The persuasion was, moreover, included amongst the Vulgar Errors gravely combated by Sir Thomas Browne.
Mandragora, then, is the most ancient and the most widely famous of all magic herbs; and the old conjecture is at least a plausible one that from its exclusive possession were derived the evil powers employed to the detriment of her wind-borne guests by the inhospitable daughter of Perse.
Moly, on the other hand, must be sought for amongst the herbaceous antidotes of fable. Perhaps the best known of these is the plant repugnant to the fine senses of Horace, and equally abominable to the nostrils of Elizabethan gallants. The name of garlic in Sanskrit signifies ‘slayer of monsters.’ Juvenal ridiculed the Egyptians for paying it reverence as a divinity.
Porrum et cepe nefas violare ac frangere morsu.
O sanctas gentes, quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis
Numina!
The Eddic valkyr, Sigurdrifa, sang of its unassailable virtue. As a sure preservative from witchcraft it was, by mediæval Teutons, infused in the drink of cattle and horses, hung up in lonely shepherds’ huts, and buried under thresholds. It was laid on beds against nightmare: planted on cottage roofs to keep off lightning: it cured the poisoned bites of reptiles: it was eaten to avert the evil effects of digging hellebore; while, in Cuba, immunity from jaundice was secured by wearing, during thirteen days, a collar consisting of thirteen cloves of garlic, and throwing it away at a cross-road, without looking behind, at midnight on the expiration of that term. The occult properties of this savoury root originated, no doubt, as M. Hehn conceives,[[308]] in its pungent taste and smell. Substances strongly impressive to the senses are apt to acquire the reputation of being distasteful to ‘spirits of vile sort.’ Witness sulphur, employed from of old, in ceremonial purification. But this may have been owing to its association, through the ‘sulphurous’ smell of ozone, with the sacred thunder-bolt.
[308]. Wanderings of Plants, p. 158.
All the magic faculties of garlic, it may be remarked, are directed to beneficent purposes; whereas those of the mandrake (regarded as an herb, not as an idol) are purely maleficent. Later folk-lore, however, has not brought them into direct competition. Each is thought of as supreme in its own line. Only in the Odyssey (on the supposition here adopted) they were permitted to meet, with the result of signal defeat for the powers of evil.
Thus we see that the identification of moly with garlic is countenanced by whatever scraps of botanical evidence are at hand, fortified by a constant local tradition, no less than by the fantastic prescriptions of superstitious popular observance. The difficulty or peril of uprooting, which made the prophylactic plant obtained by Hermes all but unattainable to mortals, is a common feature in vegetable mythology. It figures as the price to be paid for something rarely precious, enhancing its value and at the same time affixing a scarcely tolerable penalty to its possession. It belonged, for instance, in varying degrees, to hellebore and mistletoe, as well as to mandragora. With the last it most likely originated, and from it was transferred by Homer, in the exercise of his poetical licence, to moly.