For a Swarm of Bees

Template:Short description "For a Swarm of Bees" is an Anglo-Saxon metrical charm that was intended for use in keeping honey bees from swarming. The text was discovered by John Mitchell Kemble in the 19th century.Template:Sfnp The charm is named for its opening words, "", meaning "against (or towards) a swarm of bees".Template:Sfnp

In the most often studied portion, towards the end of the text where the charm itself is located, the bees are referred to as , "victory-women". The word has been associated by Kemble,Template:Sfnp Jacob Grimm, and other scholars with the notion of valkyries (Old English ), and "shield maidens", hosts of female beings attested in Old Norse and, to a lesser extent, Old English sources, similar to or identical with the Idise of the Merseburg Incantations.Template:Sfnp Some scholars have theorized the compound to be a simple metaphor for the "victorious sword" (the stinging) of the bees.Template:Sfnp

File:Lorscher Bienensegen.jpg

Lorscher Bienensegen manuscript

In 1909, the scholar Felix Grendon recorded what he saw as similarities between the charm and the Lorsch Bee Blessing, a manuscript portion of the Lorsch Codex, from the monastery in Lorsch, Germany. Grendon suggested that the two could possibly have a common origin in pre-Christian Germanic culture.Template:Sfnp

Charm text

Settle down, victory-women, sink to earth,
never be wild and fly to the woods.
Be as mindful of my welfare,
as is each man of border and of home.Template:Sfnp

Editions

• Foys, Martin et al. Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project (Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019-); digital facsimile edition and Modern English translation