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.
_Lelipa_--Then burnet shall bear up with this Whose leaf I greatly fancy, Some camomile doth not amiss With savory and some tansy.
The hot muscado oil, with milder maudlin cast Strong tansey, fennel cool, they prodigally waste.
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.
Soone at Easter cometh Alleluya. With butter, cheese and a tansay.
On Easter Sunday be the pudding seen To which the Tansey lends her sober green.
Wherever any grassy turf is view’d, It seems a tansie all with sugar strew’d.
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:--