Аннотация:Among the surviving medical writings in Old English, Bald's Leechbook holds a deservedly important place. It is preserved uniquely in London, British Library, Royal 12. D. xvii, a manuscript which may be dated on palaeographical grounds to the mid-tenth century (s. x med ), and which may arguably be attributed to a scriptorium at Winchester. 1 Linguistic evidence suggests that this manuscript is in turn a copy of a manuscript written perhaps half a century earlier. Although it is written by one scribe throughout, the manuscript contains three distinct books. A metrical colophon at the end of the second book contains the hexameter ‘Bald habet hunc librum Cild quem conscribere iussit’. Neither Bald nor Cild can be identified, and the ambiguity of conscribere in medieval Latin makes it difficult to determine whether Bald ordered Cild to compile the book or simply to transcribe it. (Because of this ambiguity, I shall refer to the person responsible as the ‘compiler’.) In any case, it is clear that the first two books form a distinct unit, and it is these two books that are customarily described as Bald's Leechbook 2 (a practice I shall follow in the present essay). The third book is a collection of medical recipes, of lesser scholarly import, entirely separate from and unrelated to Bald's Leechbook ; it will not be discussed further here.
