POT-HERBS 39 



Easter; and it is interesting to notice that in the 

 Diet-rolls of St. Swithun's Monastery at Winchester, 

 which belong to the end of the fifteenth century, we 

 come across the entry " tansey-tarte." It has been 

 said that the use of tansy cakes at this season was 

 to strengthen the digestion after what an old writer 

 calls " the idle conceit of eating fish and pulse for 

 forty days in Lent"; and it is certain that this was 

 the virtue attributed to the plant by the old herbalists. 

 "The herb fried with eggs, which is called a Tansy," 

 says Culpeper, "helps to digest and carry away those 

 bad humours that trouble the stomach." It seems, 

 however, more probable that the custom of eating 

 tansy-cakes at Easter-time was rather associated with 

 the teaching of that festival, the name " tansy " being 

 a corruption of a Greek word meaning " immortality." 



