MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS For Heath, for always believing UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS CARDIFF MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS VOLUME ONE: THE RECIPES DIANA LUFT Typeset by Marie Doherty Printed on demand by CPI Print © Diana Luft, 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, University Registry, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NS. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA. www.uwp.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-78683-548-2 e-ISBN: 978-1-78683-549-9 The right of Diana Luft to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The University of Wales Press acknowledges the financial support of the Wellcome Trust. CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii List of Abbreviations ix I Introduction 1. The Nature of the Corpus 3 2. The Manuscripts 11 2.1 British Library Additional 14912 (BLAdd) 11 2.2 Cardiff 3.242 (Hafod 16, Card) 12 2.3 Oxford Bodleian Rawlinson B 467 (Rawl) 12 2.4 Oxford Jesus College 111 (the Red Book of 13 Hergest, RBH) 2.5 The Relationship between the Manuscripts 16 3. Sources and Analogues 19 4. The Language of the Texts 21 5. Editorial Principles 27 6. Translation Method 33 II The Texts Book 1 ( Pedeir teirton yssyd ) 55 Book 2 ( Rac mann ) 69 Book 3 ( Gan borth Duw goruchel ) 79 Book 4 ( Rac y dannoed ) 93 Book 5 ( Llyma eli mawrweirthwc ) 111 Book 6 ( Ef a ddylir gollwng gwaet ) 163 Book 7 ( Wyth rann a dyly bot ym pob dyn ) 191 Book 8 ( Rac y parlis ) 203 Book 9 ( Meddeginyaeth rac pob ryw ddolur ) 233 Book 10 ( E llyfyr hwnn a wnaeth Galien ac Ypocras ) 267 Unique Collections 289 Notes to the Translation 310 Further Notes on the Recipes 339 III Indexes Index 1 Welsh Vocabulary 423 Index 2 Plant Names 445 Index 3 Other Ingredients 521 Index 4 Instruments, Measures, Treatments 537 Index 5 Parts of the Body 543 Index 6 Conditions 549 IV Appendices Appendix 1 Manuscript Contents 569 Appendix 2 Plant-name Profiles 573 Bibliography 591 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was undertaken with the support of a Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship. I would like to thank the Trust for their generous support, and the reviewers and committee members who decided to back this project. I would also like to thank colleagues at the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, who hosted me for the duration of this project, and most especially Professor Dafydd Johnston and Professor Ann Parry-Owen, who read over my translations and offered valuable suggestions, and Andrew Hawke and his team at Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru who were always ready to answer any queries I might have. I have also been supported in this work by a number of scholars working in Celtic Studies and the medi - cal humanities, some of whom I know, and some of whom I have yet to meet. I would like to thank Maria D’Aronco, Alessandra Foscati, Deborah Hayden, Daniel Huws, Sara Elin Roberts, Simon Rodway and the anonymous reviewer of this volume for the University of Wales Press for their willingness to share their time and their expertise with me. During the course of this project I also had the opportunity to work with a group of scientists supported by the Welsh Crucible project. They opened my eyes to the possible efficacy of these rem- edies, and I would like to thank Rowena Jenkins and Geertje van Keulen especially for their help and their enthusiasm. Lastly, this project would never have been completed without a small army of friends and family providing support, childcare and patience. I would like to thank all of you who have helped this work come to fruition, especially my husband, to whom this work is dedicated. ABBREVIATIONS AC G. Brodin (ed.), Agnus Castus: A Middle English Herbal (Uppsala: Lundequist, 1950). add. addition (i.e. the named manuscript adds). André J. André, Les noms de plantes dans la Rome antique (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1985). Bot. 1632 J. Davies, ‘Botanologium’, in his Antiquae linguae britannicae: nunc vulgó dictae cambro-britannicae... et linguae latinae, dictionarium duplex... (London: R. Young, 1632). Culpeper N. Culpeper, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal (Ware: Omega Books, 1985). Dawson W. R. Dawson (ed.), A Leechbook or Collection of Medical Recipes of the Fifteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1934). Demaitre L. Demaitre, Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013). de Vriend H. J. de Vriend (ed.), The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de Quadrupedibus (Oxford: Oxford University Press for EETS, 1984). Diverres P. Diverres (ed. and trans.), Le plus ancien texte des Meddygon Myddveu (Paris: Maurice le Dault, 1913). DMLBS R. Latham et al. (eds), Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources , accessed through Logeion ( http://logeion.uchicago.edu/lexidium ). DOEPN P. Bierbaumer, H. Sauer et al. (eds), Dictionary of Old English Plant Names ( http:// oldenglish-plantnames.uni-graz.at ). DWB Y Bywgraffiadur Cymreig = Dictionary of Welsh Biography ( https://bywgraffiadur.cymru/ ). x MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS ECaB D. Davies and A. Jones (eds), Enwau Cymraeg ar Blanhigion (Cardiff: Welsh National Museum, 1995). EETS Early English Text Society Fleischhacker R. Von Fleischhacker (ed.), Lanfrank’s ‘Science of Chirurgie’ (London: Oxford University Press for EETS, 1894). Getz F. Getz (ed.), Healing and Society in Medieval England: A Middle English Translation of the Pharmaceutical Writings of Gilbertus Anglicus (Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991). Glick et al. T. Glick et al. (eds), Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2005). GPC R. J. Thomas et al. (eds), Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru ar lein , c .2018 ( http://welsh-dictionary.ac.uk/gpc/gpc. html ). Grieve M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal , 2 vols (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & Company, 1931). Heinrich F. Heinrich (ed.), Ein mittelenglisches Medizinbuch (Halle: Niemeyer, 1896). Henslow G. Henslow (ed.), Medical Works of the Fourteenth Century together with a List of Plants recorded in Contemporary Writings, with their Identifications (London: Chapman and Hall, 1899). Holthausen 1896 F. Holthausen (ed.), ‘Medizinische Gedichte aus einer Stockholmer Handschrift’, Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie , 18 (1896), 293–331. Holthausen 1897 F. Holthausen (ed.), ‘Rezepte, Segen und Zaubersprüche aus zwei Stockholmer Handschriften’, Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie , 19 (1897), 75–88. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xi Hunt 1990 T. Hunt (ed.), Popular Medicine in Thirteenth-century England: Introduction and Texts (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990). Hunt 2001 T. Hunt and M. Benskin (eds), Three Receptaria from Medieval England: The Languages of Medicine in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2001). Jones I. Jones (ed. and trans.), ‘Hafod 16 (A Medieval Welsh Medical Treatise)’, Études Celtiques 7 and 8 (1955–9), 46–75, 270–339 and 66–97, 346–93. Leechdoms T. O. Cockayne (ed. and trans.), Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England , 3 vols (London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green, 1864–6). Lev E. Lev and Z. Amar, Practical Materia Medica of the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean according to the Cairo Genizah (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008). Lewis T. Lewis (ed.), A Welsh Leech Book, or Llyfr o Feddyginiaeth (Liverpool: D. Salesbury Hughes, 1914). LlS I. Edgar (ed.), Llysieulyfr Salesbury (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997). MC J. Calle-Martin et al. (eds), The Malaga Corpus of Late Middle English Scientific Prose , c .2014 ( http:// hunter.uma.es ). MED H. Kurath et al. (eds), Middle English Dictionary , c. 2013 ( https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ ). Norri J. Norri, Dictionary of Medical Vocabulary in English, 1375–1550: Body Parts, Sicknesses, Instruments, and Medicinal Preparations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). xii MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS Ogden 1938 M. S. Ogden (ed.), The ‘Liber de Diversis Medicinis’ (London: Oxford University Press for EETS, 1938). Ogden 1971 M. S. Ogden (ed.), The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac (London: Oxford University Press for EETS, 1971). om. omit (i.e. the named manuscript omits) Physicians J. Williams (ed.) and J. Pughe (trans.), The Physicians of Myddvai . (Llandovery: D. J. Roderic for the Welsh MSS Society, 1861). PNME T. Hunt, Plant Names of Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989). Power D. Power (ed.), Treatises of Fistula in ano, haemorrhoids and clysters (London: Oxford University Press for EETS, 1910). Repertory D. Huws, A Repertory of Welsh Manuscripts and Scribes (forthcoming). Seymour M. C. Seymour (ed.), On the Properties of Things, John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum: A Critical Text , 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975–88). Treasury Peter of Spain, The treasurie of health contayning many profitable medicines, gathered out of Hipocrates, Galen and Auicen , trans. Humphrey Llwyd, 2 nd edn (London, William Copland, c .1560). WB (1813) H. Davies, Welsh Botanology (London: W. Marchant, 1813). WLB T. Lewis (ed.), A Welsh Leech Book, or Llyfr o Feddyginiaeth (Liverpool: D. Salesbury Hughes, 1914). Wulff W. Wulff (ed. and trans.), Rosa Anglica sev Rosa Medicinae Johannis Anglici (London: Simpkin, Marshall Ltd for the Irish Texts Society, 1929). I INTRODUCTION This edition and translation is aimed at two different audiences: those with an interest in the Welsh language and Welsh literature, and those working in the medical humanities and the history of medicine in particular. Much of the editorial matter, the discussion of manuscripts, dialects and the variants provided in the edition, may be superfluous to the second category of reader, while the provision of an English translation itself may be needless to the first. Nevertheless, I hope that both groups of readers will find something of use in this work, despite the frustrations they may have with some of the apparatus. 