ey are haunted still to those
who retain something of primitive imagination. And when we study the
plant lore of these people we realise that prince and peasant alike
used the simple but mysterious herbs not only to cure them of both
physical and mental ills, but to guard them from these unseen
monsters. Of the reverence they paid to herbs we begin to have some
dim apprehension when we read of the ceremonies connected with the
picking and administering of them.

But, first, what can we learn of the beliefs as to the origin of
disease? Concerning this the great bulk of the folk lore in these
manuscripts is apparently of native Teutonic origin, or rather it
would be more correct to speak of its origin as Indo-Germanic; for the
same doctrines are to be found among all Indo-Germanic peoples, and
even in the Vedas, notably the Atharva Veda. Of these beliefs, the
doctrine of the "elf-shot" occupies a large space, the longest chapter
in the third book of the _Leech Book of Bald_ being entirely "against
elf-disease." We know from their literature that to our Saxon
ancestors waste places of moor and forest and marshes were the resort
of a host of supernatural creatures at enmity with mankind. In the
_Leech Book of Bald_ disease is largely ascribed to these elves, whose
shafts produced illness in their victims. We read of beorg-aelfen,
dun-aelfen, muntaelfen. But our modern word "elf" feebly represents
these creatures, who were more akin to the "mark-stalkers," to the
creatures of darkness with loathsome eyes, rather than to the fairies
with whom we now associate the name. For the most part these elves of
ancient times were joyless impersonations and creatures not of sun but
of darkness and winter. In the gloom and solitude of the forest,
"where the bitter wormwood stood pale grey" and where "the hoar stones
lay thick," the black, giant elves had their dwelling. They claimed
the forest for their own and hated man because bit by bit he was
wresting the forest from them. Yet they made for man those mystic
swords of superhuman workmanship engraved with magic runes and dipped
when red hot in blood or in a broth of poisonous herbs and twigs. We
do not understand, we can only ask, why did they make them? What is
the meaning of the myth? The water elves recall the sea monsters who
attended Grendel's dam, impersonations of the fury of the waves, akin
to Hnikarr, and again other water elves of the cavernous bed of ocean,
primeval deadly