Scatalogic Rites of All Nations / A dissertation upon the employment of excrementitious remedial agents in religion, therapeutics, divination, witchcraft, love-philters, etc., in all parts of the globe

by John Gregory Bourke

A FORMER USE OF FUNGUS INDICATED IN THE MYTHS OF CEYLON, AND IN THE LAWS OF THE BRAHMINS.

On the west shore of the Pacific Ocean, aside from the orgies of the Siberian Shamans, no instance is on record of the use of the mushroom, or other fungus in religious rites in the present day.

A former use of it is indicated in the Cingalese myths, which teach that “Chance produced a species of mushroom called mattika[23] or jessathon, on which they lived for sixty-five thousand years; but being determined to make an equal division of this, also, they lost it. Luckily for them, another creeping plant [mistletoe?] called badrilata grew up, on which they (the Brahmins) fed for thirty-five thousand years, but which they lost for the same reason as the former ones.”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta, 1807, vol. vii. p. 441.)

Among the Brahmins of the main land no such myth is related; but an English writer says:

“The ancient Hindus held the fungus in such detestation that Yama, a legislator, supposed now to be the judge of departed spirits, declares: ‘Those who eat mushrooms, whether springing from the ground or growing on a tree, fully equal in guilt to the slayers of Brahmins and the most despicable of all deadly sinners.’”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta, 1795, vol. iv. p. 311.)

Dubois refers to the same subject. “The Brahmins,” he says, “have also retrenched from their vegetable food, which is the great fund of their subsistence, all roots which form a head or bulb in the ground, such as onions,[24] and those also which assume the same shape above ground, like mushrooms and some others.... Are we to suppose that they had discovered something unwholesome in the one species and proscribed the other on account of its fetid smell? This I cannot decide; all the information I have ever obtained from those among those whom I have consulted on the reasons of their abstinence from them being that it is customary to avoid such articles.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 117.)

This inhibition, under such dire penalties, can have but one meaning. In primitive times the people of India must have been so addicted to the debauchery induced by potions into the composition of which entered poisonous fungi and mistletoe (the mushroom “growing on a tree”), and the effects of such debauchery must have been found so debasing and pernicious, that the priest-rulers were compelled to employ the same maledictions which Moses proved of efficacy in withdrawing the children of Israel from the worship of idols.[25]

XIV.
THE ONION ADORED BY THE EGYPTIANS.

There are examples of the ideas surrounding onions, leeks, garlic, and bulbous vegetables of different kinds, in many countries.

“The Egyptians likened the whole firmament to an onion with its varied shells and radiations; and this, together with the aphrodisiacal and fertilizing properties which this vegetable is almost universally held to possess, rendered it sacred.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 474.)

“The species of onion which the Egyptians abhorred was the squill or red squill, because consecrated to Typhon; the other kinds they ate indiscriminately.”—(Fosbroke, “Cyclopædia of Antiquities,” London, 1843, vol. ii. p. 109, article “Onion.”)

“At Babylon, beside Memphis, they made an onion their god.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,” London, 1651, p. 376.)

“Beans the Egyptians do not sow at all in their country; neither do they eat those that happen to grow there, nor taste them when dressed. The priests indeed abhor the sight of that pulse, accounting it impure.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 36.)

Among the Romans, “the Flamen Dialis might not ride, or even touch, beans or ivy.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M.A., London, 1890, vol. i. p. 117.)

Pliny mentions the medicinal use of certain bulbs, difficult of identification in our day. “The bulb of Mægara acts as a strong aphrodisiac;” others “aid delivery;” others were used “for the cure of the sting of serpents.” The ancients used to give bulb-seeds “to persons afflicted with madness, in drink.”—(Pliny, Nat. Hist. lib. 20, cap. 40.)

Martial has the following: “XXXIV. Bulbs. If your wife is old and your members languid, bulbs can do no more for you than fill your belly” (edition of London, 1871). A footnote to the above says: “To what particular bulb provocative effects were attributed is unknown.”

