African negroes bow down in worship before a certain kind of boletus. It
is much to be regretted that Cerdier did not discover for what toxic or
other property it was thus apotheosized.
Similarly, scholars cannot remain satisfied with the assurance that the
Fiji Islanders use toadstools for girdles only, or that the Lapps carried
other varieties upon their persons to enhance their personal attractions.
Some aphrodisiac potency is more likely to have been ascribed to them
in each case, which would account for the care displayed in their
preservation, and justify the suspicion that they were kept ready to hand
as provocatives to lust.
Dr. J. H. Porter is authority for the statement that in one of the Sagas
mention is made of a man bewitched by a Lapland witch, who gave him an
infusion of poisonous mushroom, which set him crazy.
“Lichens,” says De Candolle, “present two classes of properties, which
are developed by different agents, and especially by maceration in
urine.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. v. edition of 1841.)
There is an example of the employment of mushrooms in medicine for the
stoppage of hemorrhages of various kinds, which can be traced back to the
writings of Hippocrates.—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii. p. 143.)
“Some species of mushrooms, notably the _Agaricus volvaceus_ contain
sugar, which can be extracted in crystals, and is capable of undergoing
the vinous fermentation.”—(Encyclopædia Britannica, edition of 1841, vol.
vi. pp. 473, 474, article “Chemistry.”)
No instance of anything resembling the Ur-Orgy of the Siberians has been
described among the Australians, but there is no knowing what further
investigation may discover of the life and mode of thought of the wild
tribes inhabiting that great continent, or island, as the reader pleases.
“The Australians will not eat ‘the common mushroom,’ although they
eat almost all other kinds of fungus.”—(“The Native Tribes of South
Australia,” Adelaide, 1879, received through the kindness of the Royal
Society, Sydney, New South Wales, T. B. Kyngdon, Esq., Secretary.)
“Fungi, however, were used for food. The native truffle,—‘_Mylitta
Australis_,’—a subterranean fungus,—was much sought after by the natives.
When cut, it is in appearance somewhat like unbaked brown bread. I have
seen large pieces, weighing several pounds, and, in some localities,
occasionally a fungus weighing fifty pounds is found.”—(“Aborigines of
Victoria,” A. Brough Smyth, London, 1878, vol. i. p. 209.)
“Mushrooms, called by the Chinese ‘stones’ ears,’ are gathered by
some for the table, and form a part of the vegetable diet of the
priests.”—(Chinese Repository, Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 462.)
But why the diet of priests particularly? May there not be some mythical
precept involved?
(Monbottoes of Africa.) “Mushrooms are also in common use for the
preparation of their sauces.”—(Schweinfurth’s “Heart of Africa,” London,
1878, vol. ii. p. 42.)
“There is a great variety of mushrooms, most of which are eat. Some,
indeed, are poisonous, and unlucky accidents happen frequently.”—(Kemper,
“History of Japan,” in “Pinkerton’s Voyages,” London, 1814, vol. vii. p.
698.)
A. Brough Smyth, “Aborigines of Australia,” p. 132, speaks of the use by
the Australians of “a dry, white species of fungus, to kindle fire with
rapidly.”
Agaric. “It groweth in Fraunce, principally upon trees that bear mast, in
manner of a white mushroom; of a sweet savour; very effectual in Physicke
and used in many Antidotes and sovereigne confections. It groweth upon
the head and top of trees, it shineth in the night, and by the light that
it giveth in the dark men know when and how to gather it.”—(Pliny, lib.
xvi. cap. 8, Holland’s translation.)
“On mange généralement en Russie toutes les espèces de champignons;”
but the “champignon de mouche,” and two other kinds, are excepted.—(See
“Voyages,”—Pallas, Paris, 1793, vol. i. p. 65.)
“The Ostiaks of Siberia make a ‘moxa’ of ’un morceau d’agaric du
bouleau.’”—(Idem, vol. iv. p. 68.)
Bogle enumerates mushrooms among the articles of diet of the Lamas.—(See
Markham’s “Thibet,” London, 1879, p. 105.)
“Mushrooms and fungi of all kinds are eaten by the Bongo of the Upper
Nile region.”—(See “Heart of Africa,” Schweinfurth, London, 1878, vol. i.
pp. 117-122.)
“The Niam-Niams of Central Africa use fungi for foods.”—(Idem, p. 281.)
