e
that the British Museum owes this treasure to the zealous antiquarian
whose efforts during the closing years of the seventeenth and early
years of the eighteenth century rescued so many valuable Saxon and
other MSS. from oblivion.[13]

To the student of folk lore and folk custom these sources of herb lore
are of remarkable interest for the light they throw on the beliefs and
customs of humble everyday people in Anglo-Saxon times. Of kings and
warriors, of bards and of great ladies we can read in other Saxon
literature, and all so vividly that we see their halls, the long
hearths on which the fires were piled, the openings in the roof
through which the smoke passed. We see the men with their "byrnies" of
ring mail, their crested helmets, their leather-covered shields and
deadly short swords. We see them and their womenkind wearing golden
ornaments at their feasts, the tables laden with boars' flesh and
venison and chased cups of ale and mead. We see these same halls at
night with the men sleeping, their "byrnies" and helmets hanging near
them, and in the dim light we can make out also the trophies of the
chase hanging on the walls. We read of their mighty deeds, and we know
at least something of the ideals and the thoughts of their great men
and heroes. But what of that vast number of the human kind who were
always in the background? What of the hewers of wood and drawers of
water, the swineherds, the shepherds, the carpenters, the hedgers and
cobblers? Is it not wonderful to think that in these manuscripts we
can learn, at least to some extent, what plant life meant to these
everyday folk? And even in these days to understand what plant life
means to the true countryman is to get into very close touch with him.
Not only has suburban life separated the great concentrated masses of
our people from their birthright of meadows, fields and woods; of
Nature, in her untamed splendour and mystery, most of them have never
had so much as a momentary glimpse. But in Saxon times even the towns
were not far from the unreclaimed marshes and forests, and to the
peasant in those days they were full not only of seen, but also of
unseen perils. There was probably not a Saxon child who did not know
something of the awe of waste places and impenetrable forests. Even
the hamlets lay on the very edge of forests and moors, and to the
peasant these were haunted by giant, elf and monster, as in the more
inaccessible parts of these islands th