The Mandrake, a plant belonging to the same natural order as the deadly nightshade, henbane, and thorn-apple, had in the Middle Ages many mystic properties assigned to it. The roots are often forked, and when either by nature or art they could be supposed to roughly resemble a man it was looked upon as a talisman securing good fortune to its possessor. The belief in the narcotic and stupefying properties of the plant is referred to in Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” in the lines—
“Give me to drink mandragora
That I might sleep out this great gap of time
My Antony is away”—
“Not poppy, not mandragora,
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep.”
The victories of the Maid of Orleans over the English were ascribed to her possession of a mandrake root. Gerarde, writing in the year 1633, says that the root is long and thick, and divided into two or three parts; but as to its resemblance to a man, “it is no otherwise than in the roots of carrots, parsnips and such like forked or divided into two or more parts, which nature taketh no account of. There hath been many ridiculous tales brought up of this plant, whether of old wiues or some runnagate Surgeons or physicke-mongers I know not, but sure some one or more that sought to make themselves famous and skilful aboue others were the first broachers of that error. They adde further, that it is never or very seldome to be found growing naturally but under a gallows.[37] They fable further and affirme that he who would take vp a plant thereof must tie a dog there unto to pull it up, which will giue a great shreeke at the digging vp, otherwise if a man should do it he should surely die in short space after. All of which dreames and old wiues fables you shall from henceforth cast out from your books and memory, knowing this that they are all and euery part of them false and most untrue, for I my selfe and my seruants also have digged up, planted and replanted very many and yet could neuer perceiue shape of man. But the idle drones that have little or nothing to do but to eat and drink have bestowed some of their time in carving the roots of Brionie, which falsifying practice had confirmed the errour amongst the simple and unlearned people who haue taken them upon their report to be the true Mandrakes.”[38] Parkinson in like manner, in his “Theater of Plants,” published in 1640, writes, after describing the plant:—“Those idle forms of the mandrakes which have beene exposed to view publikely both in ours and other lands and countries are utterly deceitful, being the work of cuning knaves, onely to get money by their forgery: do not misdoubt of this relation no more than you would of any other plant set downe in this booke, for it is the plaine truth whereon everyone may relie.” The cry of the mandrake is several times referred to by Shakespeare and others of our poets; thus in “Romeo and Juliet” we get the line—
“Shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth”—
and in the second part of “King Henry VI.” Suffolk exclaims—
“Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake’s groan.”
[37] “It is supposed to be a creature having life, engendered under the earth of some dead person, put to death for murder.”—Thomas Newton, “Herball to the Bible.” [Back]
[38] “Like a man made after supper of a cheese paring; when he was naked he was for all the world like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife.”—Second part of “King Henry IV.,” Act iii. scene 2. [Back]