In a synopsis of the lecture delivered by the explorer Stanley before the
Royal Geographical Society in London, he is represented as referring to
the skill of the Niam-Niam in woodcraft, and the ability with which they
detected the edible fungi from the poisonous.—(See “Tribune,” Chicago,
Ill., June 28, 1890.)
Agaric. Avicenna believed that the white, or “feminine,” was good, the
black, or “masculine,” noxious; it was prescribed for epilepsy, fevers,
sciatica, asthma, pulmonary troubles, etc. (Avicenna, vol. i. p. 278,
improperly numbered in the book as p. 287, a 10, _et seq._) It also
entered into a number of panaceas, such as “Theriaca,” “Theodoricon
Magnum,” “Mithradatum,” and others.
It was a provocative of the menses, according to Avicenna, vol. i. p.
287, a 54.
Thurnberg mentions a plant—“Bupleorum giganteum”—found in Cape Colony,
of which clothing was made, and which was also used for tinder.—(See
Pinkerton’s Voyages, London, 1814, vol. xvi. pp. 21, 22, quoting
Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope.”)
“Toadstool, or rotten fish and willow bark, which are delicacies among
the Kamtchadals,”—(“Russian Discoveries between Asia and America,”
William Coxe, London, 1803, p. 60, quoting Steller’s account of the
Behring Voyage.)
There are some varieties of agaric, notably that of the olive-tree, which
at times emit by night a phosphorescent light. This peculiarity may well
have caused them to be regarded with reverential awe by the ancients.
On the subject of this effulgence, see “Philosophy of Magic,” Eusèbe
Salverte, New York, 1862, vol. i. p. 63.
Pope Clement VII. died of eating too many mushrooms. See Schurig’s
“Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, vol. i. p. 60.
(Tierra del Fuego.) “There is one vegetable production in this country
which is worthy of mention, as it affords a staple article of food to the
natives. It is a globular fungus, of a bright yellow color, and of about
the size of a small apple, which adheres in vast numbers to the bark of
the beech-trees.... It is eaten by the Fuegians in large quantities,
uncooked, and when well chewed has a mucilaginous and slightly sweet
taste, together with a faint odor like that of a mushroom. Excepting a
few berries of a dwarf arbutus, which need hardly be taken into account,
these poor savages never eat any other vegetable food besides this
fungus.”—(Darwin, in “Voyage of Adventure and Beagle,” London, 1839, vol.
iii. pp. 298, 299.)
“These Fuegians appeared to think the excrescences which grow on the
birch-trees, like the gall-nuts on an oak, an estimable dainty.”—(Idem,
vol. i. p. 440; again, vol. ii. p. 185.)
Agaric, or toadstool, employed in medicine “to provoke to vomit” (see
“Most Excellent and Approved Medicines,” London, 1654, pp. 3 and 10);
also given “for provoking the courses” (idem, p. 23); also “to loosen the
body” (idem, p. 36).
To insure conception, the belief was that both man and woman should take
a potion of hare’s rennet in wine,—“then quickly she will be pregnant,
and for meat she shall for some while eat mushrooms.”—(“Saxon Leechdoms,”
vol. i. p. 347.)
The Bannocks and Shoshonees of the Rocky Mountains eat mushrooms,—“the
kind that grows on a cottonwood stump; they know that some kinds
are bad.”—(Interview with the Bannocks and Shoshonees, through the
interpreters, Joe and Charlie Rainey, at Fort Hall, Idaho, 1881.)
The Indians above mentioned had no knowledge of any dance in connection
with the mushroom or fungus.
XII.
THE MUSHROOM IN CONNECTION WITH THE FAIRIES.
In the opinion of the folk of Great Britain and Ireland, possibly of
the Continent as well, the mushroom was intimately connected with the
dwellers in the realm of sprites and fairies, as can be shown in a
moment, and by simple reference.
The lore of the peasantry of those countries is replete with the
uncanniness of the “Fairy Circles,” which modern investigation has shown
to be due to a species of fungus.
“Various theories were current among the peasantry to account for their
existence. Some of them ascribed them to lightning; others to moles or
other animals; and others again to the growth of a species of fungus.
This is the more educated class. But the lower orders implicitly believed
that they were the work of the fairies, and used by them for their
nocturnal dancing. Woe to the poor mortal who ventured near at such
moments. He was seized, forced to dance, soon lost all consciousness,
and was truly in luck if he ever again succeeded in rejoining his
mortal relatives.” A very exhaustive account of these Circles, and the
superstitions in reference to them, is to be found in the third volume of
Brand’s Popular Antiquities, London, 1854, article “Fairy Mythology,” p.
