“The Mushroom Drink of the Borgie Well”
from Scatalogic Rites of All Nations
by
Captain John Gregory Bourke
The following paragraph deserves more than a passing mention:—
“The Borgie well, at Cambuslang, near Glasgow, is credited with making mad those who drink from it; according to the local rhyme,
‘A drink of the Borgie, a bite of the weed,
Sets a’ the Cam’slang folk wrang in the head.’
The weed is the weedy fungi.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, London, 1883, p. 104.)
Camden says that the Irish “delight in herbs, … especially cresses, mushrooms, and roots.”—(“Britannia,” edition of London, 1753, vol. ii. p. 1422.)
Other references to the Siberian fungus are inserted to afford students the fullest possible opportunity to understand all that was available to the author himself on this point.
“Agaricus muscarius is one of the most injurious, yet it is used as a means of intoxication by the Kamtchadales. One or two of them are sufficient to produce a slight intoxication, which is peculiar in its character. It stimulates the muscular powers and greatly excites the nervous system, leading the partakers into the most ridiculous extravagances.”—(American Cyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Fungi.”)
Agaricus muscarius. “This is the ‘mouche-more’ of the Russians, Kamtchadales, and Koriars, who use it for intoxication. They sometimes eat it dry, and sometimes immerse it in a liquor made with the epilobium, and when they drink this liquor they are seized with convulsions in all their limbs, followed by that kind of raving which attends a burning fever. They personify this mushroom, and if they are urged by its effects to suicide or any dreadful crime, they pretend to obey its commands. To fit themselves for premeditated assassination they recur to the use of the ‘mouche-more.’ A powder of the root, or of that part of the stem which is covered by the earth, is recommended in epileptic cases, and externally applied for dissipating hard, globular swellings and for healing ulcers.”—(Cyclopædia, Philadelphia, no date, Samuel Bradford, vol. i. article “Agaric.”) Continue reading ““The Mushroom Drink of the Borgie Well” | From Captain John G. Bourke’s Scatalogic Rites of All Nations”
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