THE COMMON FENNEL— continued. 
The versified fourteenth-century manuscript herbal, preserved at Stockholm 
and ascribed to John of Milan, which we have already quoted with reference to 
Fumitory, has much to say in praise of Fennel, beginning 
“ Fenel is herbe precyows — 
Good is his seed, so is his rote.’* 
The old beliefs in its virtues have been pleasantly enumerated by Longfellow in 
a poem of which the following are the two more important stanzas. 
u Above the lowly plants it towers, 
The fennel with its yellow flowers ; 
And in an earlier age than ours 
Was gifted with the wondrous powers — 
Lost vision to restore. 
u It gave men strength and fearless mood, 
And gladiators fierce and rude 
Mingled it with their daily food ; 
And he who battled and subdued 
A wreath of fennel wore.” 
Fennel is certainly a plant of classic renown, if for no other reason than that 
the plain of Marathon derived its name from the abundance of this plant, papaOov, 
marathon , being the Greek for Fennel. It was used in mediaeval times, with St. John’s- 
wort, in the midsummer rejoicings, put over the doors, strewn around the bed, or 
placed for purposes of divination under the pillow. As an old couplet has it : — 
“ Mirie it is in time of June 
When finil hangeth in town.” 
In cookery, Fennel has long been associated with fish and fasting. In “ Piers 
the Plowman ” we read of the necessity of 
“ A ferthynge-worth of fenel-seed 
For fastynge days ” ; 
and Culpeper, full three centuries later, explains that it 
“ consumes that phlegmatic humour which fish most plenteously afford and annoy the body with, benefitting this way because it 
is a herb of Mercury under Virgo and therefore bears antipathy to Pisces.” 
Even the use of Fennel as a garnish and sauce for cod or other fish seems to be 
going out of fashion ; and, save for the alleged importation of considerable quantities 
of the seed as a flavouring for gin, the plant may be said to have ceased to be put to 
any utilitarian purpose. It is, however, by no means unornamental : it will grow in 
any ordinary garden soil, preferring, perhaps, a sunny situation, and can be readily 
propagated either by division in autumn or by seed sown in spring. 
The name is almost certainly a diminutive from feenum , hay, whether merely 
from a suggested comparison of the smell of the plant with that of new-mown hay 
or from its use, like fenugreek and dill, to improve the smell of musty or inferior 
hay. From its original form the name has not departed very widely. We have a 
Mediaeval Latin Fanculum. Turner, in his “ Libellus de re herbaria” (i 538), spells 
it Fcenell and Fyncle . In his “ Names of Herbes,” ten years later, he writes : — 
“ Feniculum is called in greke Marathon, in english Fenel or fenkel, in duch Fenchel, in french Fenoul.” 
Ray gives the alternative spelling Finck/e, and the modern French is written Fenouil. 
