Some of the animals in L’Acerba are not found in other medieval animal books, and Cecco’s allegories are sometimes different from the norm. He also is skeptical about some of the animal descriptions, though he includes them in his book all the same.

There are several editions of the L’Acerba available online, mostly in Italian, though there is one English translation. You can find links to some of the on the Medieval Bestiary site.

One bird I (and others) have failed to identify is the stellino, a bird that Cecco describes as the beauty of the sky and a star wanderer. It might be some kind of hawk.

It carries its one egg with it when it flies, and sometimes drops it and it cracks, but the chick emerges unharmed. I don’t know what to relate this to in the Bestiary tradition; do you?

The images in the manuscript are surprisingly realistic – surprising because the illustrations of animals in western Bestiary manuscripts are often wildly inaccurate, because the artist had never seen the beast (or was just a bad artist). This artist knew what he was doing.

Anyway, thanks to Carlo Calloni I spent a couple of days wandering through the Italian side of the medieval animal genre, and now I know more about than I did before. Which isn’t saying much, since I knew next to nothing before.

While a knight methodically chops the heads off a multi-headed dragon (perhaps the hydra, or the Beast of the Apocalypse), two rabbits do mock battle with sword and mace, and a dog sleeps peacefully amid the carnage.

Another dog waits patiently for his master to stop having a symbolic conversation with a strange man she met while out walking her hound and squirrel. Quite what is going on here is beyond me, but perhaps the man, with a suggestive sword sticking out of his side and a very large ring, is proposing to the woman that they merge their menagerie in holy matrimony.

The dog looks amused by all this, but probably just wants to get on with the walk.

The illustration I like most is of the unicorn.

Here we have a spirited unicorn, that despite his wound turns to take on the cruel knight who spears him. Perhaps the unicorn will yet bag himself a knight to hang on his trophy wall. The maiden seems distressed, as well she should be, since she got the beast into this mess in the first place. At least she is gesturing to the knight to stop his attack; maybe the unicorn will spare her when he finishes off his attacker.

So let’s chart our favorite word: bestiary.

There is an obvious upsurge in interest around 1882. Why? One possibility is the English “antiquaries”: English (mostly) idle gentlemen-scholars who wandered around “discovering” old things, like manuscripts and church carvings. There were quite a few of these antiquaries; they even had societies, associations and clubs, held meetings, and published journals. A member of the Society of Antiquaries (one of the most prestigious) could add the letters FSA (Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries) after his name. One such was George Claridge Druce (1860-1948); there are several articles by him in the Digital Text Library.

The word “bestiary” is also common in English fiction.

It really takes off after World War II, with another spike around 1990.

How about some of our favorite beasts? Charting “real” beasts doesn’t tell us much, so here is the chart for three of the most popular fabulous beasts: Unicorn, Dragon and Phoenix.

Surprisingly, the unicorn and phoenix have the same popularity, with the dragon far ahead of either. The unicorn doesn’t even improve significantly after the 1980s, when all the new-agey people started loving the beast. As for the bonnacon: as usual, the poor beasty gets no respect; if charted against the unicorn and/or dragon, his line doesn’t get above the axis. The bonnacon is sad.

Ah, to have Dr. de Hamel’s job…

“Courtly love” is a nineteenth century term used to describe a type of medieval literature, in which a man professes his eternal love for an inaccessible woman, usually of noble class and often married to someone else. Most courtly love literature has several common features, which are present in Richard’s book. (All quotes from the Bestiaire d’amour are taken from Master Richard’s Bestiary of Love by Jeanette Beer, a noted Bestiaire scholar.) Some examples: Attraction to the lady, usually via eyes (“Did sight help to capture me? Yes, I was more captured by my sight than the tiger in the mirror.”); declaration of passionate devotion (“…I have abandoned my own will in pursuit of hers, like the beasts that, after they have sensed the odor of the panther, will not abandon it.”); virtuous rejection by the lady (“…I have no earthly hope in the future of your good will…”); renewed wooing with oaths of virtue and eternal fealty (“For if I have spoken and sent you many fine words and they have not served me as much as I needed, I must now assemble my resources in the arrièr-ban of this last composition. I must speak as best I can to know if it might win your favor.”); and moans of approaching death from unsatisfied desire (“…you have thrown me into the sort of distress that accompanies utter despair without hope of mercy. That is death by love.”).

