A name used to describe the plant mandrake (mandragora officinalis). Upon sudden death at a gallows, a man’s body would relax releasing all of the fluids within him, including semen. It was believed that a mandrake would grow where the semen of a hanged man touched the ground.
Readers, please enjoy this guest blog post by Alice Markham-Cantor, author of the new Once & Future Witch Hunt.
My 9x-great-grandmother, Martha Carrier, was hanged in the Salem witch trials. She wasn't a witch. She wasn't an herbalist or a...