What is a Herb? I have heard many definitions, but never one that satisfied the questioner, and shall, therefore, take warning by the failures of others and make no attempt to define the word here. It is, however, fairly safe to say generally that a herb is a plant, green, and aromatic and fit to eat, but it is impossible to deny that there are several undoubted herbs that are not aromatic, a few more grey than green, and one or two unpalatable, if not unwholesome. So no more space shall be devoted to discussing their “nature,” but I will endeavour to present individual ones to the reader as clearly as possible, in order that from their collective properties he may form his own idea of a herb. The objection may be raised that several plants included in this book are outside the subject. To answer this, I would point out that the boundaries of a herb-garden are indefinite, and that the old writers’ views of them were liberal. Besides this, every garden must have an outside hedge or wall, and if this imaginary herb-garden has a row of elder bushes on the East, barberry trees on the West, some bay trees on the South, and a stray willow or so on the North, who can say that they are inappropriately placed? The bay and barberry hold an undisputable position, and the other trees have each an interesting history in folk-lore, magic and medicine. Herbs have been used in all countries and from the earliest times, but I have confined myself, as a rule, to those spoken of by British authors, and used in the British Isles, though not scrupling to quote foreign beliefs or customs where they give weight or completeness to our own or our forefathers’ practices, or are themselves of much interest. We have forgotten much that would be profitable to us.

Mr Dillon, writing in the Nineteenth Century, April, 1894, on “A Neglected Sense”—the sense of smell—describes a Japanese game, the object of which was that while one of the players burned certain kinds of incense or fragrant woods, singly or in combination, the others ventured opinions from the odours arising, and recorded their conjectures by means of specially marked counters on a board. The delicate equipment for it included a silver, open-worked brazier; a spatula, on which the incense was taken up, also of silver, sometimes delicately inlaid with enamel; and silver-framed mica plates (about one inch square), on which the incense had been heated, were set to cool on “a number of medallions, mother-of-pearl, each in the shape of a chrysanthemum flower or of a maple leaf.”

Both Mr Dillon and Miss Lambert (Nineteenth Century, May 1880) attribute the importance early attached to odours to religious reasons. He says that it was believed that the gods, being spirits, neither required nor desired solid offerings, but that the ethereal nature of the ascending fragrance was gratifying and sustaining to them. Miss Lambert quotes an account of the tribes of Florida “setting on the tops of the trees, as offerings to the sun, skins of deer filled with the best fruits of the country, crowned with flowers and sweet herbs.” Among the Aztecs of Mexico the festival of the goddess of flowers, Coatlicue, was kept by Xochenanqui, or traders in flowers. Offerings of “curiously woven garlands” were made, and it was “forbidden to everyone to smell the flowers of which they were composed before their dedication to the goddess.” The Tahitians had the idea that “the scent was the spirit of the offering and corresponded to the spirit of man,” and therefore they laid sweet-scented offerings before their dead till burial, believing that the spirit still hovered near. These instances show clearly the high regard in which delicate odours were once held.

Herbs and flowers were early used in rites and ceremonies of the Church. Miss Lambert quotes from a poem of Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers. “When winter binds the earth with ice, all the glory of the field perishes with its flowers. But in the spring-time when the Lord overcame Hell, bright grass shoots up and buds come forth.... Gather these first-fruits and you bear them to the churches and wreath the altars with them till they glow with colour. The golden crocus is mingled with the purple violet, dazzling scarlet is relieved by gleaming white, deep blue blends with green.... One triumphs in its radiant beauty, another conquers by its sweet perfume; gems and incense bow before them.” In England, the flowers for the Church were grown under the special care of the Sacristan, and as early as the ninth century there was a “gardina sacristÆ” at Winchester.[1] Miss Amherst gives a most careful description of the several gardens into which the whole monastery enclosures were often divided, and herbs were specially grown in the kitchen-garden and in the Infirmarian’s garden, the latter, of course, being devoted to herbs for healing. Many herbs were introduced by the Romans, among them Coriander, Chervil, Cumin, Featherfew, Fennel, Lovage, Mallow, Mint, Parsley, Rue and Mustard. Some of these are supposed to have died out after the Romans withdrew from England and have been re-introduced, but it is certain that they have been for a very long time cultivated in England. I cannot refrain from referring to a miracle, an account of which is quoted by Miss Amherst from Dugdale’s “Monasticon” (vol. i. p. 473, new ed.), which was wrought at the tomb of St Ethelreda—:

A “servant to a certain priest was gathering herbs in the garden on the Lord’s Day, when the wood in her hand, and with which she desired to pluck the herbs unlawfully, so firmly adhered (to her hand) that no man could pluck it out for the space of five years.” At the end of this time she was miraculously healed at the tomb, which was much revered by the people.

Banks and benches of mould, fronted with stone or brick, and planted on the top with sweet-smelling herbs, were made in all fifteenth-century gardens. Later, again, Bacon recommends alleys to be planted with “those which perfume the air most delightfully being trodden upon and crushed... to have the pleasure when you walk or tread.” In his “Pastime of Pleasure” (1554) Stephen Hawes speaks of:—

More modern still is the delightful notion of a sun-dial made of herbs and flowers, that will mark the time of day by the opening and closing of their blossoms. LinnÆus had such a dial, with each plant so placed that at each successive hour a flower should open or fold up. Ingram[2] gives an appropriate list for this purpose, beginning with Goats’ Beard, which he says opens at 3 A.M. and shuts at 9 A.M., and ending with Chickweed whose stars are not disclosed till 9.15 A.M., when they display themselves for exactly twelve hours. Andrew Marvell wrote these pretty lines on this device:—

The Quarterly for June 1842 quotes this charming description of a garden in which herbs were not disregarded. “Quaint devices of all kinds are found here. Here is a sun-dial of flowers arranged according to the time of day at which they open and close. Here are peacocks and lions in livery of Lincoln green. Here are berceaux and harbours, and covered alley and enclosures containing the primest of the carnations and cloves in set order, and miniature canals that carry down a stream of pure water to the fish ponds below.... From thence (the shrubbery) winds a path, the deliciÆ of the garden, planted with such herbs as yield their perfume when trodden upon and crushed.... It were tedious to follow up the long shady path not broad enough for more than two—the lovers’ walk.” The reviewer himself continues in a less sentimental strain, and his observations make a very proper introduction to a book on Herbs.

“The olitory or herb-garden is a part of our horticulture now comparatively neglected, and yet once the culture and culling of simples was as much a part of female education as the preserving and tying down of ‘rasps and apricocks.’ There was not a Lady Bountiful in the kingdom but made her dill-tea and diet-drink from herbs of her own planting; and there is a neatness and prettiness about our thyme, and sage, and mint and marjoram, that might yet, we think, transfer them from the patronage of the blue serge to that of the white muslin apron. Lavender and rosemary, and rue, the feathery fennel, and the bright blue borage, are all pretty bushes in their way, and might have a due place assigned to them by the hand of beauty and taste. A strip for a little herbary half-way between the flower and vegetable garden would form a very appropriate transition stratum and might be the means, by being more under the eye of the mistress, of recovering to our soups and salads some of the comparatively neglected herbs of tarragon, and French sorrel, and purslane, and chervil, and dill, and clary, and others whose place is now nowhere to be found but in the pages of the old herbalists. This little plot should be laid out, of course, in a simple, geometric pattern; and having tried the experiment, we can boldly pronounce on its success. We recommend the idea to the consideration of our lady-gardeners.”