Читать книгу The Book of Herbs - Rosalind Northcote - Страница 27

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Hyssop, as an herb most prime,

Here is my wreath bestowing.

Muses Elysium.—Drayton.

Iago. “Our bodies are our gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme … why the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.” Othello, i. 3.

Parkinson opens his “Theatre of Plants” with the words: “From a Paradise of pleasant Flowers, I am fallen (Adam like) to a world of Profitable Herbs and Plants … and first of the Hisopes. … Among other uses, the golden hyssop was of so pleasant a colour, that it provoked every gentlewoman to wear them in their heads and on their arms with as much delight as many fine flowers can give.” It is a hardy, evergreen shrub, with a strong aromatic odour. The flowers are blue, and appear more or less from June till October. The Ussopos of Dioscorides was named from azob, a holy herb, because it was used for cleansing sacred places, and this is interesting when one thinks of Scriptural allusions to the plant, although the hyssop of the Bible is most probably not our hyssop. The identity of that plant has occasioned much divergence of opinion, and a decision, beyond reach of criticism, has not yet been reached. Mazes were sometimes planted with “Marjoram and such like, or Isope and Time. It may eyther be sette with Isope and Time or with Winter Savory and Time, for these endure all the Winter thorowe greene.”[25]

It was more often used for “Broths and Decoctions” than for salads, but the tops and flowers were sometimes powdered and strewn on the top of one. It is not much used nowadays, but I once saw an excitable Welsh cook seize on a huge bunch of “dear Hyssop” with exclamations of joy. In the East, “some plants diverted fascination by their smell,”[26] and hyssop was one of these, and as a protection against the Evil Eye, was hung up in houses.

[25] “Art of Gardening,” Hill, 1563.

[26] Friend.