{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Custom_and_Myth_Moly_and_Mandragora/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Custom_and_Myth_Moly_and_Mandragora","id":"wikisource_Custom_and_Myth_Moly_and_Mandragora","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Custom_and_Myth/Moly_and_Mandragora","summary":null,"tags":["Subpages"],"text":"MOLY AND MANDRAGORA.\n\n'I have found out a new cure for rheumatism,' said the lady beside whom\nit was my privilege to sit at dinner. 'You carry a potato about in your\npocket!'\n\nSome one has written an amusing account of the behaviour of a man who is\nfinishing a book. He takes his ideas everywhere with him and broods over\nthem, even at dinner, in the pauses of conversation. But here was a lady\nwho kindly contributed to my studies and offered me folklore and\nsurvivals in cultivated Kensington.\n\nMy mind had strayed from the potato cure to the New Zealand habit of\ncarrying a baked yam at night to frighten away ghosts, and to the old\nEnglish belief that a bit of bread kept in the pocket was sovereign\nagainst evil spirits. Why should ghosts dread the food of mortals when\nit is the custom of most races of mortals to feed ancestral ghosts? The\nhuman mind works pretty rapidly, and all this had passed through my brain\nwhile I replied, in tones of curiosity: 'A potato!'\n\n'Yes; but it is not every potato that will do. I heard of the cure in\nthe country, and when we came up to town, and my husband was complaining\nof rheumatism, I told one of the servants to get me a potato for Mr.\nJohnson's rheumatism. \"Yes, ma'am,\" said the man; \"but it must be a\nstolen potato.\" I had forgotten that. Well, one can't ask one's\nservants to steal potatoes. It is easy in the country, where you can\npick one out of anybody's field.' 'And what did you do?' I asked. 'Oh,\nI drove to Covent Garden and ordered a lot of fruit and flowers. While\nthe man was not looking, I stole a potato\u2014a very little one. I don't\nthink there was any harm in it.' 'And did Mr. Johnson try the potato\ncure?' 'Yes, he carried it in his pocket, and now he is quite well. I\ntold the doctor, and he says he knows of the cure, but he dares not\nrecommend it.'\n\nHow oddly superstitions survive! The central idea of this modern folly\nabout the potato is that you must pilfer the root. Let us work the idea\nof the healing or magical herb backwards, from Kensington to European\nfolklore, and thence to classical times, to Homer, and to the Hottentots.\nTurning first to Germany, we note the beliefs, not about the potato, but\nabout another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all roots, in German\nsuperstition, the Alraun, or mandrake, is the most famous. The herb was\nconceived of, in the savage fashion, as a living human person, a kind of\nold witch-wife.\n\nAgain, the root has a human shape. 'If a hereditary thief who has\npreserved his chastity gets hung,' the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered\nmandrake grows up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which he is\nsuspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the magical herb of the Odyssey,\nis 'hard for men to dig.' He who desires to possess a mandrake must stop\nhis ears with wax, so that he may not hear the deathly yells which the\nplant utters as it is being dragged out of the earth. Then before\nsunrise, on a Friday, the amateur goes out with a dog, 'all black,' makes\nthree crosses round the mandrake, loosens the soil about the root, ties\nthe root to the dog's tail, and offers the beast a piece of bread. The\ndog runs at the bread, drags out the mandrake root, and falls dead,\nkilled by the horrible yell of the plant. The root is now taken up,\nwashed with wine, wrapped in silk, laid in a casket, bathed every Friday,\n'and clothed in a little new white smock every new moon.' The mandrake\nacts, if thus considerately treated, as a kind of familiar spirit. 'Every\npiece of coin put to her over night is found doubled in the morning.'\nGipsy folklore, and the folklore of American children, keep this belief\nin doubling deposits. The gipsies use the notion in what they call 'The\nGreat Trick.' Some foolish rustic makes up his money in a parcel which\nhe gives to the gipsy. The latter, after various ceremonies performed,\nreturns the parcel, which is to be buried. The money will be found\ndoubled by a certain date. Of course when the owner unburies the parcel\nhe finds nothing in it but brass buttons. In the same way, and with\npious confidence, the American boy buries a marble in a hollow log,\nuttering the formula, 'What hasn't come here, come! what's here, stay\nhere!' and expects to find all the marbles he has ever lost. Let\nus follow the belief in magical roots into the old Pagan world.\n\nThe ancients knew mandragora and the superstitions connected with\nit very well. Dioscorides mentions mandragorus, or antimelon,\nor dirc\u00e6a, or Circ\u00e6a, and says the Egyptians\ncall it apemoum, and Pythagoras 'anthropomorphon.'\nIn digging the root, Pliny says, 'there are some ceremonies observed,\nfirst they that goe about this worke, look especially to this that the\nwind be not in their face, but blow upon their backs. Then with\nthe point of a sword they draw three circles round about the plant,\nwhich don, they dig it up afterwards with their face unto the west.'\nPliny says nothing of the fetich qualities of the plant, as credited\nin modern and medi\u00e6val Germany, but mentions 'sufficient\nit is with some bodies to cast them into sleep with the smel of mandrago.'