The Heavenly Field: A Reconsideration of Mother Earth in the Æcerbot Rite

The Æcerbot is one of the famous Old English “metrical charms” that details lengthy prescriptions for ritual performances if a field fails to produce crops.¹ It has attracted much debate over many decades. Scholars initially viewed it as providing evidence of surviving pagan customs in eleventh-century England before more nuanced interpretations of it were made as a popular, perhaps heterodox, Christian performance, if not a ritual script akin to a liturgical ordine for a procession or exorcism.² One striking feature of this field remedy that has at times been at the center of these debates is its unique triple invocation of “erce,” which is then followed by an address to “eorþan modor,” or “mother of earth.” Immediately following this is a second address to the earth as the mother of men (“folde fira modor”), possibly a separate maternal figure. Uncovering the meaning of this perhaps most obscure part...