Acosta says of the Peruvians that before any of their great ceremonies, “to prepare themselves, all the people fasted two days, during which they did neyther company with their wives nor eate any meate with salt or garlicke, nor drink any chica.”—(Acosta, “Historie of the Indies,” edition of London, 1604, quoted by Lang, “Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” London, 1887, vol. ii. p. 283.)

According to Avicenna, garlic was a provocative of the menses (vol. i. p. 276 a 52).

When a priest of the state religion of China is about to offer a sacrifice he must abstain from cohabitation with his wives and “from eating onions, leeks, or garlic.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 52.)

Juvenal says of the Egyptians: “It is an impious act to break with the teeth a leek or an onion.”—(Satire XV., Rev. Lewis Evans’s translation.)

By the Irish peasantry “garlic is planted in the thatch” to drive away fairies and witches.—(“Medical Mythology of Ireland,” James Mooney, American Philosophical Society, 1887.)

The Danes placed garlic in the cradle of the new-born child to avert the maleficence of witches.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. ii. p. 73, article “Groaning Cakes and Cheese.”)

In rustic England many good folk still believe that the house upon which grows the leek will never be struck by lightning.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. p. 317, article “Rural Charms.”)

Speaking of the Russian dissenters, known as the Raskol, Heard says: “They carried their resistance into all the details of daily life; as matters of conscience, they eschewed the use of tobacco, for ‘the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man’ (Mark vii. 15); of the potato, as being the fruit with which the serpent tempted Eve.”—(“The Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” Albert F. Heard, New York and London, 1887, p. 194.)

The quotation from the New Testament seems applicable to the subject of urine dances, and the interdiction of the use of the potato may mean more than appears on the surface.

Possibly, the intention in Russia was to wean the sectaries away from the use of bulbs or fungi not to the liking of the more thoughtful leaders of the new movement.

“From the earliest times garlic has been an article of diet.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, mentioning Israelites, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans.)

In the time of Shakspeare, “to smell of garlic was accounted a sign of vulgarity.”—(Idem, referring to “Coriolanus,” iv. 6, and “Measure for Measure,” iii. 2.)

“Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads as a supper for Hecate.”—(Idem.)

“According to Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium, in Lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food.”—(Encyc. Brit., article “Garlic.”)

Garlic is “fastened to the caps of children, suspended from the sterns of vessels and from new houses, in the Levant, as, centuries ago, it was hung over the door in the more civilized parts of Europe.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” John Graham Dalyell, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219.)

“The onion was among the earliest cultivated vegetables, and in Egypt was a sort of divinity.”—(American Encyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Onion.”)

“A phallic importance seems to have attached to the onion. Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ edition of 1660, p. 538, speaks of ‘cromnysmantia,’—a kind of divination with onions laid on the altar at Christmas Eve, practised by girls to know when they shall be married and how many husbands they shall have. This appears also to have been a German custom.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. pp. 356, 357.)

Sir Thomas More wrote the following (the original is in Latin; the translation is by Harington):—

“If leeks you leek, but do their smell disleek,

Eat onions, and you shall not smell the leek;

If you of onions would the scent expel,

Eat garlic, that shall drown the onion’s smell;

But against garlic’s savour, at one word,

I know but one receipt. What’s that? Go look.”

The last line is left untranslated; in the original it reads,—

“Aut nihil, aut tantum, tollere merda potest.”

(Harington, “Ajax,” quoting Sir Thomas More.)

XV.
SACRED INTOXICATION AND PHALLISM.

Two fundamental principles underlie the structure of primordial religion,—Intoxication and Phallism. All perversion of the cerebral functions, whether temporary estrangement or permanent alienation, is classified as Obsession; and the pranks and gibberish of the maniac or the idiot are solemnly treasured as outbursts of inspiration.

Where such temporary exaltation can be produced by an herb, bulb, liquid, or food, the knowledge of such excitant is kept as long as possible from the laity; and even after the general diffusion of a more enlightened intelligence has broadened the mental horizon of the devotee, these narcotics and irritants are “sacred,” and the frenzies they induce are “sacred” also.

