In the time of Shakspeare, “to smell of garlic was accounted a sign of vulgarity.”—(Idem, referring to “Coriolanus,” iv. 6, and “Measure for Measure,” iii. 2.)
“Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads as a supper for Hecate.”—(Idem.)
“According to Pliny, garlic and onions were invoked as deities by the Egyptians at the taking of oaths. The inhabitants of Pelusium, in Lower Egypt, who worshipped the onion, are said to have held both it and garlic in aversion as food.”—(Encyc. Brit., article “Garlic.”)
Garlic is “fastened to the caps of children, suspended from the sterns of vessels and from new houses, in the Levant, as, centuries ago, it was hung over the door in the more civilized parts of Europe.”—(“Superstitions of Scotland,” John Graham Dalyell, Edinburgh, 1834, p. 219.)
“The onion was among the earliest cultivated vegetables, and in Egypt was a sort of divinity.”—(American Encyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Onion.”)
“A phallic importance seems to have attached to the onion. Burton, in his ‘Anatomy of Melancholy,’ edition of 1660, p. 538, speaks of ‘cromnysmantia,’—a kind of divination with onions laid on the altar at Christmas Eve, practised by girls to know when they shall be married and how many husbands they shall have. This appears also to have been a German custom.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” vol. iii. pp. 356, 357.)
Sir Thomas More wrote the following (the original is in Latin; the translation is by Harington):—
“If leeks you leek, but do their smell disleek, Eat onions, and you shall not smell the leek; If you of onions would the scent expel, Eat garlic, that shall drown the onion’s smell; But against garlic’s savour, at one word, I know but one receipt. What’s that? Go look.”
The last line is left untranslated; in the original it reads,—
“Aut nihil, aut tantum, tollere merda potest.”
(Harington, “Ajax,” quoting Sir Thomas More.)
Two fundamental principles underlie the structure of primordial religion,—Intoxication and Phallism. All perversion of the cerebral functions, whether temporary estrangement or permanent alienation, is classified as Obsession; and the pranks and gibberish of the maniac or the idiot are solemnly treasured as outbursts of inspiration.