RANDOLPH. — MANDRAGORA IN FOLK-LORE AND MEDICINE. 499 



still other features,* which appear to have been derived independently 

 from the same source. Finally, from northern Europe this group of 

 mandragora stories spread back to the Orient, and the custom of digging 

 and using mandragora there to-day in the mediaeval fashion is the re- 

 sult of this backward movement.f 



In the preceding pages I have attempted to give a general idea of the 

 nature of the superstitions which have been connected with the mandra- 



I am not able from my study of tlie subject to reach any conclusion more definite 

 than tliat tliey came to northern Kurope from the Greeks and Romans rather than 

 directly from tiie Kast. As to wiietiier they passed north from the Greeks or tlie 

 llomans, I am not ready to venture an opinion. Ascherson's article in the Sitz- 

 ungsber. d. Gcsell. f. naturf. Freunde, Berlin, 1890, pp. 59-82, in which he contends 

 that certain beliefs about the mandragora formerly held in Greece passed to Ger- 

 many (in connection with another plant, Scopolin carnio/ica, Jacq.) by way of 

 Dacia, Galicia, and southern Russia, shows how the particular stories which we 

 are dealing with m/y/it have gone north from the Greeks. Doubtless there were 

 also other channels. Further investigation may make more definite conclusions 

 possible. 



* The Prometheus element and the fetich idea. By " the same source " I mean 

 by way of the Greeks and Romans. 



t We know that accounts of the medicinal uses of the plant went from west to 

 east ; witness Serapion's chapter on mandragora, based almost wliolly on Greek 

 sources (see p. 517 below). What more natural than that the superstitions now 

 at length connected with it should have passed along with these accounts of 

 its uses in medicine ? Medicine and magic went hand in hand from the earliest 

 times. 



Wetzstcin (in a letter to Ascherson, p. 800 f.) and Vetli (p 200 f.) attempt to 

 show that the mandragora story (just how much of it I cannot make out from 

 their articles) originated in Persia, and spread from tliere to neighboring countries. 

 Arguments for this view are: (1) that jLLuvSpaySpas may be derived from merdoiu 

 (jia, "man-like plant," a Persian name for the mandragora; (2) that another Per- 

 sian name for it is secjken, " dog-dug" ; and (3) that the plant is dug with the same 

 ceremonies and used for the same purposes in Persia to-day as it was in northern 

 Europe in the middle ages. But the derivation of fj.av5pay6pas from merdom gia 

 (which, if proven, would show tliat superstitions about the plant were current in 

 Persia in very early times, for which there is now no evidence) is by no means 

 certain ; and as regards the name sefjkf-n and the existence of ceremonies and be- 

 liefs in Persia to-day similar to those of mediaeval Europe, there is no more reason 

 to believe tiuit they passed from Persia to the West than that tlie opposite move- 

 ment took place. 



In attempting to show the Eastern origin of portions of the mandragora supersti- 

 tion, previous writers have often, it seems to me, asserted too positively that this 

 plant was believed by Oriental people.s from very ancient times to be an aphrodisiac 

 and a promoter of fecundity, citing the passages in which tlie word occurs in tlie Old 

 Testament as proof of this. As I have said below (p. 504), there is no positive proof 