1. THE NATURE OF THE CORPUS The recipes that form the subject of this edition have been taken from four manuscripts: British Library Additional 14912 (BLAdd), Cardiff 3.242 (Hafod 16, Card), Oxford Bodleian Rawlinson B467 (Rawl), and Oxford Jesus College 111 (the Red Book of Hergest, RBH). All four manuscripts are roughly contemporary, all dating from the end of the fourteenth century or the beginning of the fifteenth. 1 In the past, scholars and commentators have tended to treat the corpus of texts which appears in these four manuscripts as a single body of material, a single text, called Meddygon Myddfai (‘The Physicians of Myddfai’). This tendency has characterised manuscript catalogues and secondary literature, but it is mainly due to the way that these texts have been presented in editions. The medical texts from RBH were edited by John Williams ‘ab Ithel’ and published under the auspices of the Welsh Manuscripts Society in 1861, along with a translation by John Pughe, in a volume called The Physicians of Myddvai . The volume contains editions of two texts: the first of these is the medical compendium from RBH, and the second is a medical compendium attributed to ‘Hywel Feddyg’ based on a copy of the manuscript provided to the editor by the great literary forger Iolo Morganwg (i.e. Edward Williams, 1747–1826). 2 The attribution to ‘Hywel Feddyg’ in this text is based on a note at the end of the collection, where the compiler identifies himself by name and claims descent from Einion ab Rhiwallon, one of the Physicians of Myddfai. Another note claims that the text was copied by William Bona from the book of John Jones, a physician from Myddfai and the last of the line, in 1743. 3 In actuality, the book of Hywel Feddyg is based on a manuscript in the hand of the eighteenth-century scribe William Bona of Llanpumsaint (NLW 13111 part ii), which Iolo Morganwg has altered in order to make it look like an older and more authentic text. 4 Iolo rearranged the contents to make them look more like a planned medical compendium, replaced much of the English vocabulary with Welsh words to make the text appear older and more authentically Welsh, left out some remedies that were obviously more recent than the date he had in mind for this collection, and added numerous short texts to the end of the compendium. 5 These include a plant-name glossary which contains a number of unique, 4 MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS idiosyncratic or perhaps merely erroneous plant identifications, a tract on weights and measures, a list of anhepcorion Meddyg (‘the things a physician should not be without’), the ascription to Hywel Feddyg, and William Bona’s claim to have copied the text from John Jones. Iolo Morganwg’s doctored version of this compendium survives today as NLW 13111 part i, making it easy to see how he has changed the text. In reality, William Bona’s collection (that is NLW 13111 part ii) is a typical early modern medical compendium containing a mixture of medieval remedies and more recent material, and as such is worthy of further study in its own right, but it is not, as it has been presented in this edition, a compendium collected by one descendant of the Physicians of Myddfai, and copied from a manuscript belonging to another such descendant. This claim is never made by William Bona, but rather is part of Iolo Morganwg’s intentional recasting of this collection. While the Book of Hywel Feddyg is not what it is claimed to be, the edition of RBH which precedes it in the 1861 publication is an accurate edition of the texts it purports to contain. Even so, that work does also misrepresent the nature of this collection. In the introduc- tion to that volume, the editor claims that the RBH text is but one of several copies of the work, the original of which is to be found in the manuscript ‘lately transferred from the library of the Welsh Charity School, in London, to the British Museum’, a reference to BLAdd. 