^6 THE BOOK OF HERBS 



bringing a plant or two and throwing them down, that 

 his master might pick them up if he chose, but he would 

 not bring them to him for anything." ^ 



The " earliest known, really original work on garden- 

 ing, written in English," is. Miss Amherst says, "a 

 treatise in verse," by Mayster Ion Gardener. It 

 consists of a prologue and eight divisions, and one of 

 these is devoted to "Perselye" alone. The manuscript 

 in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, that she 

 quotes from, was written about I440, but it is thought 

 that the poem is older. Parsley was "much used in all 

 sortes of meates, both boyled, roasted and fryed, stewed, 

 etc., and being green it serveth to lay upon sundry 

 meates. It is also shred and stopped into powdered 

 beefe. . . . The roots are put into broth, or boyled or 

 stewed with a legge of Mutton . . . and are of a very 

 good rellish, but the roots must be young and of the 

 first year's growth." ^ 



The seeds of parsley were sometimes put into cheese to 

 flavour it, and Timbs ("Things not generally Known") 

 tells this anecdote : " Charlemagne once ate cheese 

 mixed with parsley seeds at a bishop's palace, and liked 

 it so much that ever after he had two cases of such 

 cheese sent yearly to Aix-la-Chapelle." 



In the edition of Tusser's " Five Hundred Points of 

 Good Husbandry," edited by Mavor, it is noted, 

 "Skim-milk cheese, however, might be advantageously 

 mixed with seeds, as is the practice in Holland." Though 

 not strictly relevant, these lines taken by Mrs Milne- 

 Home ("Stray Leaves from a Border- Gar den") from 

 the family records of the Earls of Marchmont, must find 

 place. They were written by a boy of eight or nine, 

 on the occasion of his elder brother's birthday. 



This day from parsley-bed, I'm sure, 

 Was dug my elder brother, Moore, 



* Friend. ^ Parkinson. 



