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Updated: June 12, 2025
Another old authority informs us that he "Who would take it up, in common prudence should tie a dog to it to accomplish his purpose, as if he did it himself, he would shortly die." Moore gives this warning: "The phantom shapes oh, touch them not That appal the maiden's sight, Look in the fleshy mandrake's stem, That shrieks when plucked at night."
For the same reason as that suggested by Calmet, Columella calls the mandrake semihomo: "Quamvis semihominis vesano gramine fœta Mandragoræ pariat flores." "Let it not vex thee if thy teeming field The half-man Mandrake's madd'ning seed should yield;"
To collect drift-wood is like botanizing, and one soon learns to recognize the prevailing species, and to look with pleased eagerness for new. It is a tragic botany indeed, where, as in enchanted gardens, every specimen has a voice, and, as you take each from the ground, you expect from it a cry like the mandrake's. And from what a garden it comes!
In darkness there to house unknown, Far underground, Pierced by no sound Save such as live in Fancy's ear alone, That listens for the uptorn mandrake's parting groan! I should, perhaps, be a happier at all events a more useful man if my mind were otherwise constituted.
Many other equally curious stories are told of the mandrake, a plant which, for its mystic qualities, has perhaps been unsurpassed; and it is no wonder that it was a dread object of superstitious fear, for Moore, speaking of its appearance, says: "Such rank and deadly lustre dwells, As in those hellish fires that light The mandrake's charnel leaves at night."
Here is a piece of wild and ghostly poetry that is well worth digging out of the Duke of Newcastle's Humorous Lovers: At curfew-time, and at the dead of night, I will appear, thy conscious soul to fright, Make signs, and beckon thee my ghost to follow To sadder groves, and churchyards, where we'll hollo To darker caves and solitary woods, To fatal whirlpools and consuming floods; I'll tempt thee to pass by the unlucky ewe, Blasted with cursèd droppings of mildew; Under an oak, that ne'er bore leaf, my moans Shall there be told thee by the mandrake's groans; The winds shall sighing tell thy cruelty, And how thy want of love did murder me; And when the cock shall crow, and day grow near, Then in a flash of fire I'll disappear.
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