A New Illustrated Translation of the Nigon Wyrta Galdor, popularly known as "The Nine Herbs Charm"
The Nigon Wyrta Galdor (NWG) or, popularly, the Nine Herbs Charm, is an Old English healing spell—a galdor—intended to remedying a wound of some kind. The charm is recorded in a single manuscript, Harley MS 585 (ff 160r—163r), commonly known today as the Lacnunga (Old English ‘remedies’), which the British Museum dates to the 9th or early 10th centuries. The topics, themes, and entities the charm touches upon, such as explicit animism, emphasis on the numbers nine and other multipliers of three, and the invocation of the Germanic deity Odin (Old English Wōden) stem from the pre-Christianization beliefs of the Old English speakers (an extension of the culture of the ancient Germanic peoples).
For the utility of readers, the translator has chosen to embrace a threefold approach, consisting of two different types of translation and a normalization the manuscript’s Old English text to assist with comparison:
Modern English, Stylized Translation: Intended to be as approachable as possible for new readers and includes ‘stylized’, ‘colorful’, and ‘poetic’ elements. The translator smooths away all complications found in the original text, saving discussion of these many issues for comparison between the normalized Old English text (2) and a more direct Modern English translation (3).
Old English, Normalized from Manuscript: The ‘normalized’ text of the Old English manuscript. The translator has made some emendations where appropriate or deemed necessary, and introduced commas to the Old English text for the convenience of readers.
The translator maintains some of the grammatical indicators, symbols, and flourishes found in the Old English manuscript (such as dots and other items), and has also retained the scribe’s use of the Old English character wynn (Ƿ, ƿ). Wynn indicates a sound (phoneme /w/) represented in the modern English alphabet by the letter W, w. Wynn stems from the letter of the runic alphabet of the same name (ᚹ) and means ‘joy’ (Old English wynn, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *wunjō ‘joy’ (Orel 2003: 475)). Readers are likely to have encountered a modern descendent of the word in the adjective winsome, meaning ‘pleasant, agreeable, delightful’.
Modern English, Direct Translation: A translation that more closely follows the poem’s syntax and contents, while highlighting difficulties in the text. The bolding in the ‘direct’ translation and ‘normalized’ Old English is the translator’s own, intended to aid readers in identifying mention of the plants. Many points raised in this translation are expounded upon the supplementary material that follows.
Neither the stylized nor direct translations attempt to replicate the alliterative verse or meter of the original. This, along with various other topics, receives discussion in commentary, analysis, and tables following the above three items.