The Book of Herbs by Rosalind Northcote (christmas read aloud txt) đź“•
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Smallage is merely wild celery, and all that is interesting about it is Parkinson’s description of his first making acquaintance with sweet smallage—our celery, which has been already quoted. He merely says of ordinary smallage that it is “somewhat like Parsley, but greater, greener and more bitter.” It grows wild in moist grounds, but is also planted in gardens, and although “his evil taste and savour, doth cause it not to be accepted unto meats as Parsley,” yet it has “many good properties both for inward and outward diseases.”
Stonecrop (Sedum).Stone-crop, Stone-hot, Prick-Madam or Trick-Madam is a Sedum, but which Sedum the old Herbalists called by these names is not absolutely clear, it was probably Sedum Telephium or Sedum Album. Evelyn speaks of “Tripe-Madam, Vermicularis Insipida,” which seems to point to the latter, as that used to be called Worm-grass. He says Tripe-madam is “cooling and moist,” but there is another Stone-crop of as pernicious qualities as the former are laudable, Wall-pepper, Sedum Minus Causticum (most likely our Sedum Acre). This is called by the French, Tricque-Madame, and he cautions the “Sallet-Composer, if he be not botanist sufficiently skilful” to distinguish them by the eye, to “consult his palate,” and taste them before adding them to the other ingredients.
Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata).Sweet Cicely or Sweet Chervil was apparently less of a favourite than its romantic name would seem to warrant, for I can find no traditions concerning it. “Chervil” (of which this is a variety) says Gerarde, “is thought to be so called because it delighteth to grow with many leaves, or rather that it causeth joy and gladness.” There does not seem much connection between these two interpretations. He continues that “the name Myrrhus is also called Myrrha, taken from his pleasant flavour of Myrrh.” Sweet Cicely has a very pleasant flavour, with this peculiarity, that the leaves taste exactly as if sugar had just been powdered over them, but personally I have never been able to recognise myrrh in it. It is a pretty plant, with “divers great and fair spread wing leaves, very like and resembling the leaves of Hemlocke... but of sweet pleasant and spice-hot taste. Put among herbes in a sallet it addeth a marvellous good rellish to all the rest. Some commend the green seeds sliced and put in a sallet of herbes. The rootes are eyther boyled and eaten with oyle and vinegare or preserved or candid.” Sweet Cicely is very attractive to bees, and was often “rubbed over the insides of the hives before placing them before newly-cast swarms to induce them to enter,” and in the North of England Hogg says the seeds are used to polish and scent oak floors and furniture.
Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).Whose leaf I greatly fancy,
Some camomile doth not amiss
With savory and some tansy.
Muses’ Elysium.
Strong tansey, fennel cool, they prodigally waste.
Polyolbion, Song xv.
The name Tansy comes from Athanasia, Immortality, because its flower lasts so long, and it is dedicated to St Athanasius. It is connected with various interesting old customs, and especially with some observed at Easter time. Brand quotes several old rhymes in reference to this.
With butter, cheese and a tansay.
From Douce’s Collection of Carols.
To which the Tansey lends her sober green.
The Oxford Sausage.
It seems a tansie all with sugar strew’d.
From Shipman’s Poems.
The last lines occur in a description of the frost in 1654. None of these quotations refer to the plant alone; but to that kind of cake or fritter called taansie, and of which Tansy leaves formed an ingredient. Tansy must be “eaten young, shred small with other herbes, or else, the juiyce of it and other herbes, fit for the purpose beaten with egges and fried into cakes (in Lent and in the Spring of the year) which are usually called Tansies.” Though Parkinson speaks of their being eaten in Lent (as they no doubt were), the special day that they were in demand was Easter Day, and of this practice Culpepper has a good deal to say. Tansies were then eaten as a remembrance of the bitter herbs eaten by the Jews at the Passover. “Our Tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs, though at the same time ’twas always the fashion for a man to have a gammon of bacon, to show himself to be no Jew.” This little glimpse of an old practice comes from Selden’s Table Talk and the idea of taking this means to declare one’s self a Christian is really delightful. I must quote again from Brand to show another very extraordinary Easter Day custom. “Belithus, a ritualist of ancient times, tells us that it was customary in some churches for the Bishops and Archbishops themselves to play with the inferior clergy at hand-ball, and this, as Durand asserts, even on Easter Day itself. Why they should play at hand-ball at this time rather than any other game, Bourne tells us he has not been able to discover; certain it is, however, that the present custom of playing at that game on Easter Holidays for a tansy-cake has been derived from thence.” Stool-ball was apparently a most popular amusement and Lewis in his English Presbyterian Eloquence criticises the tenets of the Puritans, and observes with disapproval that all games where there is “any hazard of loss are strictly forbidden; not so much as a game of stool-ball for a tansy is allowed.” From a collection of poems called “A Pleasant Grove of New Fancies,” 1657, Brand extracts the following verses:—
For sugar, cakes and wine
Or for a tansey let us pay,
The loss be thine or mine.
