someone get me a root of radish
i don’t know how you like to party. perhaps it involves an ironic brand of beer that gets less ironic the more it’s consumed. perhaps your party soundtrack is inclusive of thumping bass and grievous distortion effects and the twin mantras of carpe diem and getting some. perhaps the climax of your social gathering is when everyone interweaves themselves into a human monkey-knot, a farrago of sweat-drenched designer wife-beaters, rave beads, tiger balm, and limbs thrusting freely like tentacles of the id.
the long and short of it is that i really don’t know how you like to party, but i do know how raynor ganan likes to. and as you probably guessed, it involves a thousand year-old book, a pulpit from which i can read aloud long passages, and a roomful of party guests that can endure this.
friday’s revelation about crushed pearls as a medicine for the ailing rich tickled me in a way that i shan’t elaborate and so i went hunting for other old-timey medicine recipes for more laughs. it turns out that collections of this nature were quite common in mediæval europe and were called leechbooks. here is a good one. but the best one, and the one that i took with me to a recent dinner party is: leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early england (1865) which is a translation of a 9th century tract (known as bald’s leechbook) written in the oldest version of english going*.
i read a few preposterous remedies to my group and the yucks were so free-flowing that others grabbed this marvelous tome out of my well-manicured hands and starting finding their own ridiculous elixirs. here are a few of our favourites†:
for joint pain; take dove’s dung and a goat’s turd, dry them thoroughly and rub to dust, mingle with honey and with butter, smear the joints therewith.
against elf disease; take fennel, nightshade, moss or lichen from the hallowed sign of christ, bind in a cloth, dip it thrice in hallowed font water. reek the man with this before 9 in the morning, sing the pater noster, and write christ’s mark on each of his limbs; it will soon be will with him.
against a tumor; burn a fresh hound’s head to ashes, apply to the wound. if the wound will not give way to that, take a man’s dung, dry it thoroughly, rub to dust, apply it. if this thou art not able to cure him, thou mayest never do it by any means.
in case a man be a lunatic; take skin of porpoise, work it into a whip, swinge the man therewith, soon he will be well. amen.
in case of a cut that will not heal; take a new horse’s turd, dry it in the sun, rub it to dust thoroughly well, lay the dust very thick on a linen cloth; wrap up the wound with that.
work a salve against nocturnal goblin visitors; boil in butter lupins, hedgerife, bisopwort, red maythe, cropleek, salt; smear the man therewith, it will soon be well with him.
against a woman’s chatter; taste at night a root of radish, that day the chatter cannot harm thee.
i could keep going. i could keep going like we did on saturday, belching laughs into the predawn haze and resolving that if we ever hot-tub-timemachined ourselves back to the 9th century a.d. to never, ever, under any circumstances seek medical attention—even if we came down with a case of nocturnal goblin visitors.
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*in fact, reading through this book is highly reminiscent of poul anderson’s uncleftish beholding.
†paraphrased