Richard’s Bestiaire was very popular, and many manuscript copies still exist. In a few of the manuscripts the Bestiaire is followed by a response, supposedly from the woman Richard was writing to. Whether the response was written by Richard’s unattainable love, or by a woman at all, is not known and is still debated; Jeanette Beer says “Its author was a woman of exceptional ability who could reason with cogency and argue with style; her philosophical and theological background differed markedly from Master Richard’s; and her feminist defense of woman may have been a personal response directed specifically against Richard de Fournival.” Whether or not this is so, the response to Richard’s protestations of love was scathing, as can be seen from the excerpts below.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Français 1951 f3v.

He says: The nature of the wolf is such that when a man sees it before it sees the man, the wolf loses all its strength and courage. If the wolf sees the man first, the man then loses his voice so that he is speechless. This nature is found in the love of a man and woman. For when love exists between them, if the man can perceive first, from the woman herself, that she loves him, and if he knows how to make her aware of it, from that moment she has lost the courage to refuse him. But because I could not hold back or refrain from telling you my heart before I knew anything of yours, you have escaped me.
She replies: I must truly say that I was seen first by you whom I must for this reason call the wolf. For it is with difficulty that I can say anything to counter your words. Wherefore I can truly say that I was first seen by you, and I must thus be on my guard if I am prudent.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Français 1951 f5r.

He says: [The viper] is of such a nature that it is frightened and insecurely flees when it sees a naked man, yet it attacks him and has nothing but contempt for him if it sees him clothed. You have acted in exactly the same way with me, fair, sweetest love. For when I met you I found you to be of a gentle disposition and somewhat modest, as is fitting – as if you were a little fearful of me because of the newness of our acquaintance. Yet when you knew I loved you, you were as proud as you wished toward me, and you attacked me sometimes with your words. … I should have been better treated by you when you saw me clothed with your love than when I was naked of it.
She replies: Do you think I am bound to attack you because you say you are clothed by your love for me? I have not clothed you with my love, rather you are quite naked of it. Therefore I fear you, which is not very surprising…

Master Richard comes across as rather a cad, nay even a jerk, and his methods cannot be recommended as an example to a man hopeful of Valentine love.

The woman has the last word, and shows just what she thinks of Richard:

…the dragon for its tongue that is envenomed to kill all the animals it touches with it. Ah master, have we any such dragons among us? I truly believe and know we have, and I know well that they are worse than the feared dragon. And I shall tell you who they are and in what way they are worse, as I spoke above of those who act lovelorn till they die of it. They are calamitous. But I say upon my soul that a man may say he is dying of love when he does not even know of it as I, who by the grace of God am free of it, know love. And I say assuredly that these men are worse than the dragon mentioned above. For the dragon poisons only what it touches, but this false liar with his filthy, venomous old tongue spreads what he hopes will get him his way with the woman he covets, no matter how she may be damaged by him. Is there worse? Yes, indeed! … the evil dragon, the traitor, the wretch, now boasts that he has had his way. Is that an evil dragon? Certainly I say that no mortal man could take too cruel a vengeance on that dragon.

So much for Master Richard.

St John’s College (Cambridge) Library
A.15 f103v.

The Bestiary does not generally encourage romantic love, courtly or otherwise, or any sort pleasure for that matter. The self-sacrifice of the beaver can be seen as a reference to the value of clerical celibacy; the fate of the antelope warns us not to play in the “thickets of worldliness” where pleasure kills body and soul; the story of the blackbird should remind us that we must discipline ourselves and thus rid ourselves of pleasures of the mind by inflicting pain on our flesh; the story of the sirens shows that those who take delight in worldly pleasures will become the devil’s prey. The most obvious admonition to avoid the perils of lust is found in the story of the fire stones (lapides igniferi), which burst into flame if brought too close together; likewise, says the Bestiary, will the flames of lust erupt when man and women are too close to each other. The couple at the right have discovered the truth of this for themselves: In the top panel, they are fiercely and resolutely resisting the lure of lust, even holding out their anti-lust devices, but to no avail, for in the lower panel they are passionately in each other’s arms, and the fires of lust (and hell) roar around them. They do seem happier in the bottom panel, so perhaps not all is lost.