If the drug in question, whatever it be, possess the additional recommendation of acting upon the genito-urinary organs, and by arousing the sexual energies appeals to the phallic element in the religious nature, the apotheosis of the drug follows as a matter of course, no matter under what expression or symbolism it may be veiled; and as human nature feels the necessity of restraint upon the passions as well as a stimulus thereof, it follows that there are to be noted many cases in which a veneration is paid to plants and drugs which have just the opposite effect,—that is to say that where an aphrodisiac is held among the sacred essences or agents its counter or antagonist is held in almost equal esteem.

Mushroom, mistletoe, rue, ivy, mandrake, hemp, opium, the stramonium of the medicine-man of the Hualpai Indians of Arizona,—all may well be examined in the light of this proposition. Frazer says: “According to primitive notions, all abnormal states—such as intoxication or madness—are caused by the entrance of a spirit into the person; such mental states, in other words, are regarded as forms of possession or inspiration.”—(“The Golden Bough,” vol. i. p. 184.)

“Women who were addicted to Bacchanalian sports presently ran to the ivy and plucked it off, tearing it to pieces with their hands and gnawing it with their mouths.... It was reported ... it hath a spirit that stirreth and moveth to madness, transporting and bereaving of the senses, and that alone by itself it introduceth drunkenness without wine to those that have an easy inclination to enthusiasm.”—(Plutarch, “Morals,” Goodwin’s English translation, Boston, 1870, vol. ii. p. 264.)

An eternal drunkenness was the reward held out to the savage warrior in many regions of the world; the Scandinavians, as well as the Indians of the Pampas, had this belief.—(See “Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 123.)

Speaking of the Ur-Orgy of the Siberians, Dr. J. W. Kingsley comments in the following terms: “I remember being shown this fungus by an Englishman who was returning via the Central Pacific Railway from Siberia. He fully confirmed all that I had heard on the subject, having seen the orgy himself.... Nothing religious in this, you may say; but look at the question a little closer and you will see that these ‘intoxicants,’ which nowadays are used to produce mere excitement or brutal drunkenness, were at first looked upon as media able to raise the mere man up to a level with his gods, and enable him to communicate with them, as was certainly the case with the ‘soma’ of the Hindu ecstatics and the hashich I have seen used by some tribes of Arabs. It would be well worth while trying to ascertain whether the actors in the Ur-Orgy had eaten any particular kind of herb before its commencement, or whether they had any tradition of their ancestors having done so.”—(Personal letter to Captain Bourke, dated Cambridge, England, May, 1888.)

For sacred intoxication among the Finns, see also “Chaldean Magic,” Lenormant, p. 255, where there is a reference to “intoxicating drugs.”

XVI.
AN INQUIRY INTO THE DRUIDICAL USE OF THE MISTLETOE.

But the question at once presents itself, For what reason did the Celtic Druids employ the much venerated mistletoe? This question becomes of deep significance in the light of the learning shed by Godfrey Higgins and General Vallencey upon the derivation of the Druids from Buddhistic or Brahminical origin.

“Ajasson enumerates the following superstitions of ancient Britain, as bearing probable marks of an Oriental origin: ... the ceremonials used in cutting the plants.”—(“Mistletoe,” Pliny, Bohn, lib. 30, cap. 6, footnote.)

That the mistletoe was regarded as a medicine, and a very potent one, is easy enough to show. All the encyclopædias admit that much; but the accounts that have been preserved of the ideas associated with this worship are not complete or satisfactory.

“The mistletoe, which they (the Druids) called ‘all-heal,’ used to cure disease.”—(McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopædia, quoting Stukeley.)

“The British bards and Druids had an extraordinary veneration for the number three. ‘The mistletoe,’ says Vallencey, in his ‘Grammar of the Irish Language,’ ‘was sacred to the Druids, because not only its berries, but its leaves also, grow in clusters of three united to one stock. The Christian Irish held the Seamroy sacred in like manner, because of three leaves united to one stock.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i, p. 109, article “St. Patrick’s Day.”)