476 _et seq._
“The most clear and satisfactory remarks on the origin of fairy rings
are probably those of Dr. Wollaston, Sec. R. S., printed in the second
part of the “Philosophical Transactions” for 1807.... The cause of their
appearance he ascribes to the growth of certain species of agaric, which
so entirely absorbs all nutriment from the soil beneath that the herbage
is for a while destroyed.”—(Idem, p. 483.)
“In Northumberland, the common people call a certain fungous excrescence,
sometimes found about the roots of old trees, Fairy Butter. After great
rains, and in a certain degree of putrefaction, it is reduced to a
consistency which, together with its color, makes it not unlike butter,
and hence the name.”—(Idem, p. 493.)
Lady Wilde’s work, already quoted, makes no reference to the employment
of either mushrooms or mistletoe by the Irish peasantry.
The mixing, in the popular imagination, of Fairies and Druids, of Fairy
Circles and the Druid Circles, is noticed on p. 505, Brand, art. “Fairy
Mythology.”
Perhaps in all this there may be a vague reminiscence of a former use
of the agaric in potions not very dissimilar to those still to be found
among the Koraks and Tchuktchi. We read that this Witches’ Butter
was associated with sorcery. It was believed in Sweden to have been
“spewed up” by the cat which went with the witch.—(See Brand, “Popular
Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 7, article “Sorcery.”)
“No subject could be more interesting than an inquiry into the origin
of the superstitions of uncivilized tribes.” (“Philosophy of Magic,”
Salverte, vol. i. p. 138.) Salverte remarks that the Fairies “were
supposed to be diminutive, aerial beings, beautiful, lively, and
beneficent in their intercourse with mortals, inhabiting a region called
Fairy Land,—Alf-Heiner,—commonly appearing on earth at intervals,
when they left traces of their visits in beautiful green rings, where
the dewy sward had been trodden in their moon-light dances.... The
investigations of science have traced these rings to a species of
fungus,—_Agaricus oreades_,—but imagination still leads us willingly back
to the traditional appearance of these diminutive beings in the train of
their queen; ... and we also behold her tiny followers dancing away the
midnight hours to the sound of the most enchanting music.”—(Idem, vol. i.
p. 138, footnote.)
There is the following memorandum in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales” (London,
1875, p. 35): “Mem., that pigeon’s-dung and nitre steeped in water will
make the fayry circles; it draws to it the nitre of the air, and it will
never weare out.”
“The mushroom has always been associated with fairy-lore. It is mentioned
as the fairy dining-table (p. 502); while in the list of foods partaken
of by Oberon, we read:—
“ ... with a wine,
Ne’er ravished with a clustered vine,
But gently strained from the side
Of a sweet and dainty bride;
Brought in a daizy chalice, which
He fully quaffed up to bewitch
His blood to height.”
While Robin Goodfellow is represented as singing,—
“When lads and lasses merry be,
With possets and with juncates fine,
Unseene of all the company,
I eat their cakes and sip their wine;
And to make sport,
I fart and snort,
And out the candles I do blow.”
—(Brand, Pop. Ant., London, 1872, pp. 476 _et seq._, articles “Fairy
Mythology,” and “Robin Goodfellow.”)
Herrick describes the food of fairies:—
“ ... with a wine
Ne’er ravished from the flattering vine,
But gentle prest from the soft side
Of the most sweet and dainty bride.”
—(Herrick, “Hesperides;” also quoted in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales,” London,
1875, p. 300.)
The “wine” just described would seem to belong, in all fairness, to the
classification of Ur-Orgies.
A careful search of Shakspeare shows that while perhaps he knew little
directly to our purpose, he still had a knowledge that we may utilize;
for example, he speaks of the “midnight mushroom,” showing that it was an
element of midnight revels of the fairies; he alludes to customs which
certainly suggest that slaves and criminals were in early days buried
beneath dung-heaps as a punishment; and he can be adduced to prove that
the epithet “dunghill” applied to a man, was a most deadly insult; but
let the bard speak for himself,—
“_Prospero._ Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves;
And ye that on the sands with printless feet,
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him,
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green, sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe bites not; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms.”—(Tempest, act v. scene 1.)
“_Ajax._ Thou stool for a witch.”—(Troilus and Cressida, act ii.
scene 1.)
The concordance consulted was that of the Clarkes.
The association of “toadstools” with witchcraft may have been due to
the belief that toads were the constant companions and servants of the
witches and fairies.
