of throwing an onion after a bride is doubtless well
known. It had the same origin as the old Scotch custom of throwing a
besom after a cow on its way to market, to avert the evil-eye, and
insure luck.

The idea of bad dreams being associated with the onion seems due to the
old herbalists. At all events, Coghan wrote in 1596: 'Being eaten raw,
they engender all humourous and contemptible putrefactions in the
stomacke, and cause fearful dreams, and, if they be much used, they
snarre the memory and trouble the understanding.'

Old Gerarde had no opinion of the medical properties of the tribe. Of
both leeks and garlic he wrote most disparagingly, as 'yielding to the
body no nourishment at all,' but 'ingendereth naughty and sharpe bloud.'

Some of the other old herbalists treat it more kindly, and some ascribe
almost every virtue to garlic and onion. Garlic came to be known as
'Poor Man's Treacle,' and in some old works is thus often described. But
the word treacle here has no reference to molasses, and is probably
derived from the Greek _theriakos_, meaning venomous, for garlic was
regarded as an antidote against poison, and as a remedy for the plague.

Pliny long ago wrote of garlic as a remedy for many of the mental and
physical ailments of the country people. It was used by the Romans to
drive away snakes; and the Romans seem to have adopted this idea from
the ancient Greeks. It was recommended by one old English writer as a
capital thing with which to frighten away birds from fruit-trees; and
has been recently recommended, in solution, as the best preservative of
picture-frames from the defilement of flies. Bacon gravely tells of a
man who lived for several days on the smell of onions and garlic alone;
and there was an old belief that the garlic could extract all the power
from a loadstone.

The belief that the eating of onions will acclimatize a traveller seems
not uncommon in Eastern countries. Thus, in Burnes' Travels into Bokhara
it is recorded that at Peshawur 'Moollah Nujieb suggested that we should
eat onions in all the countries we visited, as it is a popular belief
that a foreigner becomes acclimated from the use of that vegetable.'

And in Morier's Travels in Persia it is said: 'Those who seek for
sulphur, which is found at the highest accessible point of the mountain
of Damarvend, go through a course of training previous to the
undertaking, and fortify themselves by eating much of garlic and
onions.'