“Within recent times the mistletoe has been regarded as a valuable remedy in epilepsy (query, on the principle of similia similibus?) and other diseases, but at present is not employed.... The leaves have been fed to sheep in time of scarcity of other forage (which shows at least that it is edible).”—(Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.)

“Seems to possess no decided medical properties.”—(International Encyclopædia.)

“It is now perhaps impossible to account for the veneration in which it was held and the wonderful qualities which it was supposed to possess.”—(“The Druids,” Rev. Richard Smiddy, Dublin, 1871, p. 90.)

Pliny mentions three varieties. Of these “the hyphar is useful for fattening cattle, if they are hardy enough to withstand the purgative effect it produces at first; the viscum is medicinally of value as an emollient, and in cases of tumors, ulcers, and the like.”

Pliny is also quoted as saying that it was considered of benefit to women in childbirth,—“in conceptum feminarum adjuvare si omnino secum habeant.”[26] Pliny is also authority for the reverence in which the mistletoe growing on the robur (Spanish roble, or evergreen oak) was held by the Druids. The robur, he says, is their sacred tree, and whatever is found growing upon it, they regard as sent from heaven and as the mark of a tree chosen by God.—(Encyclopædia Britannica.)

Brand (“Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. article “Mistletoe”) cites the opinion of various old authors that mistletoe was regarded “as a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other convulsive disorders.... The high veneration in which the Druids were held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak.... The mistletoe of the oak, which is very rare, is vulgarly said to be a cure for wind-ruptures in children; the kind which is found upon the apple is said to be good for fits.”

“The Persians and Masagetæ thought the mistletoe something divine, as well as the Druids.”—(“Antiquities of Cornwall,” 1796, p. 63.)

After telling of the use of this plant among the Druids and their mode of gathering it, Fosbroke adds: “Mistletoe was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, and was supposed to have magical and medicinal properties.”—(Fosbroke, Cyclopædia of Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 1047, article “Mistletoe,” London, 1843.)

Mr. W. Winwood Reade mentions, in his “Veil of Isis” (London, 1861), at page 69, that the missolding or mistletoe of the oak, still called in Wales “all-iach,” or “all-heal,” was the sovereign remedy of the Druids; and at page 71 he adds that a powder from its berries was considered a cure for sterility. He describes the effect of mistletoe as that of a strong purgative.—(Personal letter from Frank Rede Fowke, Esq., South Kensington Museum, London, England, June 18, 1888.)

“The Druids named it Uil-loc or All-Heal, because they said it promoted increase of species or prevented sterility.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 331.)

“We shall probably never hear the whole truth in regard to this ancient religion (Druidism); for, as Mr. Davies says, ‘most of the offensive ceremonies must have been either retrenched or concealed,’ as the Roman laws and edicts had for ages (before the Bardic writings) restrained the more cruel and bloody sacrifices, and at the time of the Bards nothing remained but symbolic rites.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 331.)

The plant (mistletoe) is one of world-wide fame. Masagetæ, Skythians, and the most ancient Persians called it the “Healer,” and Virgil calls it a “branch of gold;” while Charon was dumb in presence of such an augur of coming bliss; it was “the expectancy of all nations, longe post tempore visum, as betokening Sol’s return to earth.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 81.)

Borlase sees much similarity between the Magi and our Druids, and Strabo did the same. “Both carried in their hands, during the celebration of their rites, a bunch of plants; that of the Magi was of course the Hom, called Barsom,—Assyrian and Persepolis sculptures substantiate this. The Hom looks very much like the Mistletoe, and the learned Dr. Stukeley thinks that this parasite is meant as being on the tree mentioned by Isaiah, vi. 13.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 43.)

“But yet it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall be eaten; as a teil tree and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.”—(Isaiah, vi. 13.)

“The mistletoe wreath marks in one sense Venus’s temple, for any girl may be kissed if caught under its sprays,—a practice, though modified, which recalls to us that horrid one mentioned by Herodotus, where all women were for once at least the property of the man who sought them in Mylitta’s temple.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883, vol. i. p. 91.)

