For Delayed Birth

The so-called charm for delayed birth is an Old English poetic medical text found in the manuscript London, British Library, Harley 585, ff. 185r-v, in a collection of medical texts known since the nineteenth century as Lacnunga (‘remedies’). The manuscript was probably copied in the early eleventh century, though its sources may have been older.

The text is in fact a set of prose instructions which include a series of short poems which should be recited as part of the ritual. The text is an important witness to non-orthodox Anglo-Saxon Christian religious practice and to women's history: it is unique among Anglo-Saxon medical texts for being explicitly for use and recitation by a woman. However, 'this charm is perhaps misnamed, because it deals, not with delayed birth as such, but with the inability of the wifman [woman] for whom it is written to conceive at all, or to bring a child to term without miscarriage.'Considered by early scholarship to be a single charm for a single situation, this is actually composed of a number of charms for different situations, though all involve the desire for a successful pregnancy.

As edited by Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie but with long vowels marked with acute accents, the text runs:

Charm 6a:Charm To Hasten Sluggish Labour:

Se wífman, se hire cild áfédan ne mæg, gange tó gewitenes mannes birgenne and stæppe þonne þríwa ofer þá byrgenne and cweþe þonne þríwa þás word:
 þis mé tó bóte þǽre láþan lætbyrde,
 þis mé tó bóte þǽre swǽran swǽrbyrde,
 þis mé tó bóte þǽre láðan lambyrde.

Let that woman who cannot nourish her child walk to the grave of a departed person and then step three times over the burial, and then say these words three times:
 this as my remedy for the hateful late birth,
 this as my remedy for the oppressive heavy birth,
 this as my remedy for the hateful lame birth.

Charm 6b: Charm on Going to Bed:

And þonne þæt wíf séo mid bearne and héo tó hyre hláforde on reste gá, þonne cweþe héo:
 Up ic gonge, ofer þé stæppe
 mid cwican cilde, nalæs mid cwellendum,
 mid fulborenum, nalæs mid fǽgan.

...
Wikipedia