Aloe

Aloe: what lore surrounds it?

Folkard keeps the biblical aloes, the fragrant wood, apart from the bitter drug: “All thy garments smell of Myrrh, and Aloes, and Cassia,” and the spice Nicodemus brought “to embalm the body of our Lord.” The heart of the wood, calambac, “is reckoned in the Indies more precious than gold itself.” He quotes Wood's Zoography on Egypt, where “whoever returns from a pilgrimage to Mecca hangs it over his street door as a proof of his having performed that holy journey,” and the belief “that this plant hinders evil spirits and apparitions from entering the house.” The Arabic Saber “signifies patience, and in Mecca at the end of most graves, facing the epitaph, is planted an Aloe.”

Grieve separates the two aloes: “The word Aloes, in Latin Lignum Aloes, is used in the Bible and in many ancient writings to designate a substance totally distinct from the modern Aloes, namely the resinous wood of Aquilaria agallocha,” long “valued for use as incense.” Of the living plant she records that “the Mussulman who has made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Prophet is entitled to hang the Aloe over his doorway,” that “in Cairo, the Jews also adopt the practice,” and that near Mecca Burckhardt found at the end of every grave “a low shrubby species of Aloe whose Arabic name, saber, signifies patience,” its name referring “to the waiting-time between the burial and the resurrection morning.”