Poe’s troubled narrator asks the black bird, “On this home by Horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore – / Is there – Is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!’” GENESIS 37 : 25 records the Israelites carried on trade in “spices, balm, and myrrh” with the “Ishmaelites, coming from Gilead…”