Mandrake

Region/Culture: Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, with the fullest body of folklore in medieval Germany, France and England
Mythos: Greek Mythology, Roman Mythology, Jewish Mythology, Christian Mythology, Germanic Mythology, Medieval Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: A root grown into human shape that screams when it is torn out of the earth, kills whoever hears the cry, and afterwards serves its owner with fortune, fertility and prophecy.
Role in Mythos: It is the plant that behaves like a person, standing at the point where herbalism becomes sorcery and a remedy becomes a household spirit.
Relation to Humans: Mortals want it badly enough to risk dying for it, since it is credited with curing barrenness, dulling the surgeon’s knife, doubling money overnight and answering questions put to it. It cannot be taken by hand, so the danger is passed to a dog, and the dog is the one that dies.

The dog does not want to go near it. It has been starved for a day, and the meat has been thrown just past the furrow, but the rope runs from its collar to the crown of leaves in the ground and it plants its feet in the cold soil and whines. Behind it the man is already backing away with wads of cotton in his ears, sealed over with pitch. He does not turn around. Whatever the dog hears when the root comes free is not meant for him.

That scene, in one form or another, ran through European belief for the better part of a thousand years, and it exists because a plant grows in a shape it has no business growing in. Mandragora is a Mediterranean nightshade. It puts out a flat rosette of coarse dark leaves, purple or greenish flowers, and small yellow fruit like little apples with a thick sweetish smell, the smell the Song of Songs is talking about when it says the mandrakes give their scent. None of that is the point. The point is underneath. The root goes down thick and pale and divides, and in the division people saw a torso, two legs, a pair of stunted arms, sometimes a head with hair on it. A plant that looks like a man is a plant that might act like one.

The classical writers were interested in the drug, not the demon. Theophrastus, three centuries before the common era, records the ritual as something already old: draw three circles round the root with a sword, cut it facing west, and for the second piece, dance around it and say every obscene thing about sex the harvester can think of. Pliny repeats a version of it. Dioscorides, a working physician, is drier and more useful. Boil the root in wine until it reduces to a third, give the patient a ladleful, about forty-five millilitres, and then cut into him. He will not feel much. It is the earliest surgical anaesthetic in the Western record, and it worked because the root is loaded with tropane alkaloids that shut the body down. Dioscorides also notes the analgesic use, the abortifacient use, and the love potion, and he and Pliny both distinguish a pale male plant from a darker female one. Pliny goes further and claims that Phaon of Lesbos got hold of a phallic root and by that means made Sappho fall in love with him.

Not one of them mentions a scream.

The scream is medieval, and so is the gallows. Somewhere between the Physiologus, which has elephants seeking out mandragora before they mate, and the Old English Herbarium, which says the plant shines at night like a lantern, the root stopped being a drug and became a resident. The German name for it is Alraun, and its other name is Galgenmännlein, the little man of the gallows, because the belief settled that it grew from the ground under a hanged man where his urine or his seed had fallen. Grimmelshausen, writing in 1673, sets conditions: the hanged man must be a thief by inheritance, his mother must have stolen or thought about stealing while carrying him, and he must have died a virgin. Praetorius, ten years earlier, is gentler about the origin and harder about the harvest. Come on a Friday before dawn. Stop the ears with cotton and seal them with wax. Cross yourself three times while you dig. The Brothers Grimm collected the whole tangle as Deutsche Sagen number 83, with a black dog tied to the root by its tail.

What comes out of the ground is not a vegetable. It is washed in red wine, dressed in silk of red and white, and shut in a box of its own. Every Friday it is bathed. Every new moon it is given a fresh white shirt. Questions put to it are answered, secrets and futures both, and a coin laid on it at night is two coins by morning, though the trick must not be worked too often, because the thing can be drained of its strength and die. When its owner dies, the doll passes to the youngest son, and a coin and a piece of bread must go into the father’s coffin. In France the same creature is the man-de-gloire, taken from under a gibbet, and an eighteenth-century peasant told the antiquary Sainte-Palaye that his was a sort of mole, fed on meat and bread, and that whatever it was given came back doubled the next day. Two men he knew of had neglected to feed theirs. Both died.

True mandrake does not grow in Germany, which was never allowed to be an obstacle. Mattioli’s herbal describes the fraud plainly: take a root of white bryony, carve it roughly into a human shape, bury it again to heal, and when hair is wanted, prick the head with a sharpened dowel and push millet grains into the holes. Replant. Wait. The grain sprouts and the little man grows a scalp.

Its powers are exactly the powers people wanted and could not otherwise get. It ends barrenness, which is why Rachel bargained a night of her husband away for the ones Reuben carried in from the wheat harvest, and why the bargain is one of the strangest transactions in Genesis, since Rachel got the roots and Leah got the son. It kills pain and brings deep sleep. It compels love. It multiplies money and tells the truth. Philippe de Thaun’s bestiary claims flatly that it cures every illness there is, except death.

Against that, the limits are severe and they are all limits of handling. The root cannot be lifted by a human hand. Josephus, describing the flame-coloured baaras of the Jordan valley, says it retreats from anyone who reaches for it and can only be pinned by pouring a woman’s urine or menstrual blood on it, and that touching it is fatal, so a dog is tied on and the dog dies in the harvester’s place. The scream is the same law in another key: the price is not negotiated down, only transferred. The doll must be fed and washed or it turns on its keeper. It can be exhausted. It cannot cure the one thing everybody actually wants cured. And there is a plainer limit that the herbals knew perfectly well and the legends kept quiet about. It is a nightshade. Enough of it brings blurred vision, a racing heart, a dry mouth, hallucination, delirium and, with a heavy enough dose, an end to breathing. The root does not need to shriek to kill anybody. It has never needed to.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a mandrake?

A mandrake is the man-shaped root of a Mediterranean nightshade of the genus Mandragora, which folklore treated as a living being rather than a plant. Its forked root often resembles a small human body, and it contains powerful tropane alkaloids that cause sleep, hallucination and delirium. In European legend it screams when uprooted, kills anyone who hears the cry, and afterwards brings its owner wealth, fertility and prophecy.

Does the mandrake really scream when you pull it up?

The screaming mandrake is a medieval invention, not an ancient one. Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Pliny all describe rituals and drugs made from the root, but none of them mentions a cry. The scream, along with the belief that the plant grows beneath the gallows, appears only in later European sources.

Why was a dog used to pull up a mandrake?

Because touching the root was believed to be fatal, the danger was transferred to an animal. Josephus describes digging a furrow around the root, tying a dog to it, and walking away so the dog uproots the plant and dies in the harvester’s place. German versions of the legend specify a black dog, and the Brothers Grimm record it being tied on by the tail.

What are the mandrakes in the Bible?

The Hebrew dudaim, translated as mandrakes, appear in Genesis 30, where Reuben finds them in a field at wheat harvest and Rachel trades a night with Jacob to Leah in exchange for them, hoping to end her own barrenness. They also appear in the Song of Songs, praised for their scent. The name is linked to a root meaning love, and the plant was regarded as a fertility remedy.

What is an Alraune?

Alraune is the German name for the mandrake and for the root doll made from it, also called Galgenmännlein, the little man of the gallows. Legend held that it sprang from the fluids of a hanged man. Once taken, it was washed in red wine, wrapped in red and white silk, kept in a box, bathed every Friday, given a new shirt at each new moon, and in return it answered questions and doubled its owner’s money overnight.