Finally, the Aberdeen Bestiary has some advice for the married couple, based on the risque mating of a male viper with a female lamprey:

Let him be harsh, deceitful, uncouth, unreliable, drunken: are any of these things worse than the poison from which the lamprey, in intercourse, does not shrink? When she is invited, she is not found wanting and embraces the slimy snake with sincere affection. The man puts up with your mischief and your feminine tendency towards triviality. Can you, o woman, not stand by your man? … But you too, O man, for we can also bring you into the discussion, set aside the passion in your heart and the roughness of your manner when your loving wife comes to meet you, get rid of your ill-humour when your wife sweetly rouses you to express your love. You are not her master but her husband; you have gained not a maidservant but a wife. God wished you to govern the weaker sex, not rule it absolutely. Return her care with attention; return her love with grace. The viper pours out its poison; can you not get rid of your harsh attitude?

Beavers losing valuable body parts.
British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 9r

Beaver: The beaver is hunted for one special body part, which, we are assured by the best authorities, is required for “medicine”. The body part is its testicles, and the “medicine” is likely the medieval version of Viagra. The beaver knows what the hunters want, and evidently valuing life over love, bites off the desired items and throws them to the hunter, who being satisfied with his prize leaves the beaver alone. And alone he will probably stay, without hope of offspring and, most likely, a mate. I suppose he can always become a monk, the clerical class the moral of this awkward story was aimed at. In future encounters with hunters, the beaver merely has to reveal his lack of magical beastie bits to be spared any further harassment. In the illustration, the happy hunter on the right has already bagged his quota, while the others squabble over the second beaver’s offering. The lad in red, pointing at the busy beaver, is saying “Dibs on that set!” while the one in blue, who brought his best sword and a fine pair of hunting dogs, looks sorely disappointed.

A hyena munches a corpse.
British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 10r

Hyena: There is a stone in the hyena’s eye (some say in the stomach of its young) that will give a person the ability to predict the future if the stone is placed under the person’s tongue. According to Bartholomaeus Anglicus, “And also witches use the heart of this beast and the liver, in many witchcrafts”. The hyena-stone was said to prevent fever and the gout. Hyenas like to hang around graveyards, where they snack on human corpses. Perhaps this diet gives the stone its predictive power:  the dead presumably know the future. The hyena is an unstable beast, sometimes male and sometimes female; Aesop says “A female hyena wanted to have sex with a male fox, but the fox rejected her, saying that he could not be sure whether she would become his girlfriend or boyfriend.” The fox could have used the future telling stone to discover in advance how the relationship would turn out. The bestiaries do not say how (or whether) the hyena protects its future-telling stone from humans.

A lynx producing a stone; a chunk of amber.
Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 6r

Lynx: The urine of the lynx is said to harden into a stone appropriately called the lynx stone (lapis lyncurium in Latin). It is also sometimes called “lynx-water”. The lynx, knowing the stone is valued and due to a natural jealousy (according to Isidore) they do not want humans to have it, they cover their urine with sand to hide it. The stone is most likely amber, but has also been identified as iolite, tourmaline and other semi-precious stones. If it was indeed amber, its medicinal uses were many. According to the Amber Portal: “Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1178), the prioress of the local Benedictine convent, a renowned German mystic and poetess, recommended taking amber as a beer, wine or water tincture for stomach ache, and as a milk tincture for bladder conditions. Powdered amber mixed with wine was also supposed to protect from the Black Death. Albert the Great, a 13th-century Dominican theologian and philosopher, listed amber among six medications of the utmost effectiveness.”

Italian unicorn deer.

ROME – A deer with a single horn in the center of its head — much like the fabled, mythical unicorn — has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday. The 1-year-old Roe Deer — nicknamed “Unicorn” — was born in captivity in the research center’s park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, Tozzi said. He is believed to have been born with a genetic flaw; his twin has two horns. Single-horned deer are rare but not unheard of — but even more unusual is the central positioning of the horn, experts said. “Generally, the horn is on one side (of the head) rather than being at the center. This looks like a complex case,” said Fulvio Fraticelli, scientific director of Rome’s zoo. He said the position of the horn could also be the result of a trauma early in the animal’s life. (MSN-AP, June 11, 2008)

Apparently the mother deer was injured by a car while pregnant with the twins, possibly causing the horn to be shifted to the middle of the head. The deer may not be a “unicorn” for long; it will soon shed its horn, as deer generally do, and it is not certain that the single horn will regrow as it is. A good video of the deer in the Tuscany park can be seen, with useful commentary, on the Discovery Chanel web site.