\nThis is like Shakespeare's 'poppy and mandragora, and all\nthe drowsy syrups of the world.' Plato and Demosthenes also speak\nof mandragora as a soporific. It is more to the purpose of magic that\nColumella mentions 'the half-human mandragora.' Here we touch the\norigin of the mandrake superstitions. The roots have a kind of fantastic\nresemblance to the human shape; Pliny describes them as being 'of a\nfleshy substance and tender.' Now it is one of the recognised principles\nin magic, that things like each other, however superficially, affect each\nother in a mystic way, and possess identical properties. Thus, in\nMelanesia, according to Mr. Codrington, 'a stone in the shape of a\npig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, was a most valuable find,' because it\nmade pigs prolific, and fertilised bread-fruit trees and yam-plots. In\nScotland, too, 'stones were called by the names of the limbs they\nresembled, as \"eye-stane,\" \"head-stane.\" A patient washed the affected\npart of his body, and rubbed it well with the stone corresponding.' In precisely the same way, the mandrake root, being thought to\nresemble the human body, was credited with human and superhuman powers.\nJosephus mentions a plant 'not easily caught, which slips away\nfrom them that wish to gather it, and never stands still' till certain\nrepulsive rites are performed. These rites cannot well be reported here,\nbut they are quite familiar to Red Indian and to Bushman magic. Another\nway to dig the plant spoken of by Josephus is by aid of the dog, as in\nthe German superstition quoted from Grimm. \u00c6lian also recommends the\nuse of the dog to pluck the herb aglaophotis, which shines at night. When the dog has dragged up the root, and died of terror, his\nbody is to be buried on the spot with religious honours and secret sacred\nrites.\n\nSo much for mandragora, which, like the healing potato, has to be\nacquired stealthily and with peril. Now let us examine the Homeric herb\nmoly. The plant is thus introduced by Homer: In the tenth book of the\n'Odyssey,' Circe has turned Odysseus's men into swine. He sets forth to\nrescue them, trusting only to his sword. The god Hermes meets him, and\noffers him 'a charmed herb,' 'this herb of grace' (\u03c6\u03b1\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03bd\n\u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03bb\u03bf\u03bd) whereby he\nmay subdue the magic wiles of Circe.\n\nThe plant is described by Homer with some minuteness. 'It\nwas black at the root, but the flower was like to milk. \"Moly,\"\nthe gods call it, but it is hard for mortal men to dig, howbeit with\nthe gods all things are possible.' The etymologies given\nof 'moly' are almost as numerous as the etymologists.\nOne derivation, from the old 'Turanian' tongue of Accadia,\nwill be examined later. The Scholiast offers the derivation '\u03bc\u03c9\u03bb\u03c5\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd,\nto make charms of no avail'; but this is exactly like Professor\nBlackie's etymological discovery that Erinys is derived from \u03b5\u03c1\u03b9\u03bd\u03c5\u03b5\u03b9\u03bd:\n'he might as well derive critic from criticise.' The Scholiast adds that moly\ncaused death to the person who dragged it out of the ground. This\nidentification of moly with mandrake is probably based on Homer's remark\nthat moly is 'hard to dig.' The black root and white flower of moly are\nquite unlike the yellow flower and white fleshy root ascribed by Pliny to\nmandrake. Only confusion is caused by regarding the two magical herbs as\nidentical.\n\nBut why are any herbs or roots magical? While some scholars, like De\nGubernatis, seek an explanation in supposed myths about clouds and stars,\nit is enough for our purpose to observe that herbs really have medicinal\nproperties, and that untutored people invariably confound medicine with\nmagic. A plant or root is thought to possess virtue, not only when\nswallowed in powder or decoction, but when carried in the hand. St.\nJohn's wort and rowan berries, like the Homeric moly, still 'make evil\ncharms of none avail;'\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Rowan, ash, and red threed\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Keep the devils from their speed,\n\nsays the Scotch rhyme. Any fanciful resemblance of leaf or flower or\nroot to a portion of the human body, any analogy based on colour, will\ngive a plant reputation for magical virtues. This habit of mind survives\nfrom the savage condition. The Hottentots are great herbalists. Like\nthe Greeks, like the Germans, they expect supernatural aid from plants\nand roots. Mr. Hahn, in his 'Tsui Goam, the Supreme Being of the Khoi\nKhoi' (p. 82), gives the following examples:\u2014\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dapper, in his description of Africa, p. 621, tells us:\u2014'Some of them\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0wear round the neck roots, which they find far inland, in rivers, and\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0being on a journey they light them in a fire or chew them, if they\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0must sleep the night out in the field. They believe that these roots\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0keep off the wild animals. The roots they chew are spit out around\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0the spot where they encamp for the night; and in a similar way if they\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0set the roots alight, they blow the smoke and ashes about, believing\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0that the smell will keep the wild animals off.