Lacnunga

Lacnunga is a collection of miscellaneous medical texts, mainly in Old English, included alongside other medical texts in the manuscript London, British Library Harley 585, probably copied in South-Western England around the first decade of the eleventh century. The collection contains many unique texts, including an unusual proportion of charms which providing rare glimpses into Anglo-Saxon popular religion and healing practices. Among these charms is that known as Wið færstice. Lacnunga means 'remedies', but although it is in Old English the name is not in the manuscript: it was given by the collection's first editor, Oswald Cockayne, and has since stuck.