Mystical Plants, article in Chamber's Journal 1877
Human cunning and human credulity have dowered with mystery certain plants which are worthy of being considered the most beautiful and passive of created objects. One plant at least has been said to utter shrieks on being torn from the earth, and to have avenged the violence by causing the death of him who removed it. This plant was the mandragora of the poets, the mandrake of Scripture, a species of the Solanaceae or Nightshade tribe; the belief in whose qualities as a sedative or a charm was as old as the days of the childless Rachel. Indigenous to the East, where probably its uses as an anodyne and soporific were early known to the initiated, it may be that in order to enhance the wonder of its effects, and prevent the extirpation of the root by its too common use, miraculous powers were imputed to it, and superstition hedged it round with fabled terrors.
The evil reputation of the plant procured it subsequently the name of Atropa mandragora, by which our oldest botanists distinguish it; a name borrowed from the most terrible of the Fates, Atropos, and since transferred to its relative Atropa belladonna (Dwale, or 'Deadly Nightshade"). So potent and valuable were the medical uses of the root at a time when few anodynes were known, that the ancient Romans made it the subject of a weird ritual, without which they would have deemed it impious to have taken it from the earth. The operator stood with his back to the wind, drew three circles round the root with the point of a sword, poured a libation on the ground, and turning to the west, began to dig it up.
The root of the mandrake, a plant with a taproot, frequently forked, as we see that of the radish, and covered with fibrous rootlets, was easily convertible into a grotesque likeness of the human form. In the times of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, little images made of mandrake roots, called abrunes, were imported in large numbers from Germany, and found a ready sale in England. The fable of the wondrous powers of these vegetable idols was easily accepted by our superstitious ancestors; and the pedlers who travelled about from place to place with cases of them drove a brisk trade. Sir Francis Bacon had them in his mind's eye when he wrote: 'Some plants there are, but rare, that have a mossy or downy root, and likewise that have a number of thread-like beards, as the mandrake, whereof witches and impostors make an ugly image, giving it the form of a face at top of the root, and leave those strings to make a broad beard to the foot.' It is to the credit of the old herbalists Gerard and Turner, that they both essayed, without fear of consequences, to dig up and examine for themselves the dreaded mandrake, and lost no time in publishing the fallacy of the weird stories told of it.
Saturnine and poisonous plants were those most affected by necromancers and witches—plants dwelling in shady groves like that described by Dryden in Oedipus:
Nor tree nor plant
Grows here but what is fed with magic juices,
All full of human souls, that cleave the bark
To dance at midnight by the moon's pale beams;
or on wild heaths, like the potent moonwort, which opened locks and unshoed horses; or amidst solitary churchyards and old ruins, like the deadly nightshade and fetid henbane, hound's-tongue, and digitalis. Plants with dusky or sad-green leaves, and lurid-coloured flowers for the most part, and an ill-favoured soporific scent. Nature herself distinguishes hemlock from all others of the umbelliferous tribe by the pink or purplish spots with which its tall smooth stem is variegated. It grows by hedgerows and in waste places; its large-winged, finely-cut leaves and white umbels of flowers give no indication of its dangerous nature; but its speckled cuticle betrays it, and prevents its being rashly meddled with by rustic herb-gatherers and children.
Wolf's-bane or monk's-hood, a herb of Saturn, sacred to Hecate, and which has since figured in the floral calendar of witchcraft, had its first name from the use the Anglo-Saxons made of the juice, in which they dipped their arrows, and literally kept the wolf from the doors of their wattled huts. It was and is a brave herb for all evil purposes. Its root resembles the tail of a scorpion; its flowers, of lurid purple, have the form of a helmet; features sufficiently significant for those who sought such dangerous simples. The very scent of the flowers on some sensitive persons has produced swooning and loss of sight for several days; others it has deprived of speech; and there are instances on record of persons who have eaten of the root being seized with all the symptoms of mania. Imagine such powers in the hands of a reputed witch, malevolent enough to exercise them for reward or malice, in days when medical science itself was not without faith in magic! Dreadful as are its proved effects, the monk's-hood is a common plant in cottage gardens, where we have seen it flourishing three feet in height, crowned with its handsome spikes of purplish flowers, and little children playing with them.
Black hellebore had also a place in the category of mystical plants; the Romans removed the root with the same ceremonies as were observed in taking up the mandrake, with this distinction, that prayers were humbly offered to Apollo and Aesculapius for permission, and the operator turned to the east instead of to the west, on commencing to dig it up.
