CHAPTER IX.
DREAM-PLANTS.
The importance attached to dreams in all primitive and savage
culture accounts for the significance ascribed to certain plants found by
visitors to dreamland. At the outset, it may be noticed that various drugs
and narcotic potions have, from time immemorial, been employed for
producing dreams and visions--a process still in force amongst
uncivilised tribes. Thus the Mundrucus of North Brazil, when desirous
of gaining information on any special subject, would administer to their
seers narcotic drinks, so that in their dreams they might be favoured
with the knowledge required. Certain of the Amazon tribes use narcotic
plants for encouraging visions, and the Californian Indians, writes Mr.
Tylor,[1] "would give children narcotic potions, to gain from the ensuing
visions information about their enemies;" whilst, he adds, "the Darien
Indians used the seeds of the Datura sanguinca to bring on in children
prophetic delirium, in which they revealed hidden treasure." Similarly,
the Delaware medicine-men used to drink decoctions of an intoxicating
nature, "until their minds became wildered, so that they saw
extraordinary visions."[2]
The North American Indians also held intoxication by tobacco to be
supernatural ecstasy. It is curious to find a survival of this source of
superstition in modern European folk-lore. Thus, on the Continent,
many a lover puts the four-leaved clover under his pillow to dream of
his lady-love; and in our own country, daisy-roots are used by the rustic
maiden for the same purpose. The Russians are familiar with a certain
herb, known as the son-trava, a dream herb, which has been identified
with the Pulsatilla patens, and is said to blossom in April, and to have an
azure-coloured flower. When placed under the pillow, it will induce
dreams, which are generally supposed to be fulfilled. It has been
suggested that it was from its title of "tree of dreams" that the elm
became a prophetic tree, having been selected by Virgil in the Aeneid
(vi.) as the roosting-place of dreams in gloomy Orcus:
"Full in the midst a spreading elm displayed
His aged arms, and cast a mighty shade;
Each trembling leaf with some light visions teems,
And leaves impregnated with airy dreams."