In strewing of these herbs... with bounteous hands and free,
The healthful balm and mint from their full laps do fly.
Polyolbion, Song xv.
Sunflowers and marigolds and mint beset us,
Moths white as stitchwort that had left its stem,
... Loyal as sunflowers we will not swerve us,
We’ll make the mints remembered spices serve us
For autumn as in spring.
N. Hopper.
“Mint,” says De la Quintinye, “is called in French Balm,” which sounds rather confusing; but Evelyn says it is the “Curled Mint, M. Sativa Crispa,” that goes by this name. Mint was also called “Menthe de Notre Dame,” and in Italy, “Erba Santa Maria,” and in Germany, “Frauen Münze,” though this name is also applied to costmary. This herb used to be strewn in churches. All the various kinds of it were thought to be good against the biting of serpents, sea-scorpions, and mad dogs, but violently antagonistic to the healing processes of wounds. “They are extreme bad for wounded people, and they say a wounded man that eats Mints, his wound will never be cured, and that is a long day! But they are good to be put into Baths.”[28] The “gentler tops of Orange Mint” (Mentha citrata?) are recommended “mixed with a Salad or eaten alone, with the juyce of Orange and a little Sugar.”
The mint we commonly use is Mentha Viridis or Spear Mint. “Divers have held for true, that Cheeses will not corrupt, if they be either rubbed over withe the juyce or a decoction of Mints, or they laid among them.” It has been said, too, that an infusion of mint will prevent the rapid curdling of milk. Being dried, mint was much used to put with pennyroyal into puddings, and also among “pease that are boyled for pottage.” The last is one of the few uses that survives. Parkinson complains of all sorts of mints, that once planted in a garden they are difficult to get rid of!
Cat Mint, or Nep (Nepeta Cataria) is eaten in Tansies. “According to Hoffman the root of the Cat Mint, if chewed, will make the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome.”[29]
Pepper Mint is still retained, as is Spear Mint, in the British Pharmacopœia. “The leaves have an intensely pungent aromatic taste resembling that of pepper, and accompanied with a peculiar sensation of coldness” (Thornton).
[28] Culpepper.
[29] Folkard.