Otter G’Zel and Lancelot, the unicorn goat.

Other unicorn animals have been created, notably the unicorn goat produced by Morning Glory and her husband Otter G’Zell, in the 1980s. The exact technique was not revealed, but it most likely involved surgically removing one horn bud and moving the other to the center of the head, while the animal was very young. This may be what happened accidentally to the Italian deer.

In the early 1900s several Nepalese one-horned sheep were given to the Prince of Wales and exhibited at the London Zoological Gardens in 1906. It is thought that these were also surgically manipulated in an effort to make them more valuable.

In the 1930s, Dr. W. F. Dove of Maine University did unicorn experiments with a bull. According to The Unicorn Garden:

Dr. Dove’s unicorn bull.

In 1933 Dove took a day-old Ayrshire calf, surgically removed its horn buds, trimmed them to fit together and replanted them in the centre of its forehead. As the young bull grew, the buds fused and produced a single solid, straight and pointed horn a foot or so in length which proved equally useful for fighting and uprooting fences, far superior in fact to the usual brace of curved ones when it comes to confronting a rival. Dr Dove’s Unicorn bull became the leader of its herd and was very rarely challenged by other males. Which is not altogether surprising if you think about it. When bulls charge each other the main aim (as with male deer) is to crack skulls until one or other can take no more. Charging towards an enemy who has a spike aimed right between your eyes is a different game altogether. So effective was the single horn that one almost wonders why evolution did not do Dr Dove’s work for him. An interesting side effect of the experiment was the nature of the bull’s temperament. Being secure in his strength led him to become unusually gentle and mild mannered, echoing what has so often been said of the true Unicorn’s nature.

Dr Dove published the results of his experiment in an article titled “The Physiology of Horn Growth” in the Journal of Experimental Zoology (Jan 1935, Vol 69, No 3); and another “Artificial Production of the Fabulous Unicorn” in Scientific Monthly (May 1936, Volume 42; pages 431-436).

So perhaps we can add to the more commonly assumed sources of the unicorn legend – the rhinocerus and the narwhal – this sort of natural or artificial “unicorn”, ordinary horned beasts that sometimes, by accident or by design, produce only a single horn.

Asp eying a large carbuncle, which
clearly did not come out of its head.
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KA 16.

Asp (or adder): The asp, aka adder, was said to have a blood-red, glowing stone in its head, called the carbuncle. “Carbuncle” means something like “little glowing coal”; it may have been the garnet or almandine. Exactly what the carbuncle was used for is not stated, but that its use was magical is implied by who is said to seek it: conjurers or enchanters. Magicians, in other words. According to some accounts, the carbuncle was said to be in the dragon’s head — there was general confusion between dragons and other serpents — and that it had to be taken from a live dragon, since it would turn to dust if the dragon/asp stopped breathing. Taking a stone from the head of a live, breathing dragon — or a venomous asp, for that matter — would have been a bit impractical, so the beast had to be put to sleep. For the dragon, this was done by burning drugged grass outside the dragon’s den; for the asp, the enchanter would sing or recite a spell in the asp’s hearing. The asp knew full well what those tricky magicians were after and how they meant to get it, so it would press one ear to the ground and plug the other one with its tail to avoid falling under the spell and losing its carbuncle. A good strategy for a beastie with no thumbs to stuff in its ears.

Imperious eagle with a geode.
Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º.

Eagle: Some kinds of eagles have a stone called the eagle-stone (aëtites or gagites) built into their nests; this stone can survive fire without loss of virtue, and is useful in many cures. The stone is large and has another stone inside it, which can be heard to rattle when shaken. It may be the geode, which is hollow and can have loose rattly things in it. Says CW King in The Natural History of Precious Stones and Gems (1865): “The best kind were asserted to be only found in the nests of eagles, which could not breed without their aid; hence their name. They, for this reason, were of the greatest benefit to women in labour; a notion which even Dioscorides appears to endorse. The substance itself … was one of those calcareous hollow concretions, sometimes white, sometimes tinged with iron, well known to geologists; and which appear to be accidental for­mations, not petrifactions of older organised bodies.” The eagle-stone was called the pregnant stone, because of the second stone inside it, and was said to promote successful birth. The stone is also useful, according to Dioscorides, in detecting thieves: bread is made containing the stone, or sprinkled with powder made from the stone, and suspected thieves are made to eat the bread; the guilty one will be unable to swallow even a mouthful.

