"Full moon, high sea,
Great man thou shalt be;
Red dawning, cloudy sky,
Bloody death shalt thou die."Pray to the Moon when she is round,
Luck with you will then abound,
What you seek for shall be found
On the sea or solid ground."THE POWER OF GARLIC AND ONIONS
Among the Poles, garlic is laid under children's pillows to protect them
from devils and witches. (BRATRANECK, "Beiträge zur Æsthetik der
Pflanzenweit," p. 56). The belief in garlic as something sacred appears to have
been very widely spread, since the Druids attributed magic virtues to it;
hence the reverence for the nearly allied leek, which is attached to King
David and so much honoured by the Welsh.
"Tell him I'll knock his leek about his pate
Upon Saint David's Day."--SHAKESPEARE.The magic virtues of garlic were naturally enough also attributed to
onions and leeks, and in a curious Italian work, entitled "Il Libro del
Comando," attributed (falsely) to Cornelius Agrippa, I find the following:--
"Segreto magico d'indovinare, colle cipole, la salute d'una persona lontana. A
magic secret to divine with onions the health of a person far distant. Gather
onions on the Eve of Christmas and put them on an altar, and under every
onion write the name of the persons as to whom one desires to be informed,
ancorche non scrivano, even if they do not write.
"The onion (planted) which sprouts the first will clearly announce that
the person whose name it bears is well.
"And in the same manner we can learn the name of the husband or wife
whom we should choose, and this divination is in use in many cantons of
Germany."
Very much allied to this is the following love charm from an English
gypsy:--
"Take an onion, a tulip, or any root of the kind (i.e. a bulbous root?), and
plant it in a clean pot never used before; and while you plant it repeat the