Garlic.
Garlic, again, from its pungency, is valued in the same way. Garlic was one of the substances used by Danish mothers to keep evil from children.85 The Swedish bridegroom sews in his clothes garlic, cloves, and rosemary. Garlic was an early English cure for a fiend-struck patient.86 Juvenal said that the Egyptians had gods growing in their gardens, in allusion to their reverence for onions or garlic. In Sanskrit garlic is called Mlechha-kanda, “the foreigner’s root,” and its virtues for the removal of demons are so well known that it will be often seen hung from the lintel of the house door. The same idea may account for the very common prejudice among some castes against eating onions.