HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



123 



THE HISTORY OE CULTIVATED VEGE- 

 TABLES. 

 By H. G. Glasspoole. 

 No. II.— The Onion. 



*' Wel loved he garlic, onions and letics.'' 



Chatjcbb. 



THE various kinds of onions, garlic, and leeks, 

 are called alliaceous plants, and were formerly 

 placed by the older botanists under the natural order 

 of the Asphodeliese, but are now included in the 

 LiliacejE, or Lily tribe. The native country of the 

 jiarden onion {Allium Cepci) is not known. Dr. 

 Kitto, in his " Cyclopsedia of Biblical Literature," 

 thinks that some region of Persia may have first 

 produced it in its wild state, as many species of the 

 Allium arc to be found in the moutainous chain which 

 extends from the Caspian to Cashmere, and likewise 

 in the Himalayan mountains. There is a tradition 

 in the East that when Satan stepped out of the 

 Garden of Eden after the Eall of Man, onions sprang 

 up from the spot where he placed his right foot, 

 and garlic from that which his left foot touched. Be 

 this as it may, there is no doubt of its great antiquity, 

 since there is evidence to show that this bulb was 

 known and esteemed in Egypt 2,000 years before 

 the birth of Christ, for Herodotus informs us that 

 in his time there was an inscription on the Great 

 Pyramid stating that a sum amounting to 1,600 

 talents for this vegetable whichhad been consumed by 

 the workmen during the progress of its erection. One 

 of the complaints that the Israelites made to Moses 

 in the wilderness was that of being deprived of 

 the onions, leeks, and garlic of Egypt. 



It has been said by some authors that the onion 

 was worshipped as a god by the Egyptians, and 

 Pliny, in his " Natural History," writes thus on the 

 subject :— " Where, by the way, I cannot overpass 

 the foolish superstition of the Egyptians, who used 

 to swear by garlic and onions, calling them to wit- 

 ness in taking their oaths, as if they were no less 

 than some god." Juvenal in like manner ridicules 

 the Egyptians for their superstitious veneration of 

 the onion (Sat. xv. 9). 



" 'Tis mortal sin an onion to devour ; 

 Each clove of garlic is a sacred power : 

 Religious nations sure, and blest abodes. 

 Where ev'ry orchard is o'errun with gods." 



Dr. Kitto remarks that this must be an exaggerated 

 statement, as it is unlikely that the Israelites should 

 have been allowed to regale themselves upon what 

 was considered too sacred for, or forbidden to, their 

 task -masters. It is probable, as suggested by Dr. 

 Harris, that the priests ^oiily refrained from what 

 was freely partaken of by the people. This may be 

 observed in the present day among the Brahmins 

 of India. It has also been supposed that some 



particular kind of onion may have been held sacred 

 from its utility as a medicine, as the sea onion or 

 squill {Scilla maritmd), which grows in great 

 abundance on the seacoast in the neighbourhood of 

 Pelusium, whose inhabitants are said by Lucian to 

 have especially worshipped the onion. But it is 

 evident that the Israelites in the desert did not long 

 for this acid bulb. 



The onion was well known to the Greeks and 

 Romans. It is said that Pythagoras, the great 

 philosopher and traveller, who lived in the sixth 

 centary B.C., wrote a treatise on the onion. Theo- 

 phrastus, who died in his 107th year, complaining of 

 the shortness of life, wrote on the same subject 

 about 200 years before the Christian era. Pliny 

 mentions all the countries from whence the Greeks 

 and Romans procured the different varieties of 

 onion, but states that he could not discover that 

 they ever grew wild. The different kinds were 

 named from the places which produced them, and 

 among these the Cnidian onion was considered 

 the mildest, and those from Cyprus drew the most 

 tears. 



Perhaps from Italy it may have been distributed 

 throughout Europe, in almost every country of 

 which it has been cultivated from time immemorial. 

 We have no record when the onion was introduced 

 into this country ; it may have been brought by the 

 Romans, or introduced at a later period from the 

 Continent by the monks. The earliest mention of 

 them that T can find are in the lines at the head of 

 this paper from Chaucer's Prologue (v. 636), who 

 lived about 1340, in the reign of Edward III. 

 Gerard, 1597, writes thus on the subject :—" The 

 onion being eaten, yea though it be boiled, causeth 

 headach, hurteth the eies and maketh a man dim- 

 sighted, dulleth the senses and provoketh over- 

 much sleep, especially being eaten rawe." He adds, 

 "Being rawe they nourish not at all, and but a little 

 though they be boiled." In Donne's " Hort. Can- 

 tabrigiensis" it is stated that the Spanish onion 

 was brought into this country about 1596. 



In a curious old poem, entitled " The Hog hath 

 Lost his Peari," published in 1614, occur the fol- 

 lowing lines : — 



" And you that delight in trulls and muiions. 

 Come buy my four ropes of hard St. Thomas's onions." 



"Buy my rope of onions, white St. Thomas's 

 onions," was one of the cries of London in the 

 seventeenth century. (See 1^016$ and Queries, 

 vol. iii. series i.) 



Shakespeare notices their property of drawing 

 tears in " Taming of the Shrew," which play is sup- 

 posed to have been published about 1625, where he 

 says : — 



" If the boy have not a woman's gift 

 To rain a shower of commanded tears, 

 An onion will do well." 



G 2 