At trundling of the ball,
The wager thou shalt have and me,
And my misfortunes all.
Let us hope that the stake was handsomer than it sounds! Brand quotes another very curious practice in which Tansies have a share, once existing in the North. On Easter Sunday, the young men of the village would steal the buckles off the maidens’ shoes. On Easter Monday, the young men’s shoes and buckles were taken off by the young women. On Wednesday, they are redeemed by little pecuniary forfeits, out of which an entertainment, called a Tansey Cake, is made, with dancing. One cannot help wondering how this cheerful, if somewhat peculiar custom originated! In course of time Tansies came to be eaten only about Easter-time and the practice seems to have acquired at one period the lustre almost of a religious rite in which superstition had a considerable share. Coles (1656) and Culpepper (1652) rebel against this and show with force and clearness the advantages of eating Tansies throughout the spring. Coles ignores the ceremonial reasons and says that the origin of eating it in the spring is because Tansy is very wholesome after the salt fish consumed during Lent, and counteracts the ill-effects which “the moist and cold constitution of winter” has made on people... “though many understand it not and some simple people take it for a matter of superstition to do so.” This shows plainly that the idea of eating Tansies only at Easter, was pretty widely spread. Culpepper as usual is more incisive. He first gives the same reason that Coles does for eating Tansies in the spring; then: “At last the world being over-run with Popery, a monster called superstition pecks up his head, and... obscures the bright beams of knowledge by his dismal looks; (physicians seeing the Pope and his imps, selfish, began to do so too), and now, forsooth, Tansies must be eaten only on Palm and Easter Sundays and their neighbour days. At last superstition being too hot to hold, and the selfishness of physicians walking in the clouds; after the friars and monks had made the people ignorant, the superstition of the time, was found out by the virtue of the herb hidden and now is almost, if not altogether left off. Scarcely any physicians are beholden to none so much as they are to monks and friars; for wanting of eating this herb in spring, maketh people sickly in summer, and that makes work for the physician. If it be against any man or woman’s conscience to eat Tansey in the spring, I am as unwilling to burthen their conscience, as I am that they should burthen mine; they may boil it in wine and drink the decoction, it will work the same effect.” “The Pope and his imps” is a grand phrase! A more militant Protestant than Culpepper it would be difficult to find, even in these days.
From other writers, it seems that the phase of associating Tansies exclusively with Easter, must have worn itself out, for we find many descriptions of them on distinctly secular occasions. At the Coronation Feast of James II. and his Queen, a Tansie was served among the 1445 “Dishes of delicious Viands” provided for it, and I must quote some of the others:—“Stag’s tongues, cold; Andolioes; Cyprus Birds, cold and Asparagus; a pudding, hot; Salamagundy; 4 Fawns; 10 Oyster pyes, hot; Artichokes; an Oglio, hot; Bacon, Gammon and Spinnage; 12 Stump Pyes; 8 Godwits; Morels; 24 Puffins; 4 dozen Almond Puddings, hot; Botargo; Skirrets; Cabbage Pudding; Lemon Sallet; Taffeta Tarts; Razar Fish; and Broom Buds, cold.”[52] These are only a very few out of an immense variety that are also named.
Many recipes for a “Tansy” exist, and very often have only the slightest resemblance to one another, but this is rather a nice one and is declared by its transcriber to be “the most agreeable of all the boiled Herbaceous Dishes.” It consists of: “Tansey, being qualify’d with the juices of other fresh Herbs; Spinach, green Corn, Violet, Primrose Leaves, etc., at entrance of the spring, and then fry’d brownish, is eaten hot, with the Juice of Orange and Sugar.” Isaac Walton speaks of a “Minnow Tansy,” which is made of Minnows “fried with yolks of eggs; the flowers of cowslips and of primroses and a little tansy; thus used they make a dainty dish of meat.” Our ancestors seem to have had a great love of “batter,” for it is a prominent part in very many of their dishes. Mrs Milne Home says, “In Virginia the Negroes make Tansy-tea for colds and at a pinch, Mas’r’s cook will condescend to use it in a sauce,” but in English cookery, it has absolutely disappeared.
Tansy had many medicinal virtues. Sussex people used to say that to wear Tansy-leaves in the shoe, was a charm against ague.
Wild Tansy looks handsome when it grows in abundance on marshy ground; and, indeed, its feathery leaves are beautiful anywhere, and it has a more refreshing scent than the Garden-Tansy. “In some parts of Italy people present stalks of Wild Tansy to those whom they mean to insult,”[53] a proceeding for which there seems neither rhyme nor reason. Turner tells tales of the vanity of his contemporaries, masculine as well as feminine, for he says:
“Our weomen in Englande and some men that be sunneburnt and would be fayre, eyther stepe this herbe in white wyne and
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