“_Prospero._ Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves; And ye that on the sands with printless feet, Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him, When he comes back; you demi-puppets that By moonshine do the green, sour ringlets make, Whereof the ewe bites not; and you whose pastime Is to make midnight mushrooms.”—(Tempest, act v. scene 1.) “_Ajax._ Thou stool for a witch.”—(Troilus and Cressida, act ii. scene 1.) The concordance consulted was that of the Clarkes. The association of “toadstools” with witchcraft may have been due to the belief that toads were the constant companions and servants of the witches and fairies. Gesner says that witches made use of toads as a charm, “ut vim coeundi, ni fallor, in viris tollerunt.”—(Brand, Pop. Ant. London, 1872, vol. ii. page 170, art. “Divination at Weddings.”) “Un crapaud noir de venin” was to be employed by those seeking favor of the witches of “Les Bourbonnais,” “La Fascination.”—(J. Tuchmann, in “Mélusine,” Paris, July, August, 1890.) May dew was considered a most beneficial application for the skin, but young maidens while gathering it were careful not “to put foot within the rings, lest they should be liable to the fairies’ power.”—(“Illustrations of Shakspeare,” Francis Douce, London, 1807, vol. i. p. 180.) It would seem that the Saxons in England, at the time of the Norman Conquest, were fully aware of the deadly effects producible by the mushroom: “The old woman came back to her, ere she went to bed. ‘I have found it all out and more. I know where to get scarlet toadstools and I put the juice in his men’s ale. They are laughing and roaring now, merry-mad every one of them.’” The effects of the potion are thus described: “His men were grouped outside of the gate, chattering like monkeys; the porter and the monks from the inside entreating them, vainly, to come in and go to bed quietly. “But they would not. They vowed and swore that a great gulf had opened all down the road, and that one step more would tumble them in headlong.... In vain Hereward stormed; assured them that the supposed abyss was nothing but the gutter; proved the fact by kicking Martin over it. The men determined to believe their own eyes, and after a while fell asleep in heaps in the roadside, and lay there till morning, when they woke, declaring, as did the monks, that they had been bewitched. They knew not—and happily, the lower orders, both in England and on the Continent, do not yet know—the potent virtues of that strange fungus with which Lapps and Samoieds have, it is said, practised wonders for centuries past.”—(“Hereward, the last of the English,” Charles Kingsley, New York, 1866, p. 111.) See also under “Ordeals and Punishments,” and “Insults.” XIII. A USE OF POISONOUS FUNGI QUITE PROBABLY EXISTED AMONG THE MEXICANS.