Madness, Medication--and Self-Induced Hallucination? Elleborus (and Woody Nightshade) in Anglo-Saxon England, 700-900

This article studies what Anglo-Saxons in around 700--900 understood by the Latin plant-name <i>elleborus</i>, looking particularly at Aldhelm's Latin riddle <i>Elleborus</i>, which suggests that the word was understood to denote woody nightshade (<i>Solanum dulcamara</i>). It examines the semantics of Old English words that gloss <i>elleborus</i> in earlier Anglo-Saxon sources: <i>wedeberge</i>, <i>ceasteræsc</i>, <i>ceasterwyrte</i>, and <i>ælfþone</i>. The article finds evidence for the presence of a copy of Dioscorides’ <i>De materia medica</i> in seventh-century Canterbury. It also argues for a culturally significant connection between ingesting woody nightshade, the production of an altered state of mind attested in Latin as <i>dementia cordis</i> and in Old English as <i>wedenheortnes</i>, and elves. <i>Ælfþone</i> might originally have meant something along the lines of ‘vine which causes the symptoms which elves cause’. It seems likely that there was a custom of ingesting it deliberately to achieve mind-altering effects.