Gesner says that witches made use of toads as a charm, “ut vim coeundi,
ni fallor, in viris tollerunt.”—(Brand, Pop. Ant. London, 1872, vol. ii.
page 170, art. “Divination at Weddings.”)
“Un crapaud noir de venin” was to be employed by those seeking favor of
the witches of “Les Bourbonnais,” “La Fascination.”—(J. Tuchmann, in
“Mélusine,” Paris, July, August, 1890.)
May dew was considered a most beneficial application for the skin, but
young maidens while gathering it were careful not “to put foot within the
rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies’ power.”—(“Illustrations
of Shakspeare,” Francis Douce, London, 1807, vol. i. p. 180.)
It would seem that the Saxons in England, at the time of the Norman
Conquest, were fully aware of the deadly effects producible by the
mushroom: “The old woman came back to her, ere she went to bed. ‘I have
found it all out and more. I know where to get scarlet toadstools and
I put the juice in his men’s ale. They are laughing and roaring now,
merry-mad every one of them.’”
The effects of the potion are thus described: “His men were grouped
outside of the gate, chattering like monkeys; the porter and the monks
from the inside entreating them, vainly, to come in and go to bed quietly.
“But they would not. They vowed and swore that a great gulf had
opened all down the road, and that one step more would tumble them in
headlong.... In vain Hereward stormed; assured them that the supposed
abyss was nothing but the gutter; proved the fact by kicking Martin over
it. The men determined to believe their own eyes, and after a while
fell asleep in heaps in the roadside, and lay there till morning, when
they woke, declaring, as did the monks, that they had been bewitched.
They knew not—and happily, the lower orders, both in England and on the
Continent, do not yet know—the potent virtues of that strange fungus
with which Lapps and Samoieds have, it is said, practised wonders for
centuries past.”—(“Hereward, the last of the English,” Charles Kingsley,
New York, 1866, p. 111.)
See also under “Ordeals and Punishments,” and “Insults.”
XIII.
A USE OF POISONOUS FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE MEXICANS.
That some such use of poisonous fungi as has been shown exists among the
tribes of Siberia was made by other nations, would be difficult to prove
in the absence of direct testimony, but many incidental references are
encountered which the reflective mind must consider with care before
rejecting them as absolutely irrelevant in this connection. The Mexicans,
as we learn from Sahagun, were not ignorant of the mushroom, which is
described as the basis of one of their festivals. He says that they ate
the nanacatl, a poisonous fungus which intoxicated as much as wine; after
eating it, they assembled in a plain, where they danced and sang by night
and by day to their fullest desire. This was on the first day, because on
the following day they all wept bitterly, and they said that they were
cleaning themselves and washing their eyes and faces with their tears.[17]
It is true that Sahagun does not describe any specially revolting feature
in this orgy, but it is equally patent that he is describing from
hearsay, and, probably, he was not allowed to know too much. In a second
reference to this fungus, which he now calls teo-nanacatl, he alludes to
the toxic properties, which coincide closely with those of the mushrooms
noted in Siberia and on the northwest coast of America.
“There are some mushrooms in this country which are called teo-nanacatl.
They grow under the grass in the fields and plains; ... they are hurtful
to the throat and intoxicate; ... those who eat them see visions and
feel flutterings in the heart; those who eat many of them are excited to
lust, and even so if they eat but few.”[18]
The proof is not at all conclusive that this intoxication was produced as
among the Siberian and Cape Flattery tribes; but it is very odd that the
Aztecs should eat mushrooms for the same purpose; that they should hold
their dance out in a plain and by night (that is, in a place as remote as
possible from Father Sahagun’s inspection). On the second day, to trust
Sahagun’s explanation, they would appear to have bewailed their behavior
on the first; although it should be remarked here that ceremonial weeping
has not been unknown to the American aborigines, and may, in this case,
have been induced by causes not revealed to the stranger. Lastly, it is
important to note that this poisonous fungus was a violent excitant, a
nervous irritant, and an aphrodisiac.
Another early Spanish observer, also cited by Kingsborough, describes
them in these terms:—
“They had another kind of drunkenness, ... which was with small fungi or
mushrooms, ... which are eaten raw, and, on account of being bitter, they
drink after them or eat with them a little honey of bees, and shortly
after that they see a thousand visions, especially snakes.
“They went raving mad, running about the streets in a wild state
(‘bestial embriaguez’). They called these fungi ‘teo-na-m-catl,’ a word
meaning ‘bread of the gods.’”