So, you want to catch a unicorn. As we all know, the unicorn is a swift and fierce beast, not to be caught by ordinary means. But there is a way: find a pure and virgin girl, sit her down in unicorn habitat, hide in the bushes clutching your spear, and wait. A unicorn will come along, and charmed by the girl’s purity, will lie down with its head in her lap. Once the unicorn is nicely settled in and comfy, you leap out of the bushes and slaughter the beast.

No wonder there are so few unicorns left in the wild.

But why kill the unicorn? Wouldn’t a live unicorn give you more bragging rights than a bloody corpse? Yet in the majority of maiden-and-unicorn illustrations in medieval manuscripts, the unicorn is being killed.

…it is even killed with swords and spears and with an ax in reserve just in case…

British Library, Harley MS 4751, Folio 6v

There’s got to be a reason for all this mayhem.

One possibility is the value of the unicorn’s horn. Dipped in the king’s cup of wine it would reveal the presence of poison placed there by the dastardly duke; if the king was poisoned anyway, he could be cured with the horn. Powdered horn was also known to be a powerful aphrodisiac, as rhinoceros horn is now. Useful thing, a unicorn horn, and difficult to get from a live beast, so it has to be slaughtered.

<digression>Unicorn horns are also very beautiful. I saw and handled one once: a fellow student brought it to a Medieval Cosmology class and passed it around. Her grandfather or great-grandfather had acquired it somewhere, years before, and passed it down the generations. It was about as long as my arm, a rich ivory color, smooth and heavy, and spiraled to a sharp tip. Of course it wasn’t a “real” unicorn’s horn, though it would certainly have fooled a medieval king. It was a narwhal (Monodon monoceros) horn, which is not really a horn, but a very long tooth.

Swarming into an ice hole, males wield their tusks with care.
Photo by Paul Nicklen, from National Geographic.

How, you may be wondering, did the narwhal become confused with the unicorn? Perhaps it was like this:

The Land-Narwhal, ©2008 Carl Huber at the Warehouse Comic.

“So prized was the fabled tooth of the unicorn that Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century paid 10,000 pounds for one, equivalent to the cost of an entire castle”, says narwhal.org. Beautiful. I wanted the one I saw; I can’t image a queen or king being able to resist.</digression>

While a medieval hunter-of-unicorns might find it expedient to kill the beast for its horn, this does not really explain the type and level of violence shown in the illustrations, and it definitely does not explain why the unicorn killers in many illustrations are soldiers. There is more going on here. The basic symbolism of the unicorn is clearly stated in the bestiary: it says that the unicorn represents Christ, who descended to the womb of the virgin Mary, was captured by the Jews, and was crucified. The unicorn’s swiftness and fierceness indicates Christ’s power, that none could take him by force, but only by his willing surrender. While some bestiary versions say the unicorn is captured and taken to the king’s palace, others don’t say what happens to it; the killing of the unicorn is only hinted at through the reference to crucification. That hint seems to have been enough for the illustrators: the unicorn is Christ, so must die violently as Christ died violently, at the hands of the Jews (depicted as civilians) and/or the Romans (depicted as soldiers).

And what are we to make of the maiden’s betrayal of the trusting unicorn? Well, we can’t be sure she was in on the trick; maybe she didn’t know the true intent of the hunters. In some illustrations, the maiden seems upset at the killing:

Kongelige Bibliotek, Gl. kgl. S. 1633 4º, Folio 5v

“Hey!”, she says, “why you kill my unicorn?” and gives the startled hunter-of-unicorns a slap with her big left hand.

So, fair maidens, if they lead you off to the unicorn forest, watch out for guys with spears in the bushes; only you can prevent unicorn killing.

Mandrake root

The mandrake is, of course, a real plant, found around the Mediterranean, in the Middle East, and in China. To quote Wikipedia:

Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora belonging to the nightshades family (Solanaceae). Because mandrake contains deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids such as hyoscyamine and the roots sometimes contain bifurcations causing them to resemble human figures, their roots have long been used in magic rituals, today also in neopagan religions such as Wicca and Germanic revivalism religions such as Odinism. … The mandrake, Mandragora officinarum, is a plant called by the Arabs luffâh, or beid el-jinn (“djinn’s eggs”). The parsley-shaped root is often branched. This root gives off at the surface of the ground a rosette of ovate-oblong to ovate, wrinkled, crisp, sinuate-dentate to entire leaves, 6 to 16 inches long, somewhat resembling those of the tobacco-plant. There spring from the neck a number of one-flowered nodding peduncles, bearing whitish-green flowers, nearly 2 inches broad, which produce globular, succulent, orange to red berries, resembling small tomatoes, which ripen in late spring. All parts of the mandrake plant are poisonous. The plant grows natively in southern and central Europe and in lands around the Mediterranean Sea, as well as on Corsica.

