The Woman Who Cannot

The woman who cannot bring forth her child: go to a dead man’s grave and then step three times over the grave, and then say these words three times: This is my cure for the loathsome late-birth This is my cure for the bitter black-birth This is my cure for the loathsome imperfect-birth And when that woman is with child and she goes to her lord in his bed, then let her say: Up I go, over you I step, with a quick child, not a quelled one, with a full-born one, not a doomed one. And when the mother feels the child is quick, go then to a church, and when she comes before the altar say then: Christ, I said it. This has been uttered. The woman who cannot bring forth her child: grasp a handful of her own child’s grave, and after that, bind it in black wool and sell it to peddlers, and say then: I sell it, you sell it. This blackened wool, this sorrow seed. Translated from the Old English