CHAPTER Xyi 
meetin’ seed and sabbath day posies 
(t I touched a thought, I know 
Has tantalized me many times. 
Help me to hold it ! First it left 
The yellowing Fennel run to seed.’* 
— Robert Browning. 
Y “thought” is the association of 
certain flowers with Sunday ; the 
fact that special flowers and leaves 
and seeds, Fennel, Dill, and 
Southernwood, were held to be 
fitting and meet to carry to the 
Sunday service. “Help me to hold it” — to re- 
cord those simple customs of the country-side ere 
they are forgotten. 
In the herb garden grew three free-growing plants, 
all three called indifferently in country tongue, 
“ meetin’ seed.” They were Fennel, Dill, and Cara- 
way, and similar in growth and seed. Caraway is 
shown on page 342. Their name was given because, 
in summer days of years gone by, nearly every woman 
and child carried to “ meeting ” on Sundays, bunches 
of the ripe seeds of one or all of these three plants, 
to nibble throughout the long prayers and sermon. 
It is fancied that these herbs were anti™soporific ? 
but I find no record of such power. On the con- 
34 1 
