Countless and sundry traditions have gathered around the mandrake, mandragora or, as it is called in modern nomenclature, briony. Antiquity has conferred upon the simple plant a distinction that the somewhat inadequate physical facts fail to dim although they do not altogether justify. Pliny and other writers make frequent allusion to its potency as a soporific, and in the Book of Genesis (Chapter xxx) the story of Reuben and the mandrakes establishes the antiquity of the plant. "The mandrakes make smell and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits," sings King Solomon.

Brand quotes Cole's "Art of Simples," in referring to the use of the roots of mandrake, or briony, by the mediaeval witches, while its virtues as a narcotic are voiced by Shakespeare when Iago says of Othello:

"... Not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owd'st yesterday."

146 the fabric of dreams

Modern medicine gives it the dignified appellation of Bryonia Alba, and accredits the drug with vexatious, vivid dreams and somnambulism. Sounds rather than colors are attendant upon the dreams of mandrake, or briony; now the chirping of locusts in the hedges, and again it is the roaring of a storm, the pealing of an organ or the swinging harmony of the spheres. The flowers sing, the earth speaks and the woes of humanity cry aloud. Besides these there are strange cravings, a longing for that which never existed even in the soul of a dreamer. So upon the whole, despite its marvels as a producer of sounds and despite its high reputation as a soporific with so mighty a sage as Shakespeare, it is perhaps best for moderns not to build their dreams with mandragora.

Hypericum, Dittany, Hyssop, the male fern, Belladonna, or Solanum, were alike remedies of the moyen age. That the potions derived from these herbs did not necessarily induce dreams of a soothing and comforting nature is obviously a fact. In truth one is inclined to wonder whether the sorcerer may not have used some of these remedies for the strengthening of curses rather than as unmitigated blessings. Wild fan-tastic visions induced by a surreptitiously administered dose of stramonium might readily have fulfilled a witch's imprecation in the mind of a dreamer.

Stramonium, Datura or thornapple was, we are told, a favorite drug with the Druids, and a description of the dreams induced by this remedy corroborates the fact that the Druids were banished for tampering with human life and for the misuse of the so-called black art. The dreams are characterized by visions of ghosts and of voices that seem to come from back of the ears, singing, siren voices that will not be denied. Strange animals seem to run at the dreamer, jumping sideways out of the ground. At times he finds himself growing tall, elongating to twice his own height, and then suddenly he is lying crosswise with half his body cut off. And during all these weird performances there are ghosts, ghosts, ghosts. The gift of strange, unheard-of tongues is also his, and he has written an epic that only he and the ghosts can understand.

The outlaw of East India, the apache of Paris and the hoodlum of San Francisco have a common tie in the use of stramonium for their nefarious work of robbing the unwary; administered as a narcotic, in either food or beverages, it renders the victim drowsy and trustful, then stupidly somnolent. The gypsies also have a weakness for this plant and it is said that the fair dames of Portugal make use of its seeds as a remedy for otherwise unmanageable husbands, thus soothing them into complacent dreams.

Although the plant riots in the woodlots and other neglected corners of North America, it is known among the Indians as the "white man's plant"; tradition associates it with the settlement at Jamestown by giving it the appellation of Jamestown weed, a not altogether improbable connection in view of the regard in which the alkaloid from datura, or stramonium, was held by the physicians of the seventeenth century who favored its use more than the use of morphine, the alkaloid of opium.

Dittany and hyssop are Biblical remedies as well as remedies of the tnoyen age; ancient medicos, however, attribute to these romantic herbs properties that the modern pharmacopoeia denies. Deep stupor follows in their wake, and Hahnemann mentions "slumber full of dreams"; the nature of those dreams, however, is left to the reader's imagination.

The fame of the plant known as Hypericum, or St. John's wort, has come winging down the ages as a preternatural benefit. It was said to avert evil eye, to reveal the presence of witches, and dipped in oil, to be a panacea for every wound. Even nowadays in rural districts the dew that falls on the plant on the twenty-fourth of June, St. John's day, is carefully collected as a remedy for eye troubles. Herring's "Materia Medica" describes the dreams produced by St. John's wort as "visions of spirits and specters with the sensation of being lifted high in the air"; increased intellectual power is furthermore attributed to the dreamer. From this basis of

148 the fabric of dreams scientific material it is simple to picture the possibilities of a dreamer who might find himself borne by spirits far. into the ethereal blue, away from the dreaded evil eye and the machinations of witch and wizard.

Solanum, or belladonna, has held its fascinating, half repulsive mystery through Biblical lore and mediaeval magic to the stern, straight-laced science of to-day. The Bible refers to it as the vine of Sodom, Deuteronomy xxii, 32, although its more recent name of solanum is derived from sotamen, meaning solace or consolation, in that it induces sleep. Its modern portion is belladonna, or atropine. Tanner describes its visions as wild and fantastic, while Herring and Jahr ascribe to the dreams, "merry craziness, dreams of undressing and of walking through the streets undressed. Walks around the churchyard gathering herbs and in his dream converses with his late sister in the churchyard."