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." 



