Those Romanian witches are really, really mad at the tax collectors. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Romanian witches from the east and west will head to the southern plains and the Danube River today to threaten the government with spells and spirits because of the tax law, which went into effect Saturday. A dozen witches will hurl the poisonous mandrake plant into the Danube to put a hex on government officials "so evil will befall them," said a witch named Alisia. She identified herself with one name - customary among Romania's witches."
Fortune tellers, who are also now on the tax rolls as a result of the changes in the Romanian Labor Code, are apparently less agitated by their new classification. Maybe they knew ahead of time? The classification, by the way, applies to the self-employed, who now pay a sixteen percent tax on earnings. All righty then.
That mandrake plant, the one the witches are hurling, is apparently Mandragora officinarum, which is poisonous taken internally but which applied externally is supposed to relieve pain. It's native to the Mediterannean and the Himalayas. Mandragora is a member of the potato or nightshade family.
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Go and catch a falling star
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Get with child a mandrake root
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Tell me where all past years are,
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Or who cleft the devil's foot.
---John Donne, Go and Catch a Falling Star (1633).
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