“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.
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._