Editing Elf (section)

==== As causes of illnesses ====

The earliest surviving manuscripts mentioning elves in any Germanic language are from [[Anglo-Saxon England]]. Medieval English evidence has, therefore, attracted quite extensive research and debate.{{sfnp|Jolly|1996}}{{sfnp|Shippey|2005}}{{sfnp|Hall|2007}}{{sfnp|Green|2016}} In Old English, elves are most often mentioned in medical texts which attest to the belief that elves might afflict humans and [[livestock]] with illnesses: apparently mostly sharp, internal pains and mental disorders. The most famous of the medical texts is the [[Anglo-Saxon metrical charms|metrical charm]] ''[[Wið færstice]]'' ("against a stabbing pain"), from the tenth-century compilation ''[[Lacnunga]]'', but most of the attestations are in the tenth-century [[Bald's Leechbook|''Bald's Leechbook'' and ''Leechbook III'']]. This tradition continues into later English-language traditions too: elves continue to appear in Middle English medical texts.<ref name="ReferenceB">{{harvp|Hall|2007|pp=88–89, 141}}; {{harvp|Green|2003}}; {{harvp|Hall|2006}}.</ref>

Belief in elves as a cause of illnesses remained prominent in early modern Scotland, where elves were viewed as supernaturally powerful people who lived invisibly alongside everyday rural people.<ref>{{harvp|Henderson|Cowan|2001}}; {{harvp|Hall|2005}}.</ref> Thus, elves were often mentioned in the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials: many witnesses in the trials believed themselves to have been given healing powers or to know of people or animals made sick by elves.<ref name=purkiss/>{{sfnp|Hall|2007|p=112–15}} Throughout these sources, elves are sometimes associated with the [[succubus]]-like supernatural being called the [[Mare (folklore)|''mare'']].{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=124–26, 128–29, 136–37, 156}}

While they may have been thought to cause diseases with magical weapons, elves are more clearly associated in Old English with a kind of magic denoted by Old English ''sīden'' and ''sīdsa'', a cognate with the Old Norse ''[[seiðr]]'', and paralleled in the Old Irish ''[[Serglige Con Culainn]]''.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=119–156}}{{sfnp|Tolley|2009|loc=vol. I, p. 221}} By the fourteenth century, they were also associated with the arcane practice of [[alchemy]].<ref name="ReferenceB"/>