No wayside plant is more simple in appearance than the vervain, the 'holy herb' of so many nations. Its pale lilac spike of minute flowers scarcely attracts attention, except from those who know its ancient history and uses. In the sun-worship of the ancient Persians, their magi carried branches of vervain in their hands when approaching the altar. So did the pagan priests of ancient Greece and Rome; and ages subsequently, the Druids in the forest temples of Gaul and Britain. With the Greeks and Romans, it was never absent from their religious rites. The plant was long considered to be good against witchcraft and the bites of venomous creatures; and being under the dominion of Venus, was a great beautifier; and when used in the baths of delicate women, made a fair face and took away freckles. It were 'perhaps well,' as Lord Bacon would say, to notice the agreement between various writers as to the cephalic virtues of the plant, and its remedial efficacy in taking away headache, and the 'pin and web,' or clouds and mists which darken the optic nerve. From medical to magical uses was but a step in those days, sometimes a very short one; and accordingly we find a spray of vervain used as a charm to keep houses and persons from harm, and especially from evil spirits and witchcraft. A relic of the later superstition lingers in the rhyme—
Vervain and dill hinder witches of their will.
St John's wort, by virtue of its dedication to the saint, whose birthday, according to the religious calendar, is the anniversary of the summer solstice, was said to have the power of putting to flight ghosts, demons, and even Satan himself. Jeremy Taylor, in his Dissuasions from Popery, enumerating certain specifics used by the priests to discover the presence of the evil one, adds,' and specially St John's wort, which therefore they call "Devil's Flight,'" which is an anglicised rendering of the old pagan name Fuga Demonium, which Pliny tells us it received from its property of scaring demons; and retained in more modern times in allusion to its supposed virtues in the cure of distraction and melancholy. The Irish peasant at the present day firmly believes in the powers of St John's wort which his Church originally endorsed; and on the vigil of the saint's day, gathers bunches of the bright yellow, starry, almost scintillating flowers, and after sprinkling them with holy water, hangs them at the bed's head, and over the door, with a firm faith in the potency of the plant to preserve him and his household from evil spirits, fairies, and witchcraft. Armed with this floral charm, the wanderer through the most solitary places is as safe as on the fire-lit hill, amidst the youth of a whole village, who are dancing and making merry, and leaping through the fire to Moloch—without an idea that the revels of the sainted summer's night once meant the worship of the sun-god Belus. In days when the occult powers of certain plants were universally believed, it made part of the champion's oath, that he carried not about him any herb, spell, or enchantment, by which he might procure the victory.
Nowadays, the mistletoe generally affects old crab and apple trees, and the boughs of beech and ash; but in so-called Druidical times it appears to have flourished in the oak-groves, which these strange worshippers are said to have made their temples, and under the name of the 'All-heal plant,' was, we are told, severed from these trees with solemn ceremonies. The mystery of its appearance—its aerial place of growth—the pale green antlered branches putting forth their pearly berries in honour, as it were, of the high festival of the winter solstice,' the mother of the nights — probably conduced to render it a miraculous plant. Long after Druidism was but a name, the plant retained its healing and protective properties for the populace, whose teachers strengthened their superstitious reverence for it, by calling it Lignum Sanctae Crucis (wood of the holy cross). Amulets were made of it, and worn round the neck, to defend the wearer from enchantment and other dangers; and in more modern times, as a charm against the falling-sickness and the plague.
The yew, like the oak, was sacred to the Druids. Branches of it were anciently carried by the mourners at funeral processions, and were thrown into the grave before the coffin was lowered. The awe in which it was originally held is traceable in the traditions yet extant of its dangerous and even deadly properties. The beautiful crimson drupes scattered amongst its dark-green linear leaves were reputed poisonous if eaten. In clipping the tree, the greatest care was necessary that the operator might not inhale its dangerous fumes; while to sleep under the shade of its widespread branches, ragged and dusky as a raven's wing, was to risk sickness and even death.
The mountain-ash or rowan-tree has for ages been endowed with mystical properties in Scotland. The custom of carrying sprigs of it in the pocket still obtains in the Isle of Man, where it is extensively grown and cherished for warding off demons, witchcraft, and the evil-eye. There, on St John's Eve, crosses are made of it and hung upon the cattle, and placed over the doors, and in the eaves of barns and houses, to avert the evil influences supposed to be preternaturally active on that night. Not such the reputation of the Lunaria, described by Chaucer, Spenser, and Drayton as one of the most powerful of vegetable charms, and an ingredient in the most subtle spells of night-hags and enchanters. This, the homely 'Honesty' of the cottage garden, the satin flower that our grandmothers cherished, is a plant than which none more apparently harmless is to be found in the floral calendars of herb-men and gardeners. But in days when plants were supposed to bear witness in many instances to their own attributes, when certain features were sought for and believed in, as affording a key to the sympathies and properties of herbs, its round fiat silvery frond shewed it to be under the dominion of the moon, and endowed with magic influences.
After all, a child's hand might have clasped the plants that were under the ban of our ancestors. Amongst the most potent of these herbal talismans were the trefoil and the wood-sorrel, the triple leaves of which symbolised the Trinity, and were on that account noisome to witches. Hence arose the custom in Ireland for the lord of the soil as well as the peasant to wear the shamrock as a preservative from evil influences, a custom annually returned to, without distinction of creed or rank, by all true Irishmen on the anniversary of St Patrick's Day—a saint it will be remembered so pure that all venomous things fled before him. In that country, as in this, there still lingers in shady, rustic places an aged moribund belief in the occult power of plants in the hands of weird women who know how to use them.
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