MANCHINEEL.—The Manchineel-tree (Hippomane Mancinella) is one of ill repute. Its exhalations are stated to cause certain death to those who sleep beneath its foliage. It abounds in a white milky juice, which is highly poisonous; a single drop causing instant pain if it touches the human skin.
MANDRAKE.—The Atropa Mandragora derives its name from Atropos, the eldest of the all-powerful Parcæ, the arbiters of the life and death of mankind. Clothed in sombre black robes, and holding scissors in her hands, Atropos gathers up the various-sized clues of thread which, as the chief of the inexorable Fates, it is her privilege to cut according to the length of the persons’ lives they represent.——Another name bestowed by the Greeks upon the Mandrake was that of Circeium, derived from Circe, the weird daughter of Sol and Perseis, celebrated for her witchcraft and knowledge of magic and venomous herbs.——From the earliest ages, the Atropa Mandragora appears to have been deemed a mystic plant by the inhabitants of Eastern countries, and to have been regarded by them as stimulating the passions; on which account it is still used for preparing love potions. It is generally believed that the Mandrake is the same plant which the ancient Hebrews called Dudaim; and that these people held it in the highest esteem in Jacob’s time is evident from the notice in Genesis (xxx., 14) of Reuben finding it and carrying the plant to his mother Leah. From the remotest antiquity the Mandrakes were reputed in the East to possess the property of removing sterility; hence Rachel’s desire to obtain from Leah the plants that Reuben had found and given to his mother. It is certain that the Atropa Mandragora was looked upon by the ancients as something more than a mere vegetable, and, in fact, as an embodiment of some unquiet or evil spirit. In an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth or eleventh century, the Mandrake is said to shine in the night like a candle. The Arabs call it the Devil’s Candle, because of this nocturnal shining appearance; and in allusion to this peculiarity, Moore says of it in ‘Lalla Rookh’:—
“Such rank and deadly lustre dwells,
As in those hellish fires that light
The Mandrake’s charnel leaves at night.”
From times long past has come down the legend that the Mandrake is a dweller in the dark places of the earth, and that it thrives under the shadow of the gallows, being nourished by the exhalations or flesh of the criminals executed on the gibbet. Amongst other mysterious attributes, we are told by old writers that the Mandrake has the power of emitting sounds, and that when it is pulled out of the ground, it utters dreadful shrieks and groans, as if possessed of sensibility. Shakspeare thus describes
these terrible cries:—
“Would curses kill, as doth the Mandrake’s groan,
I would invent as bitter-searching terms,
As curst, and harsh, and horrible to hear.”