food one day, he would find double the amount the following, and so
with anything else. A certain countryman, whom he mentioned as still
living, and who had become very rich, was believed to have owed his
wealth to the fact that he had found one of these mains de gloire." Many
other equally curious stories are told of the mandrake, a plant which, for
its mystic qualities, has perhaps been unsurpassed; and it is no wonder
that it was a dread object of superstitious fear, for Moore, speaking of its
appearance, says:--
"Such rank and deadly lustre dwells,
As in those hellish fires that light
The mandrake's charnel leaves at night."
But these mandrake fables are mostly of foreign extraction and of
very ancient date. Dr. Daubeny, in his "Roman Husbandry," has given a
curious drawing from the Vienna MS. of Dioscorides in the fifth century,
representing the Goddess of Discovery presenting to Dioscorides the
root of the mandrake (of thoroughly human shape), which she has just
pulled up, while the unfortunate dog which had been employed for that
purpose is depicted in the agonies of death.
Basil, writes Lord Bacon in his "Natural History," if exposed too much
to the sun, changes into wild thyme; and a Bavarian piece of folk-lore
tells us that the person who, during an eclipse of the sun, throws an
offering of palm with crumbs on the fire, will never be harmed by the
sun. In Hesse, it is affirmed that with knots tied in willow one may slay a
distant enemy; and according to a belief current in Iceland, the Caltha
palustris, if taken with certain ceremonies and carried about, will
prevent the bearer from having an angry word spoken to him. The
virtues of the dittany were famous as far back as Plutarch's time, and
Gerarde speaks of its marvellous efficacy in drawing forth splinters of
wood, &c., and in the healing of wounds, especially those "made with
envenomed weapons, arrows shot out of guns, and such like."
Then there is the old tradition to the effect that if boughs of oak be
put into the earth, they will bring forth wild vines; and among the
supernatural qualities of the holly recorded by Pliny, we are told that its
flowers cause water to freeze, that it repels lightning, and that if a staff of
its wood be thrown at any animal, even if it fall short of touching it, the
animal will be so subdued by its influence as to return and lie down by
it. Speaking, too, of the virtues of the peony, he thus writes:--"It hath
been long received, and confirmed by divers trials, that the root of the
male peony dried, tied to the necke, doth helpe the falling sickness, and
likewise the incubus, which we call the mare. The cause of both these
diseases, and especially of the epilepsie from the stomach, is the
grossness of the vapours, which rise and enter into the cells of the brain,