The following are Frazer’s views on this subject: “The mistletoe was viewed as the seat of life of the oak. The conception of the mistletoe as the seat of life of the oak would naturally be suggested to primitive people by the observation that while the oak is deciduous, the mistletoe which grows on it is evergreen. In winter, the sight of its fresh foliage among the bare branches must have been hailed by the worshippers of the tree as a sign that the divine life which had ceased to animate the branches yet survived in the mistletoe, as the heart of the sleeper still beats when his body is motionless. Hence, when the god had to be killed, when the sacred tree had to be burnt, it was necessary to begin by breaking off the mistletoe, for so long as the mistletoe remained intact, the oak (so people thought) was invulnerable,—all the blows of their knives and axes would glance harmless from its surface. But once tear from the oak its sacred heart, the mistletoe, and the tree nodded to its fall.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, vol. ii. pp. 295, 296.)

This train of reasoning would be irrefutable, as it is most logical, were we in a position to be able to say that the excision of the fungus was followed by the felling of the tree; but, unfortunately, that is just what we are not able to determine. As a surmise, there is no impropriety in believing that such excision may have marked the oak for destruction at some future day; but there is no authority that we can produce at this time to justify anything more than a surmise in the premises. That the sacred character of the oak was due to the properties discovered in the mistletoe is quite likely in view of all the facts already presented.

O’Curry, who appears to have known all that was to be learned on the subject of Druidism, admits that the world is in possession of very little that is reliable; he inclines to the view that Druidism was of Eastern origin. (See “Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish,” Eugene O’Curry, London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and New York, 1873.) He contends that “the Sacred Wand” of the Druids was made of the yew, and not of the oak or mistletoe.—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 194.)

Vallencey did not believe that the Persians were acquainted with the mistletoe; at least, he could not find any name for it in Persian.—(See Major Charles Vallencey, “Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis,” Dublin, 1774, vol. ii. p. 433.)

“In Cambodia, when a man perceives a certain parasitic plant growing on a tamarind-tree, he dresses in white and taking a new earthen pot climbs the tree at mid-day. He puts the plant in the pot and lets the whole fall to the ground. Then in the pot he makes a decoction which renders him invulnerable.”—(Aymonier, “Notes sur les Coûtumes, etc., des Cambodgiens,” quoted in “The Golden Bough,” vol. ii. p. 286, footnote.)

“It was that only which is found upon the oak which the Druids employed; and being a parasitic plant, the seeds of which are not sown by the hand of man, it was well adapted for the purposes of superstition.”—(“Philosophy of Magic,” Salverte, vol. i. p. 229.)

Much testimony may be adduced to show that the mistletoe was valued as an aphrodisiac, as conducive to fertility, as sacred to love, and, in general terms, an excitant of the genito-urinary organs, which is the very purpose for which the Siberian and North American medicine-men employed the fungus, and perhaps the very reason for which both fungus and mistletoe were excluded from the Brahminical dietary.

Brand shows that mistletoe “was not unknown in the religious ceremonies of the ancients, particularly the Greeks,” and that the use of it, savoring strongly of Druidism, prevailed at the Christmas service of York Cathedral down to our own day.—(See in Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1849, vol. i. p. 524.)

The merry pastime of kissing pretty girls under the Christmas mistletoe seems to have a phallic derivation. “This very old custom has descended from feudal times, but its real origin and significance are lost.” (“Appleton’s American Encyclopædia.”) Brand shows that the young men observed the custom of “plucking off a berry at each kiss.” (Vol. i. p. 524.) Perhaps, in former times, they were required to swallow the berry. The deductions of a recent writer merit attention:—

“The mistletoe was dedicated to Mylitta, in whose worship every woman must once in her life submit to the sexual embrace of a stranger. When she concluded to perform this religious duty in honor of her acknowledged deity, she repaired to the temple and placed herself under the mistletoe, thus offering herself to the first stranger who solicited her favors. The modern modification of the ceremony is found in the practice among some people of hanging the mistletoe, at certain seasons of the year, in the parlor or over the door, when the woman entering that door, or found standing under the wreath, must kiss the first man who approaches her and solicits the privilege.” (“Phallic Worship,” Robert Allen Campbell, C. E., St. Louis, Mo., 1888, p. 202.)

