ffor to gedryn Ratownys and dryve þem from a place

With composer Charlotte Baskerville, the choir have selected a manuscript from Gonville & Caius College, one of whose charms has been transcribed and translated by Dr Clarck Drieshen (Medieval Manuscripts Specialist at Cambridge University Library).

This fifteenth-century collection contains Middle English and Latin medical, alchemical and household recipes alongside charms and practical magical instructions to ward off vermin and other animals. The choir was intrigued by a charm ‘to gather rats and drive them from a place’.

The charm invokes the Virgin Mary who, according to the text, all creatures – including rats – should obey. The virtues of St Nicasius are also called upon, along with St Gertrude of Nivelles, who was commonly invoked against rodent infestations.

The choir has yet to test the efficacy of the charm, but Dr Clarck Drieshen has his doubts, as the text itself appears on a page that has been heavily gnawed by rodents…

Discover more about this manuscript in the CUL Special Collections blog post, Charming creepy-crawlies in the Middle Ages

ffor to gedryn Ratownys

With thanks to Dr Clarck Drieshen for his transcription and translation of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 457/395

To gather rats and drive them from a place: I command all the rats that are in this place, inside and outside, by the virtue of our dear Lady who carried Jesus, and who all creatures should obey, by the virtue of St Gertrude that good clean holy virgin to whom God granted the favour that no rats shall ever dwell in the place where her name is spoken, in the virtue of St Nicasius that holy man to whom God gave the favour that no rats shall ever dwell in the place where his name is spoken, Lord God of Hosts, and by the virtue of the Holy Spirit, I command all the rats that are here in this place that you flee this place and go away so that no rats dwell in this place. Lord God of Hosts, may you keep this place from all evil creatures and from all rats and all other misfortunes. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Des flours des femmes

In their commission for the choir, composer Hannah Conway and librettist Hazel Gould reinterpret an Anglo-Norman treatise on menstruation, Sicom Aristotele nous dit, found in a manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge, MS O.2.5, ff. 123r–124v

This rhymed text was created in England, probably before the mid-fourteenth century. It describes the arrival and cessation of monthly symptoms – ‘des flours des femmes’ (the ‘flowers of women’) – as hidden maladies. The purpose of the treatise appears to be to educate women to help themselves without the need for a doctor.  

The choir have taken inspiration from Dr Clarissa Chenovick's scholarship on this text, particularly her observation that it appears in the manuscript alongside items as diverse as a treatise on the nature of man, charts of eclipses, and astronomical works. This aspect of women’s experience is placed ‘within the context of greater questions about the nature of the human body and its place in the world.’ (Chenovick, p. 304)

Sicom Aristotele nous dit

With thanks to Dr Clarissa Chenovick for her transcription and translation

As Aristotle tells us in his letter to Alexander, it is neither right nor fitting that the illnesses that come about and keep the body in a state of feebleness and decline should be known to all people. He [Aristotle] would not have revealed these maladies to a man, a topic a woman hides, so well that it is never willingly shown to a man. I want to show it, in short, in order to teach medicine to women and young girls alike so that they might help themselves in private, without specialised knowledge.

It is written that this trouble comes to the woman for exactly the same reason that ejaculation comes to the male; it comes about because of an excess of humours, and woman calls it her ‘flowers’. By nature, it happens to a woman when she attains the fourteenth year of age, and, in fact, it is quite often wont to take place in the twelfth.

But for almost everyone, when it stops, it [menopause] brings on hot humours. Menstruation usually lasts for thirty-five years for many women; for others it stops at forty or fifty, and for many others it lasts until sixty, when the flowers come to an end, and the body returns to a regular state. Flowers are a great help to the whole body, for as many write, they purge the ill-humours very well. Certainly, without this, the body cannot remain healthy.

Find Dr Clarissa Chenovick's full transcription, translation and commentary on this extract in Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Thelma Fenster, and Delbert W. Russell, editors. Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England: Texts and Translations, c.1120- c.1450. Boydell & Brewer, 2016. 303–308.

Erce, eorþan mōdor

Stef Conner’s Seed Spell reworks lines from the Anglo-Saxon Æcerbot, a charm that calls to the mother of the earth for the flourishing of crops and all the fruits of the earth.

The eleventh-century metrical charm for unfruitful land appears in a manuscript in the British Library collections, available to view online in image 357 of MS Cotton Caligula A.vii, f 177v.

Dr Ophelia Eryn Hostetter's translation of this charm is available on the Old English Poetry Project hosted by Rutgers University.

Previously commissioned by The Timeline Choir, Seed Spell completes the repertoire for their performance at the exhibition launch.