This author does not allude to any effect upon the kidneys.[19]
This account can be compared, word for word, with those previously quoted
from the Moqui Indian and from the descriptions of the Ur-Orgies of the
Siberians.
The list of quotations is not yet complete. Tezozomoc, also an author of
repute, relates that at the coronation of Montezuma the Mexicans gave
wild mushrooms to the strangers to eat; that the strangers became drunk,
and thereupon began to dance.[20] All of which is a terse description
of a drunken orgy induced by poisonous mushrooms, but not represented
with the disgusting sequences which would have served to establish a
connection with urine dances.
Diego Duran also gives the particulars of the coronation of this
Montezuma (the second of the name and the one on the throne at the date
of the arrival of Cortés). He says that, after the usual human sacrifices
had been offered up in the temples, all went to eat raw mushrooms, which
caused them to lose their senses and affected them more than if they
had drunk much wine. So utterly beside themselves were they that many
of them killed themselves with their own hands, and by the potency of
those mushrooms they saw visions and had revelations of the future, the
devil speaking to them in their drunkenness.[21] Duran, of course, is not
describing what he _saw_. Doubtless, in that case, his narrative would
have been more animated and, possibly, more to our purpose.
MUSHROOMS AND TOADSTOOLS WORSHIPPED BY AMERICAN INDIANS.
Dorman is authority for the statement that mushrooms were worshipped by
the Indians of the Antilles, and toadstools by those in Virginia,[22] but
for what toxic or therapeutic qualities, real or supposed, he does not
say. The toxic properties of fungi would seem to have been known to the
Algonkins:—
“Paused to rest beneath a pine tree,
From whose branches trail the mosses,
And whose trunk was coated over
With the Dead Man’s Moccasin Leather,
With the fungus white and yellow.”
“Hiawatha,” Henry W. Longfellow, canto ix.
A FORMER USE OF FUNGUS INDICATED IN THE MYTHS OF CEYLON, AND IN THE LAWS
OF THE BRAHMINS.
On the west shore of the Pacific Ocean, aside from the orgies of the
Siberian Shamans, no instance is on record of the use of the mushroom, or
other fungus in religious rites in the present day.
A former use of it is indicated in the Cingalese myths, which teach that
“Chance produced a species of mushroom called mattika[23] or jessathon,
on which they lived for sixty-five thousand years; but being determined
to make an equal division of this, also, they lost it. Luckily for them,
another creeping plant [mistletoe?] called badrilata grew up, on which
they (the Brahmins) fed for thirty-five thousand years, but which they
lost for the same reason as the former ones.”—(“Asiatic Researches,”
Calcutta, 1807, vol. vii. p. 441.)
Among the Brahmins of the main land no such myth is related; but an
English writer says:
“The ancient Hindus held the fungus in such detestation that Yama, a
legislator, supposed now to be the judge of departed spirits, declares:
‘Those who eat mushrooms, whether springing from the ground or growing
on a tree, fully equal in guilt to the slayers of Brahmins and the most
despicable of all deadly sinners.’”—(“Asiatic Researches,” Calcutta,
1795, vol. iv. p. 311.)
Dubois refers to the same subject. “The Brahmins,” he says, “have also
retrenched from their vegetable food, which is the great fund of their
subsistence, all roots which form a head or bulb in the ground, such as
onions,[24] and those also which assume the same shape above ground, like
mushrooms and some others.... Are we to suppose that they had discovered
something unwholesome in the one species and proscribed the other on
account of its fetid smell? This I cannot decide; all the information I
have ever obtained from those among those whom I have consulted on the
reasons of their abstinence from them being that it is customary to avoid
such articles.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 117.)
This inhibition, under such dire penalties, can have but one meaning.
In primitive times the people of India must have been so addicted to
the debauchery induced by potions into the composition of which entered
poisonous fungi and mistletoe (the mushroom “growing on a tree”), and
the effects of such debauchery must have been found so debasing and
pernicious, that the priest-rulers were compelled to employ the same
maledictions which Moses proved of efficacy in withdrawing the children
of Israel from the worship of idols.[25]
XIV.
THE ONION ADORED BY THE EGYPTIANS.
There are examples of the ideas surrounding onions, leeks, garlic, and
bulbous vegetables of different kinds, in many countries.
“The Egyptians likened the whole firmament to an onion with its varied
shells and radiations; and this, together with the aphrodisiacal and
fertilizing properties which this vegetable is almost universally held to
possess, rendered it sacred.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, London, 1883,
vol. i. p. 474.)