Parsley. 
(FESTIVITY.) 
A LTHOUGH modern florigraphists, swayed by the cir¬ 
cumstance of the ancients having frequently made sym¬ 
bolic use of this herb at their banquets, have adopted Parsley 
as the representative of festivity , with the nations of antiquity 
it was deemed typical of the most melancholy feelings. In 
Potter’s erudite “ Antiquities of Greece,” it is stated that of all 
the flowers and herbs used by the Greeks to decorate graves, 
none was in greater request than parsley; and this custom, 
observes our learned authority, gave birth to that despairing 
proverb, when speaking of one dangerously ill, “ that he has 
need of nothing but parsley;” which is in effect to say that he 
is a dying man, and nearly ready for the grave. Dead bodies 
were also strewed with sprigs of this herb: 
“ Garlands that o’er thy doors I hung, 
Hang withered now and crumble fast; 
Whilst parsley on thy fair form flung, 
Now tells my heart that all is past,” 
cries the forlorn youth over the lifeless form of his betrothed. 
Plutarch relates that when Timoleon was marching his troops 
up some ascending ground, whence he expected to obtain a 
view of the -forces and strength of the Carthaginians, he was 
met by a number of mules laden with parsley ; which circum¬ 
stance, says the historian, was looked upon by his soldiers as 
an ill-omened and fatal occurrence, that being the very herb 
wherewith the sepulchres of the dead were adorned. 
These funeral associations notwithstanding, parsley was also 
held in high repute by the Greeks for festive and other pleasant 
events, as far back as the times of Homer. That poet, in the 
fifth book of the “Odyssey,” uses it, in conjunction with the 
song-honoured violet, to adorn the precincts of Calypso’s arbour: 
« In verdant meads, and thriving all around, 
Sweet violets and parsley deck the ground.” 