The “Jacob” of the title is a character from the Judeo-Christian biblical book of Genesis, the son of Abraham Isaac, husband of Leah and Rachel. Leah’s son Reuben finds a mandrake plant during the wheat harvest and brings it home to his mother. Second wife Rachel, then childless, wants the mandrake because it is thought to aid conception; Leah trades an extra night with Jacob for the plant. Rachel eats the mandrake berries and soon conceives a child with Jacob.

While aiding conception is the mandrake’s best known use, it had several other uses. If the plant is given a coin, the next day it will return two coins, thus making the owner rich, though “you must not overwork [the mandrake], otherwise he will grow stale and might even die.” The berries of the plant were used as a soporific and narcotic; the ancient Greeks and the medieval Arabs used them as an anesthetic during surgery. Some figures made from the root of the plant were said to be “infallible love-charms, others make the wearer invulnerable or invisible; but almost all have this in common that they reveal treasures hidden under the earth, and that they can relieve their owner of chronic illness by absorbing it into themselves.”

The source of the mandrake plant had its own rather gruesome mythology. In Germany the plant was called the “Little Gallows Man”, and it was said

that when a hereditary thief, born of a family of thieves, or one whose mother stole while he was in her womb, is hanged on a gallows, and his seed or urine falls on the ground, the mandrake or Little Gallows Man sprouts on the spot. Others, however, say that the human progenitor of the plant must be, not a thief, but an innocent and chaste youth who has been forced by torture falsely to declare himself a thief and has consequently ended his days on a gallows. Be that as it may, the one thing about which all are agreed is that the Little Gallows Man grows under the gallows tree from the bodily droppings of a hanged man.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France, fr. 14969, f. 61v

Uprooting a mandrake is a dangerous task, as seen in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, where the students take special precautions when transplanting mandrakes. The mandrake resents being pulled from the ground, and its screams are deadly, killing anyone nearby. To safely get the mandrake, you must dig all around it with a sword until it is attached to the ground by only a few small roots. Then you tie a dog which has been starved for several days to the root, and offer food to the dog from a distance; the dog, in rushing to get the food, will pull the mandrake root out of the ground. Once the root is out of the ground it is harmless and you can collected safely. It is not recommended that you use the family pet for this task, since the dog is killed by the screams of the angry mandrake. The dog, having nobly sacrificed itself so you can get the mandrake, is to be buried with honors in the place where the mandrake was. Then

all you have now to do is to pick up the plant, wash it clean in red wine, wrap it in white and red silk, and lay it in a casket. But you must not forget to bathe it every Friday and to give it a new white shirt every new moon. If you only observe these precautions, the mandrake will answer any question you like to put to it concerning all future and secret matters. Henceforth you will have no enemies, you can never be poor, and if you had no children before, you will have your quiver full of them afterwards.

It is said that if you forget to give the mandrakes their weekly bath, they would “scream like children till they got it.”

The human form of the mandrake root was particularly attractive, and since the natural root is only vaguely humanoid, some enhancement was needed:

To this day there are ‘artists’ in the East who make a business of carving genuine roots of mandrakes in human form and putting them on the market, where they are purchased for the sake of the marvellous properties which popular superstition attributes to them. Antioch in Syria and Mersina in Cilicia particularly excel in the fabrication of these curious talismans. Sometimes the desired form is imparted simply by cutting and pressing the roots while they are still fresh and juicy, or while they are in process of desiccation. But sometimes, when a root has been thus moulded into the proper shape, it is buried again in the ground, until the scars on it have healed, and the parts which had been tied together have coalesced. When such an effigy is finally unearthed and allowed to dry and shrivel up, the traces of the manipulation which it has undergone are often hard to detect. A skilful ‘artist’ will in this way turn out mandrake roots which look so natural that no native would dream of questioning their genuineness.

So watch where you get your mandrake roots, don’t sacrifice the family pet, and remember the weekly bath!