6 This edition presents the RBH text along with variants from a manu- script belonging to Mr Rees of Tonn, a reference to Cardiff 2.135 (ab Ithel refers to this manuscript as ‘Tonn’). The impression given is that there is a single medical text, the original of which is found in BLAdd, of which several copies exist, including those in RBH and Cardiff 2.135. In fact, Cardiff 2.135 is a copy of RBH, and while the collec- tion of medical texts in RBH draws on the same sources as does the collection in BLAdd, the former is not a copy of the latter. The only other versions of the collection of medical texts in RBH, are actually copies of RBH itself, or copies of those copies. The medical texts from RBH were edited and translated again by Pol Diverres in 1913 in his Le Plus Ancien Texte des Meddygon Myddveu 7 As is apparent from the title of this volume, Diverres also treats the collection of medical texts in RBH as a single work. In his introduction, Diverres provides a brief treatment of the Welsh medical INTRODUCTION 5 material, which he divides into four groups: ‘ Meddygon Myddveu proprement dits’; medical tracts composed after Meddygon Myddveu ; Welsh translations of Latin medical texts; and medical recipes and formulae scattered throughout different manuscripts. 8 Like Williams, Diverres also provides variants from two further copies of the base text in his edition: the ‘Tonn’ manuscript used by Williams (Cardiff 2.135), and another source which he calls ‘Fenton’ (Cardiff 2.128). He identifies copies of his text in a total of nine manuscripts (this is the group of texts which he identifies as ‘ Meddygon Myddveu proprement dits’), and concludes that as RBH is the oldest of these, it is the correct choice for the basis of his edition. 9 In reality, this is a mixed group of texts. Some are simply copies of RBH (Cardiff 2.128, Cardiff 2.135, NLW Llanstephan 87). Others are medical compendia based on the same types of sources as is the RBH collection but not actually the same text (Oxford Jesus 22 and its copy in NLW Peniarth 120). Still others are composite manuscripts made up of several fifteenth- and sixteenth-century sources which have been bound together, all con- taining medical material, but once again not closely related to the material in RBH (BL Additional 14913, NLW Peniarth 204, NLW Peniarth 119). Diverres’s group of texts containing ‘ Meddygon Myddveu proprement dits’ actually contains RBH, copies of RBH, and several other medical texts only tangentially related to RBH. Once again, the only actual copies of the RBH text which Diverres calls Meddygon Myddveu , are copies of RBH itself. The titles given to these editions ( The Physicians of Myddvai , Le plus ancien texte des Meddygon Myddveu ) reflect the way that the medical collection in RBH begins. It starts with the famous preface ascribing the following collection to the expertise of the Physicians of Myddfai, who are named as Rhiwallon the Physician and his three sons, Cadwgon, Gruffydd and Einion. 10 According to that preface, this family of physicians practised under the Lord Rhys Gryg of Dinefwr Castle in Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire. Its placement at the beginning of this collection has the effect of ascribing all of the medical texts which follow it to the Physicians of Myddfai. This is misleading, as prefaces such as this normally apply only to the specific collection of recipes which follow them. Thus, for example, the preface which begins the tenth collection of recipes in this corpus ascribes them to the authority of Galen and Hippocrates. 11 This ascription applies only 6 MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS to the recipes in that recipe collection, not to all the medical texts which follow it in the manuscript. Like that preface, the Physicians of Myddfai preface appears at the beginning of a specific collection of remedies, and like that preface, it applies only to the recipes which follow it, not to the entire manuscript. That collection also appears in BLAdd and Rawl (although in Rawl the preface is much simpli- fied and the Physicians themselves are not mentioned). It is the first collection of recipes in Rawl (it forms the first text in the second of four booklets which make up that manuscript), but in BLAdd it is the third collection. The arrangement of texts in BLAdd makes it clear that the preface belongs only to the specific recipes that follow, not to the entire collection. This preface has been used to date the texts to the reign of Rhys Gryg, who was lord of Dinefwr at various points of time between 1195 and 1216, and then continuously from 1216 until his death in 1234. 12 It has been used to tie this corpus of medical material to a folk-tale about a fairy bride, supposedly the wife of Rhiwallon and the father of his medically gifted sons. 13 It has also been used by medical practitioners since at least the eighteenth century to prop up their claims to medical expertise as descendants of these physicians. 