage, woad, sorrel, feverfew, henbane, rubia, rape, mullein, wormwood, hemlock, groundsel, fennel, lupine, violet, ravensfoot, daisy, heliotrope, clary, comfrey, rue, vervain, tansy, milfoil, yarrow, saxifrage, iris, reed, poppy, absinthe, nettle, angelica, plantain, cinquefoil, periwinkle, horehound, argentilla, strawberry, cumin, modera, burdock, watercress, pionia, pennyroyal, marjarom, mugwort, sage, earth gall, thistle, crow garlic, carrot, lily, rose, clover, radish, fern and sedge or rush.2 Other vegetables central to the Anglo-Saxon diet included onions, turnips, wild carrots, beans, and peas. Incidentally, asparagus which was cultivated by the Romans and christened eorþnafala by the Anglo-Saxons was not dissimilar to the French variety gifted to Britain in the seventeenth century. Eorþnafala was used for both medicinal and culinary purposes.

3 The onion is widely considered to be the subject of riddle number 65 in the tenth century Exeter Book of Riddles. The writer of this verse leads us to believe that as a vegetable, onions were undoubtedly eaten raw, as well as cooked, as this translation by Dr. Aaron Hostetter demonstrates. Riddle 65 I was living and said not a word-- nevertheless I still die. I came back to where I was before. Everyone ransacks me, keeps me in confinement, shearing my head, biting me on the bareness of my body, breaking my runners. I haven''t bitten a man, unless he bites me first-- there are many of them, however, who bite me.4 To add to this discourse; although slightly later, the medieval writer Alexander Neckam indicated that herb gardens of the 1100s should be adorned with ''parsley, cost, fennel, southernwood, coriander, sage, savoury, hyssop, mint, rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, garden cress and pionies''.

Neckam declared, ''there should also be beds planted with onions, leeks, garlic, pumpkins and shallots.pottage herbs, such as beets, herb mercury, orach, sorrel, and mallows''.5 Sorrel was widely used in Anglo-Saxon Britain. It is native to Europe and was a typical vegetable used in porrays (medieval stews). The Anglo-Saxons called sorrel ''sure'' because they put faith in it as a purgative medicine. As such it was cultivated as a garden vegetable.6 Leeks have grown abundantly in Britain since at least the time of the Celts. The Welsh sixth century bishop St.

David is particularly associated with them. Like many men of religion he frequently abstained from meat and even forbid any farming equipment to be driven by animals. The Welsh king Cadwallo is understood to have instructed his soldiers to wear leeks in their hats when they fought off the Saxon army in 640.7 So enamoured were the Anglo-Saxons with this slender green and white stalk that they termed a kitchen-garden, the leac-tun , or leek-garth. The town of Leyton in east London is said to derive from this phrase. Anglo -Saxons christened six types of allium vegetables after their beloved leek - cropleach (a type of onion), garleac (garlic), porleac (a pot leek), ynioleac (onion), holleac (shallot) and brade-leac (a type of leek) . One of the most important documents relating to the properties of herbs originating in the Anglo-Saxon era is the metrical charm, the Nine Herbs Charm. A combination of nine herbs blended together into a salve.

Composed in the tenth century, it was believed to act as a fiercely powerful spell, recommended by Woden (Odin), the god of gods in Norse mythology. It was considered a cure-all remedy against toxins, evil spirits, pain, sickness, you name it, the Nine Herbs Charm could restore it. The original text as reproduced by Benjamin Slade reads as follows: Mucgcwyrt, wegbrade þe eastan open sy, lombescyrse, attorlaðan, mageðan, netelan, wudusuræppel, fille and finul, ealde sapan. Gewyrc ða wyrta to duste, mængc wiþ þa sapan and wiþ þæs æpples gor. Wyrc slypan of wætere and of axsan, genim finol, wyl on þære slyppan and beþe mid æggemongc, þonne he þa sealfe on do, ge ær ge æfter. Sing þæt galdor on æcre þara wyrta, III ær he hy wyrce and on þone æppel ealswa; ond singe þon men in þone muð and in þa earan buta and on ða wunde þæt ilce gealdor, ær he þa sealfe on do.8 Some of the herbs cited are translated slightly differently by other writers, for example, I have seen fille described as both thyme and savory and attorlaðan as cockspur. The translated version I have included here can be found in Godfrid Storms'' Anglo-Saxon Magic.

Mugwort, [broadleaf] plantain open from the east, lamb''s cress, venom loather (possibly betony), camomile, nettle, crab-apple, chervil and fennel, old soap; (this might refer to an older variety of fennel; the oil of which was used to perfume water for washing); pound the herbs to a powder, mix them with the soap and the juice of the apple. Then prepare a paste of water and of ashes, take fennel, boil it with the paste and wash it with a beaten egg when you apply the salve, both before and after. Sing this charm three time on each of the herbs before you (he/she) prepare them, and likewise on the apple. And sing the same charm into the mouth of the man and into both his ears, and on the wound, before you (he/she) apply the salve.9 Footnotes 1. Van Arsdall, A, Medieval Herbal Remedies . The Old English Herbarium and Anglo-Saxon Medicine, (Routledge, London, 2002) 184 2. Bata, Aelfric, Porter, D (ed) Anglo Saxon Conversations.

The Colloquies of Aelfric Bata , (Boydell Press, 1997), 159. 3. Rumwoldstow, Anglo-Saxon Plants https://www.rumwoldstow.org/anglo-saxon-plants/ accessed 14/12/21.