\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I had often occasion to observe the practice of these superstitious\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0ceremonies, especially when we were in a part of the country where we\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0heard the roaring of the lions, or had the day previously met with the\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0footprints of the king of the beasts.\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Korannas also have these roots as safeguards with them. If a\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Commando (a warlike expedition) goes out, every man will put such\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0roots in his pockets and in the pouch where he keeps his bullets,\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0believing that the arrows or bullets of the enemy have no effect, but\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0that his own bullets will surely kill the enemy. And also before they\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0lie down to sleep, they set these roots alight, and murmur, 'My\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0grandfather's root, bring sleep on the eyes of the lion and leopard\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0and the hyena. Make them blind, that they cannot find us, and cover\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0their noses, that they cannot smell us out.' Also, if they have\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0carried off large booty, or stolen cattle of the enemy, they light\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0these roots and say: 'We thank thee, our grandfather's root, that thou\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0hast given us cattle to eat. Let the enemy sleep, and lead him on the\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0wrong track, that he may not follow us until we have safely escaped.'\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another sort of shrub is called \u0101bib. Herdsmen, especially, carry\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0pieces of its wood as charms, and if cattle or sheep have gone astray,\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0they burn a piece of it in the fire, that the wild animals may not\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0destroy them. And they believe that the cattle remain safe until they\n\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0can be found the next morning.\n\nSchweinfurth found the same belief in magic herbs and roots among the\nBongoes and Niam Niams in 'The Heart of Africa.' The Bongoes believe,\nlike the Homeric Greeks, that 'certain roots ward off the evil influences\nof spirits.' Like the German amateurs of the mandrake, they assert that\n'there is no other resource for obtaining communication with spirits,\nexcept by means of certain roots' (i. 306).\n\nOur position is that the English magical potato, the German mandrake, the\nGreek moly, are all survivals from a condition of mind like that in which\nthe Hottentots still pray to roots.\n\nNow that we have brought mandragora and moly into connection with the\nordinary magical superstitions of savage peoples, let us see what is made\nof the subject by another method. Mr. R. Brown, the learned and\nindustrious author of 'The Great Dionysiak Myth,' has investigated the\ntraditions about the Homeric moly. He first\n'turns to Aryan philology.' Many guesses at the etymology\nof 'moly' have been made. Curtius suggests mollis,\nmolvis, \u03bc\u03c9\u03bb\u03c5-\u03c2, akin to \u03bc\u03b1\u03bb\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2,\n'soft.' This does not suit Mr. Brown, who,\nto begin with, is persuaded that the herb is not a magical herb, sans phrase, like those which the Hottentots use, but that the basis\nof the myth 'is simply the effect of night upon the world of day.'\nNow, as moly is a name in use among the gods, Mr. Brown thinks 'we\nmay fairly examine the hypothesis of a foreign origin of the term.'\nAnyone who holds that certain Greek gods were borrowed from abroad,\nmay be allowed to believe that the gods used foreign words, and, as\nMr. Brown points out, there are foreign elements in various Homeric\nnames of imported articles, peoples, persons, and so forth. Where,\nthen, is a foreign word like moly, which might have reached Homer?\nBy a long process of research, Mr. Brown finds his word in ancient 'Akkadian.'\nFrom Professor Sayce he borrows a reference to Apuleius Barbarus, about\nwhose life nothing is known, and whose date is vague. Apuleius\nBarbarus may have lived about four centuries after our era, and he\nsays that 'wild rue was called moly by the Cappadocians.'\nRue, like rosemary, and indeed like most herbs, has its magical repute,\nand if we supposed that Homer's moly was rue, there would be some\ninterest in the knowledge. Rue was called 'herb of grace'\nin English, holy water was sprinkled with it, and the name is a translation\nof Homer's \u03c6\u03b1\u03c1\u03bc\u03b1\u03ba\u03bf\u03bd \u03b5\u03c3\u03b8\u03bb\u03bf\u03bd.