the Goddess of Love) 'in
spring, and on a Monday, in a grave, and then sprinkled it with milk in
which three field-mice had been drowned. In a month it became more
humanlike than ever. Then he placed it in an oven with vervain, wrapped
it afterwards in a dead man's shroud, and so long as he kept it he never
failed in luck at games or work.'

Then we learn from the same author that a German horse-dealer, of
Augsburg, once lost a horse, and being poor, wandered in despair to an
inn. There some men gave him a mandrake, and on his return home he found
a bag of ducats on the table. His wife, however, did not like the
business, and persuaded the man to return to give back the root to those
from whom he got it. But he could not find the men again, and soon after
the house was burned down, and both horse-dealer and wife perished.

The only suggestion from this story is that the mandrake was supposed to
bring 'devil's luck,' although, if so, it is difficult to understand why
the _erdmanns_ were so carefully preserved from generation to
generation. One German writer, Rist, says that he has seen one more than
a century old, which had been kept in a coffin, on which was a cloth
bearing a picture of a thief on the gallows and a mandrake growing
underneath.

Coles, who wrote The Art of Simpling, in 1656, says the witches use the
mandrake-roots, 'according to some, or, as I rather suppose, the roots
of briony, which simple people take for the true mandrake, and make
thereof an ugly image, by which they represent the person on whom they
intend to exercise their witchcraft.' But their professions must at
times have been even larger, for it is on record that a witch was
executed near Orleans, in France, about 1605, who was charged with
having kept a living mandrake-fiend, having the form of a female ape!

So much for the mandrake, of which, however, a good deal more might be
said. But what has been said serves to establish that it was identical
with the mandragora, and with the mandragoras of the Greeks; that it was
probably also the briony; that superstitions have attached to it in all
countries and from time immemorial, which ascribed to it occult virtues;
that the powers it exercised varied a good deal according to locality
and time, but that two main conceptions have almost universally
prevailed, viz., that it was a stimulant, and a potent instrument in
affairs of the heart.

What, then, is the Soma, or Homa, of the Hindu mytho