The Laud Herbal Glossary (MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 587) is a twelfth-century copy of the single biggest compilation of plant-name glosses of its time in England, rooted in Anglo-Saxon sources. Its lemmata are mostly Latin, and these are mostly glossed into Old English/Middle English.[1]

Although the Laud Herbal Glossary drew on many sources, its main sources for vernacular glosses are a list of plant-names in the Greek primer, the Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana (the best preserved manuscript of which appears to be Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, 1828–30, folios 94–95, which gives the names under the title 'Nomina herbarum Grece et Latine'); the Old English Herbarium; and a text very like the Durham Plant-Name Glossary.[2]

References

  1. ^ Stracke, J. Richard, ed. 1974. The Laud Herbal Glossary. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
  2. ^ Rusche, Philip Guthrie. 2008. ‘The sources for plant names in Anglo-Saxon England and the Laud Herbal Glossary’, in Health and Healing in the Medieval Garden, ed. by Peter Dendle and Alan Touwaide, 128–44. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.


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