A writer in “Notes and Queries” (Jan. 3, 1852, vol. v. p. 13) quotes Nares to the effect that “the maid who was not kissed under it at Christmas would not be married in that year.” But another writer (Feb. 28, 1852, same volume) points out that “we should refer the custom to the Scandinavian mythology, wherein the mistletoe is dedicated to Friga, the Venus of the Scandinavians.”[27]

Grimm speaks of Paltar (Balder) being killed by the stroke of a piece of mistletine, but ventures upon no explanation.—(“Teutonic Mythology,” vol. i. p. 220, article “Paltar.”)

“Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis.) Tradition averred that the fatal branch was that ‘golden bough’ which at the Sibyl’s bidding, Æneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead.”—(“The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 4, article “The Arician Grove.”)

“A plant associated with the death of one of their greatest and best-beloved gods must have been supremely sacred to all of Teutonic blood; and yet this opinion of its sacredness was shared by the Celtic nations.” (Grimm, “Teutonic Mythology,” vol. iii. p. 1205.) “Our herbals divide mistletoe into those of the oak, hazel, and pear tree; and none of them must be let touch the ground.”—(Idem, p. 1207.)

Another writer (“Notes and Queries,” 2d series, vol. iv. p. 506) says: “As it was supposed to possess the mystic power of giving fertility and a power to preserve from poison, the pleasant ceremony of kissing under the mistletoe may have some reference to this belief.”

In vol. iii. p. 343, it is stated: “A Worcestershire farmer was accustomed to take down his bough of mistletoe and give it to the cow that calved first after New Year’s Day. This was supposed to insure good luck to the whole dairy. Cows, it may be remarked, as well as sheep, will devour mistletoe with avidity.”

And still another (in 2d series, vol. vi. p. 523) recognizes that “the mistletoe was sacred to the heathen Goddess of Beauty,” and “it is certain that the mistletoe, though it formerly had a place among the evergreens employed in the Christian decorations, was subsequently excluded.” This exclusion he accounts for thus: “It is also certain that, in the earlier ages of the church, many festivities not at all tending to edification (the practice of mutual kissing among the rest) had gradually crept in and established themselves, so that, at a certain part of the service, ‘statim clerus, ipseque populus per basia blande sese invicim oscularetur.’”

This author cites Hone, Hook, Moroni, Bescherelle, Ducange, and others. Finally (in the 3d series, vol. vii. p. 76), an inquirer asks, “How came it in Shakspeare’s time to be considered ‘baleful,’ and, in our days, the most mirth-provoking of plants?” And still another correspondent, in the same series (vol. vii. p. 237), claims that “mistletoe will produce abortion in the female of the deer or dog.”

“Sir John Ollbach, in his dissertation concerning mistletoe, which he strongly recommends as a medicine very likely to subdue not only the epilepsy, but all other convulsive disorders, observes that this beautiful plant must have been designed by the Almighty for other and more noble purposes than barely to feed thrushes or to be hung up superstitiously in houses to drive away evil spirits. He tells (p. 12) that ‘the high veneration in which the Druids were anciently held by the people of all ranks proceeded in a great measure from the wonderful cures they wrought by means of the mistletoe of the oak; this tree being sacred to them, but none so that had not the mistletoe upon them.’ Mr. F. Williams, dating from Pembroke, Jan. 28, 1791, tells us, in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for February that year, that ‘“Guidhel,” mistletoe, a magical shrub, appeared to be the forbidden tree in the middle of the trees of Eden; for, in the Edda, the mistletoe is said to be Balder’s death, who yet perished through blindness and a woman.’”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. i. p. 519, article “Evergreen-decking at Christmas.”)