The Nine Herbs Charm survives in Lacnunga, a collection of remedies, medical recipes, prayers and charms preserved in the manuscript now known as British Library Harley MS 585. The manuscript was compiled around the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century, with the Lacnunga portion dated by the British Library to the early eleventh century.1
The charm itself is written in Old English. It names nine plants, addresses them individually and gives instructions for preparing them as a medicine. The herbs are worked into a preparation with ingredients including old soap and apple, while the accompanying words are to be sung three times over the herbs before they are prepared and again over the person receiving the treatment.1, 5
It is difficult to separate the remedy into the categories we might use today. Plant medicine, spoken charm and practical preparation all belong to the same procedure.
The eldest of worts
Mugwort is the first plant addressed in the charm.
The Old English begins:
Gemyne ðu, mucgwyrt, hwæt ðu ameldodest...
Remember, mugwort, what you made known.
A little later comes one of its most memorable descriptions:
Una ðu hattest, yldost wyrta.
You were called Una, eldest of herbs.5
It is a striking title for such an ordinary-looking plant.
Mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris, remains common on roadsides, field margins, hedgebanks and rough ground across Britain. Its leaves are dark green above and noticeably pale or silvery beneath. Once you learn to turn the leaf over, it becomes surprisingly easy to recognise.
In the charm, however, mugwort is anything but insignificant. It is spoken to directly and credited with power against poison and harmful forces. The plant is not simply listed as an ingredient. It has a history and a reputation of its own.
That way of addressing plants runs throughout the charm.
Nine plants against poison
Modern accounts often present the Nine Herbs Charm with a tidy list of nine familiar plant species, but the Old English plant names do not all translate quite so neatly. The identification of some remains uncertain and has been the subject of considerable scholarly discussion.5
Mugwort, plantain and fennel are among the more readily recognised plants in the text. Others are much less certain.
Plantain appears as wegbrade, a name associated with the road or way, appropriate for a plant still commonly found beside paths and on disturbed and trodden ground.
This uncertainty is part of what makes old plant texts interesting. A name written down a thousand years ago cannot always be matched confidently to a modern botanical species.
Throughout the charm, the plants are set against poison, infection and other harmful forces. They are addressed individually before being brought together in the final preparation.
Then, among all this plant lore, Woden appears.
Then Woden took nine glory-twigs
The appearance of Woden is one of the most intriguing passages in the Nine Herbs Charm.
A serpent comes crawling and bites a man. Woden takes nine wuldortanas, usually translated as something like “glory-twigs”, and strikes the serpent so that it flies apart.2, 4
Woden is the Old English counterpart of the figure known as Odin in Old Norse tradition. His presence in the charm has attracted considerable scholarly attention, particularly because the manuscript in which it survives also contains explicitly Christian prayers and invocations.1, 2
Earlier interpretations have sometimes treated this passage as straightforward evidence of surviving pre-Christian belief. The picture is more complicated than that. Scholars continue to disagree about what Woden's appearance here represents and how the passage relates to wider Germanic traditions of healing, charms and specialised knowledge.2, 3
We should also be cautious about the nine “glory-twigs”. They have sometimes been interpreted as magical objects or connected with runes, but the surviving text does not allow us to state confidently what they were. Chardonnens, in particular, has argued against reading more into this passage than its wording can support.4
Nor can we know what the scribe who copied the charm personally believed about Woden, or why this particular material was preserved.
What we do know is that it was preserved.
The same manuscript could contain practical remedies, Christian material and a healing charm in which the name of Woden still appeared. That mixture tells us something important in itself about the complicated transmission of older knowledge in early medieval England.
A remedy made from words and plants
After the verses come practical instructions.
The plants are worked into a preparation with old soap and apple, with further directions involving fennel and a liquid made using water and ashes.1, 5
Preparing the ingredients, however, is only part of the procedure.
The charm is to be sung three times over each of the herbs before they are prepared and also over the apple. It is then sung into the patient's mouth and both ears and over the affected place.5
For the people who used or preserved this remedy, spoken words and physical ingredients belonged to the same process.
This is one of the things that makes the Nine Herbs Charm so valuable. It does not simply preserve the names of medicinal plants. It records something of the actions surrounding their use: preparing ingredients, speaking over them and applying the resulting remedy.
It gives us a glimpse of plant knowledge not simply as a list of properties, but as something practised.
Finding mugwort today
You don't need to wait for Midsummer to become acquainted with mugwort.
Mugwort is a perennial. New growth appears in spring, the plant grows tall through summer and its small flower heads appear later in the season. The stems eventually dry and die back before growth begins again the following year.
It is a plant of roadsides, field margins, rough ground and the edges of hedges. The easiest feature to remember is the leaf: green above and distinctly pale or silvery beneath.
There is something particularly interesting about learning to recognise a plant named in an English text written around a thousand years ago and then finding it growing beside an ordinary lane.
Mugwort has not retreated into botanical collections or herb gardens. It remains a familiar wild plant.
Once you know what you are looking for, you may begin to notice how often it is there.
Explore the old stories of the hedgerow
The Nine Herbs Charm is one of the many threads we follow in the Hedgerow & Moor Monthly Almanac, where each month we explore British wild plants and wildlife alongside folklore, old seasonal customs, recipes and things to notice as the year changes.
Each issue is written and illustrated here in Cornwall, following what is happening outside that month rather than rushing ahead to the next season.
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References
1. British Library. Harley MS 585, ff. 130r–193r: Lacnunga (Leechbook). British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue. The catalogue identifies the Nine Herbs Charm at ff. 160r–163r and describes the manuscript's medical recipes, charms and invocations. British Library catalogue record.
2. Neidorf, L. (2025) ‘Woden and the Nine Herbs Charm’, Folklore, 136(2), pp. 250–269. DOI: 10.1080/0015587X.2025.2474313. Article record.
3. Olsen, K. ‘The Lacnunga and its sources: The Nine Herbs Charm and Wið Færstice reconsidered’, Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 55, pp. 23–31. Journal record.
4. Chardonnens, L. S. (2009) ‘An Arithmetical Crux in the Woden Passage in the Old English Nine Herbs Charm’, Neophilologus, 93, pp. 691–702. DOI: 10.1007/s11061-009-9163-y.
5. Pettit, E. (ed.) (2001) Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms, and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The Lacnunga. 2 vols. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press.