\nPerhaps rue was used in sprinkling, because in pre-Christian times rue\nhad, by itself, power against sprites and powers of evil. Our\nancestors may have thought it as well to combine the old charm of rue\nand the new Christian potency of holy water. Thus there would\nbe a distinct analogy between Homeric moly and English 'herb of\ngrace.'\n\n'Euphrasy and rue' were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes. Pliny\nis very learned about the magical virtues of rue. Just as the stolen\npotato is sovran for rheumatism, so 'rue stolen thriveth the best.' The\nSamoans think that their most valued vegetables were stolen from heaven\nby a Samoan visitor. It is remarkable that rue, according to\nPliny, is killed by the touch of a woman in the same way as, according to\nJosephus, the mandrake is tamed. These passages prove that the\nclassical peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions about women as\nthe Bushmen and Red Indians. Indeed Pliny describes a magical\nmanner of defending the crops from blight, by aid of women, which is\nactually practised in America by the Red Men.\n\nHere, then, are proofs enough that rue was magical outside of Cappadocia.\nBut this is not an argument on Mr. Brown's lines. The Cappadocians\ncalled rue 'moly'; what language, he asks, was spoken by the\nCappadocians? Prof. Sayce (who knows so many tongues) says that 'we know\nnext to nothing of the language of the Cappadocians, or of the Moschi who\nlived in the same locality.' But where Prof. Sayce is, the Hittites, if\nwe may say so respectfully, are not very far off. In this case he thinks\nthe Moschi (though he admits we know next to nothing about it) 'seem to\nhave spoken a language allied to that of the Cappadocians and Hittites.'\nThat is to say, it is not impossible that the language of the Moschi,\nabout which next to nothing is known, may have been allied to that of the\nCappadocians, about which we know next to nothing. All that we do know\nin this case is, that four hundred years after Christ the dwellers in\nCappadocia employed a word 'moly,' which had been Greek for at least\ntwelve hundred years. But Mr. Brown goes on to quote that one of the\nlanguages of which we know next to nothing, Hittite, was 'probably allied\nto Proto-Armenian, and perhaps Lykian, and was above all not Semitic.' In\nany case 'the cuneiform mode of writing was used in Cappadocia at an\nearly period.' As even Professor Sayce declines to give more than a\ntentative reading of a Cappadocian cuneiform inscription, it seems highly\nrash to seek in this direction for an interpretation of a Homeric word\n'moly,' used in Cappadocia very many centuries after the tablets were\nscratched. But, on the evidence of the Babylonian character of the\ncuneiform writing on Cappadocian tablets, Mr. Brown establishes a\nconnection between the people of Accadia (who probably introduced the\ncuneiform style) and the people of Cappadocia. The connection amounts to\nthis. Twelve hundred years after Homer, the inhabitants of Cappadocia\nare said to have called rue 'moly.' At some unknown period,\nthe Accadians appear to have influenced the art of writing in Cappadocia.\nApparently Mr. Brown thinks it not too rash to infer that the Cappadocian\nuse of the word 'moly' is not derived from the Greeks, but\nfrom the Accadians. Now in Accadian, according to Mr. Brown, mul\nmeans 'star.' 'Hence ulu or mulu\n= \u03bc\u03c9\u03bb\u03c5, the mysterious Homerik counter-charm\nto the charms of Kirk\u00ea' (p. 60). Mr. Brown's\ntheory, therefore, is that moly originally meant 'star.'\nCirce is the moon, Odysseus is the sun, and 'what watches over\nthe solar hero at night when exposed to the hostile lunar power, but\nthe stars?' especially the dog-star.\n\nThe truth is, that Homer's moly, whatever plant he meant by\nthe name, is only one of the magical herbs in which most peoples believe\nor have believed. Like the Scottish rowan, or like St. John's\nwort, it is potent against evil influences. People have their\nown simple reasons for believing in these plants, and have not needed\nto bring down their humble, early botany from the clouds and stars.\nWe have to imagine, on the other hand (if we follow Mr. Brown), that\nin some unknown past the Cappadocians turned the Accadian word for a\nstar into a local name of a plant, that this word reached Homer, that\nthe supposed old Accadian myth of the star which watches over the solar\nhero retained its vitality in Greek, and leaving the star clung to the\nherb, that Homer used an 'Akkado-Kappadokian' myth, and\nthat, many ages after, the Accadian star-name in its perverted sense\nof 'rue' survived in Cappadocia. This structure of\nargument is based on tablets which even Prof. Sayce cannot read, and\non possibilities about the alliances of tongues concerning which we\n'know next to nothing.' A method which leaves on one\nside the common, natural, widely-diffused beliefs about the magic virtue\nof herbs (beliefs which we have seen at work in Kensington and in Central\nAfrica), to hunt for moly among stars and undeciphered Kappadokian inscriptions,\nseems a dubious method. We have examined it at full length because\nit is a specimen of an erudite, but, as we think, a mistaken way in\nfolklore. M. Hal\u00e9vy's warnings against the shifting\nmythical theories based on sciences so new as the lore of Assyria and\n'Akkadia' are by no means superfluous. 'Akkadian'\nis rapidly become as ready a key to all locks as 'Aryan'\nwas a few years ago.\n\nFootnotes","title":"Custom and Myth/Moly and Mandragora","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":3381}