to Homer, and to the
Hottentots. Turning first to Germany, we note the beliefs, not about
the potato, but about another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all roots,
in German superstition, the Alraun, or mandrake is the most famous.
The herb was conceived of, in the savage fashion, as a living human
person, a kind of old witch-wife.[157]

Again, the root has a human shape. 'If a hereditary thief who has
preserved his chastity gets hung,' the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered
mandrake grows up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which he
is suspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the magical herb of the
Odyssey, is 'hard for men to dig.' He who desires to possess a
mandrake must stop his ears with wax, so that he may not hear the
deathly yells which the plant utters as it is being dragged out of the
earth. Then before sunrise on a Friday, the amateur goes out with a
dog, 'all black,' makes three crosses round the mandrake, loosens the
soil about the root, ties the root to the dog's tail, and offers the
beast a piece of bread. The dog runs at the bread, drags out the
mandrake root, and falls dead, killed by the horrible yell of the
plant. The root is now taken up, washed with wine, wrapped in silk,
laid in a casket, bathed every Friday, 'and clothed in a little new
white smock every new moon.' The mandrake acts, if thus considerately
treated, as a kind of familiar spirit. 'Every piece of coin put to her
over night is found doubled in the morning.' Gipsy folklore, and the
folklore of American children, keep this belief in doubling deposits.
The gipsies use the notion in what they call 'The Great Trick.' Some
foolish rustic makes up his money in a parcel which he gives to the
gipsy. The latter, after various ceremonies performed, returns the
parcel, which is to be buried. The money will be found doubled by a
certain date. Of course when the owner unburies the parcel he finds
nothing in it but brass buttons. In the same way, and with pious
confidence, the American boy buries a marble in a hollow log, uttering
the formula, 'What hasn't come here, _come!_ what's here, _stay_
here!' and expects to find all the marbles he has ever lost.[158] Let
us follow the belief in magical roots into the old Pagan world.

The ancients knew mandragora and the superstitions connected with it
very well. Dioscorides mentions _mandragorus_, or _antimelon_, or
_dircaea_, or _Circaea_, and says the Egyptians call it _apemoum_, and
Pythagoras 'anthro