Our position is that the English magical potato, the German mandrake, the Greek moly, are all survivals from a condition of mind like that in which the Hottentots still pray to roots.

Now that we have brought mandragora and moly into connection with the ordinary magical superstitions of savage peoples, let us see what is made of the subject by another method.  Mr. R. Brown, the learned and industrious author of ‘The Great Dionysiak Myth,’ has investigated the traditions about the Homeric moly.  He first {151} ’turns to Aryan philology.’  Many guesses at the etymology of ‘moly’ have been made.  Curtius suggests [Greek], akin to [Greek], ‘soft.’  This does not suit Mr. Brown, who, to begin with, is persuaded that the herb is not a magical herb, sans phrase, like those which the Hottentots use, but that the basis of the myth ’is simply the effect of night upon the world of day.’  Now, as moly is a name in use among the gods, Mr. Brown thinks ’we may fairly examine the hypothesis of a foreign origin of the term.’  Anyone who holds that certain Greek gods were borrowed from abroad, may be allowed to believe that the gods used foreign words, and, as Mr. Brown points out, there are foreign elements in various Homeric names of imported articles, peoples, persons, and so forth.  Where, then, is a foreign word like moly, which might have reached Homer?  By a long process of research, Mr. Brown finds his word in ancient ‘Akkadian.’  From Professor Sayce he borrows a reference to Apuleius Barbarus, about whose life nothing is known, and whose date is vague.  Apuleius Barbarus may have lived about four centuries after our era, and he says that ’wild rue was called moly by the Cappadocians.’  Rue, like rosemary, and indeed like most herbs, has its magical repute, and if we supposed that Homer’s moly was rue, there would be some interest in the knowledge.  Rue was called ‘herb of grace’ in English, holy water was sprinkled with it, and the name is a translation of Homer’s [Greek].  Perhaps rue was used in sprinkling, because in pre-Christian times rue had, by itself, power against sprites and powers of evil.  Our ancestors may have thought it as well to combine the old charm of rue and the new Christian potency of holy water.  Thus there would be a distinct analogy between Homeric moly and English ‘herb of grace.’

‘Euphrasy and rue’ were employed to purge and purify mortal eyes.  Pliny is very learned about the magical virtues of rue.  Just as the stolen potato is sovran for rheumatism, so ‘rue stolen thriveth the best.’  The Samoans think that their most valued vegetables were stolen from heaven by a Samoan visitor. {152a} It is remarkable that rue, according to Pliny, is killed by the touch of a woman in the same way as, according to Josephus, the mandrake is tamed. {152b} These passages prove that the classical peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions about women as the Bushmen and Red Indians.  Indeed Pliny {152c} describes a magical manner of defending the crops from blight, by aid of women, which is actually practised in America by the Red Men. {152d}