Caroline R. Batten’s research while affiliated with University of Oxford and other places

The metre of the Old English metrical charms is highly unusual according to all postulated systems of Old English metrical scansion. Their numerous irregularities have led previous studies to dismiss the charms as corrupt or poor verse. The present study subjects the metrical charms to stylometric analysis for the first time and demonstrates that their irregularities are in fact both predictable and explicable. It argues that the charms are aesthetically sophisticated and vivid narrative poems, with stylistic features that complement their content. It demonstrates that their irregularities are a consequence of the accommodation of traditional formulae and plurilinear rhetorical structures evidently essential to these texts’ practical purposes and magical functions. The charms’ shared, unusual stylistic features suggest that they may represent a mode of Old English poetic composition distinct from the ‘classical’ verse found in texts like Beowulf, and the resulting re-evaluation of the charms’ aesthetic merit in turn suggests the importance of re-evaluating the criteria by which scholars judge Old English verse more broadly.

The Old English charm usually referred to as Æcerbot [Land Remedy] is a set of liturgically inspired rites and verse incantations designed to heal areas of agricultural land afflicted by dry [magic] and lyblac [poison]. The extant text was copied down in the first half of the eleventh century and added, at some point, to a tenth-century copy of the Old Saxon Heliand.¹ This charm has been the subject of frequent analysis, and is often assumed to contain traces of pagan worship—though the text features significant liturgical quotation, makes repeated references to the Christian God, and takes Genesis as its central myth and source of magical power.² The text also contains a crux that has perhaps been the subject of more debate than any other line in the Old English metrical charm corpus. After hallowing the plough with blessed substances, the charmer addresses the land as follows: Erce, erce, erce, eorþan mōdor, Geunne þē se alwalda, ēce drihten, æcera wexendra and wrīdendra… Erce, erce, erce, mother of earth, May the all-ruler, the Eternal Lord, grant you Fields growing and producing….