14 The reliance upon the text in RBH in editions has encouraged the misap- prehension that the entire corpus of medieval Welsh medical texts should be ascribed to the Physicians of Myddfai. It has also encouraged the idea that there is a particularly Welsh or Celtic medical tradition to which these texts belong, which is distinct from that of the rest of Europe, and which may still be discerned in certain herbal medical practises used in the Celtic nations today. 15 This is how the texts are presented in the introduction to the 1861 edition, which presents the material as follows: Meddyginiaeth, or medicine, numbers as one of ‘the nine rural arts, known and practised by the ancient Cymry before they became possessed of cities and a sovereignty;’ that is, before the time of Prydain ab Aedd Mawr, which is generally dated about a thousand years anterior to the Christian era. The text goes on to ascribe the teaching of this knowledge to the Gwyddoniaid or men of knowledge, and characterises it as one of INTRODUCTION 7 the three ‘pillars of knowledge’ with which they were acquainted, the others being theology and astronomy. 16 These statements are supported by references to Triads, that is, snippets of wisdom or lore organised into groups of three, presumably for mnemonic purposes. 17 Some of the medical recommendations in the medical corpus, for example, are structured as triads. 18 However the language and con- tents of these particular triads, as well as their place of publication in the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales , immediately identifies them as the product of Iolo Morganwg, whose hand is also seen at work in the second part of the 1861 edition, the medical tract attributed to Hywel Feddyg. 19 It is apparent that the physicians of Myddfai were a well-known legendary family, whatever the historicity of their story may be. They are often referred to in medical manuscripts from the early modern period, outside the context of the preface. For example, a remedy (in the sixteenth-century section of Peniarth 204) for an electuary that will ease chest constriction ends with the statement, ‘hynn yw dysc Riallon veddic a’i vaibion’ (‘this is the counsel of Rhiwallon the physician and his sons’). 20 They are also referred to by the fourteenth-century poet Iorwerth ab y Cyriog (fl. c .1325–75) in a poem thanking his sweetheart, Efa, for a valuable gold and silver brooch adorned with a precious stone with healing powers which she has given him: 21 Oedd afraid peth i ddwyfron A dynnai haint i dan hon. Balchach wyf gilio’r bolchwydd O’r cylla rhwth, cawell rhwydd: Odid iddo ruo rhawg O wyrthiau main mawrwerthawg! Gwyrthiau a rôn’, gwerth aur ŷnt, Ac odidog od ydynt. Yma maen, mae i’m mynwes, Anaml yw, a wnâi ym lles. Meddyg, a wnâi modd y gwnaeth, Myddfai, o châi ddyn meddfaeth. Iach yw’r gallon hon yn hawdd: Hi â’i chae a’i hiachaawdd! 8 MEDIEVAL WELSH MEDICAL TEXTS A diseased breast under this [jewel] Would not have need of anything. I am very happy that my swollen abdomen is shrinking From the distended stomach, the loose belly: It would be strange were it to keep rumbling Because of the miracles of the valuable stones! They produce miracles, they are worth gold, And they are wondrously strange. Here is a stone, it is at my breast, It is rare, and it does me good. A Physician of Myddfai would do as it has done Were a noble person [lit. a person nourished on mead] able to get it. This belly is healthy now, easily, It is she and her brooch that have healed it. The reference to the Physicians here is integral to the poet’s argu- ment, and is unlikely to be an afterthought or an error. Iorwerth was probably from Anglesey, although most of his patrons seem to be based in Merionethshire. Whatever his exact milieu, he was a northern poet, which indicates that the legend of the Physicians of Myddfai had travelled far from their south-western home by the time Iorwerth was writing. While the earliest copy of this poem is found in RBH along with a copy of the texts attributed to the Physicians of Myddfai, it pre-dates that manuscript, and could not have been influenced by any of its contents. 22 Morfydd Owen points out that during the reign of Rhys Gryg, Myddfai was a royal manor directly under the lordship of Dinefwr, of the sort where Rhys Gryg might have settled some of his court officials. 23 Owen also shows that there is evidence to suggest that the manor of Myddfai in particular was especially renowned for medical knowledge. She notes that in the later Middle Ages, when Myddfai had become part of the lordship of Llandovery, the tenants of Myddfai ‘were obliged to supply the Lord of Llanymddyfri with a doctor to follow him in Wales at their own expense’. 24 The names of farms and physical features in the area bear out this connection: the farms Llwyn Ifan Feddyg (‘the grove of John the physician’) and Llwyn Maredudd Feddyg (‘the grove of Maredudd the physician’; remember that one of Rhiwallawn’s sons was named Maredudd), as well as the famous