THE DEVIL'S PLANTS 113 



It is said that the witch-doctors made little idols 

 of the roots, which were consulted as oracles, and 

 their repute was such that they were manufactured 

 in great numbers and sold in cases. 



According to Pliny, the mandrake was sometimes 

 shaped like a man, at others like a woman: the 

 male was white and the female black. 



From the earliest ages the Atropa mandragora 

 seems to have been regarded as a mystic plant by 

 the Eastern peoples, and thought by them to 

 stimulate 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 passage in Genesis (xxx. 14) 

 of Reuben finding it, and carrying the plant to his 

 mother Leah. From the very earliest times in the 

 East, the mandrakes were reputed to possess the 

 power of removing sterility; hence Rachel's desire 

 to obtain from Leah, the plants that Reuben had 

 found and given to his mother. 



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 called it the 

 " Devil's Candle," because of this nocturnal shining 

 appearance, and in allusion to this peculiarity 

 Moore speaks 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." 



T^he Elder has always been associated in plant lore 

 and legend with all that was evil, and there is perhaps 



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