From Douce’s Collection of Carols.
On Easter Sunday be the pudding seen
To which the Tansey lends her sober green.
The Oxford Sausage.
Wherever any grassy turf is view’d,
It seems a tansie all with sugar strew’d.
From Shipman’s Poems.
The last lines occur in a description of the frost in 1654. None of these quotations refer to the plant alone; but to that kind of cake or fritter called taansie, and of which Tansy leaves formed an ingredient. Tansy must be “eaten young, shred small with other herbes, or else, the juiyce of it and other herbes, fit for the purpose beaten with egges and fried into cakes (in Lent and in the Spring of the year) which are usually called Tansies.” Though Parkinson speaks of their being eaten in Lent (as they no doubt were), the special day that they were in demand was Easter Day, and of this practice Culpepper has a good deal to say. Tansies were then eaten as a remembrance of the bitter herbs eaten by the Jews at the Passover. “Our Tansies at Easter have reference to the bitter herbs, though at the same time ’twas always the fashion for a man to have a gammon of bacon, to show himself to be no Jew.” This little glimpse of an old practice comes from Selden’s Table Talk and the idea of taking this means to declare one’s self a Christian is really delightful. I must quote again from Brand to show another very extraordinary Easter Day custom. “Belithus, a ritualist of ancient times, tells us that it was customary in some churches for the Bishops and Archbishops themselves to play with the inferior clergy at hand-ball, and this, as Durand asserts, even on Easter Day itself. Why they should play at hand-ball at this time rather than any other game, Bourne tells us he has not been able to discover; certain it is, however, that the present custom of playing at that game on Easter Holidays for a tansy-cake has been derived from thence.” Stool-ball was apparently a most popular amusement and Lewis in his English Presbyterian Eloquence criticises the tenets of the Puritans, and observes with disapproval that all games where there is “any hazard of loss are strictly forbidden; not so much as a game of stool-ball for a tansy is allowed.” From a collection of poems called “A Pleasant Grove of New Fancies,” 1657, Brand extracts the following verses:—
At stool-ball, Lucia, let us play
For sugar, cakes and wine
Or for a tansey let us pay,
The loss be thine or mine.
If thou, my dear, a winner be,
At trundling of the ball,
The wager thou shalt have and me,
And my misfortunes all.
Let us hope that the stake was handsomer than it sounds! Brand quotes another very curious practice in which Tansies have a share, once existing in the North. On Easter Sunday, the young men of the village would steal the buckles off the maidens’ shoes. On Easter Monday, the young men’s shoes and buckles were taken off by the young women. On Wednesday, they are redeemed by little pecuniary forfeits, out of which an entertainment, called a Tansey Cake, is made, with dancing. One cannot help wondering how this cheerful, if somewhat peculiar custom originated! In course of time Tansies came to be eaten only about Easter-time and the practice seems to have acquired at one period the lustre almost of a religious rite in which superstition had a considerable share. Coles (1656) and Culpepper (1652) rebel against this and show with force and clearness the advantages of eating Tansies throughout the spring. Coles ignores the ceremonial reasons and says that the origin of eating it in the spring is because Tansy is very wholesome after the salt fish consumed during Lent, and counteracts the ill-effects which “the moist and cold constitution of winter” has made on people... “though many understand it not and some simple people take it for a matter of superstition to do so.” This shows plainly that the idea of eating Tansies only at Easter, was pretty widely spread. Culpepper as usual is more incisive. He first gives the same reason that Coles does for eating Tansies in the spring; then: “At last the world being over-run with Popery, a monster called superstition pecks up his head, and... obscures the bright beams of knowledge by his dismal looks; (physicians seeing the Pope and his imps, selfish, began to do so too), and now, forsooth, Tansies must be eaten only on Palm and Easter Sundays and their neighbour days. At last superstition being too hot to hold, and the selfishness of physicians walking in the clouds; after the friars and monks had made the people ignorant, the superstition of the time, was found out by the virtue of the herb hidden and now is almost, if not altogether left off. Scarcely any physicians are beholden to none so much as they are to monks and friars; for wanting of eating this herb in spring, maketh people sickly in summer, and that makes work for the physician. If it be against any man or woman’s conscience to eat Tansey in the spring, I am as unwilling to burthen their conscience, as I am that they should burthen mine; they may boil it in wine and drink the decoction, it will work the same effect.” “The Pope and his imps” is a grand phrase! A more militant Protestant than Culpepper it would be difficult to find, even in these days.
From other writers, it seems that the phase of associating Tansies exclusively with Easter, must have worn itself out, for we find many descriptions of them on distinctly secular occasions. At the Coronation Feast of James II. and his Queen, a Tansie was served among the 1445 “Dishes of delicious Viands” provided for it, and I must quote some of the others:—“Stag’s tongues, cold; Andolioes; Cyprus Birds, cold and Asparagus; a pudding, hot; Salamagundy; 4 Fawns; 10 Oyster pyes, hot; Artichokes; an Oglio, hot; Bacon, Gammon and Spinnage; 12 Stump Pyes; 8 Godwits; Morels; 24 Puffins; 4 dozen Almond Puddings, hot; Botargo; Skirrets; Cabbage Pudding; Lemon Sallet; Taffeta Tarts; Razar Fish; and Broom Buds, cold.”[52] These are only a very few out of an immense variety that are also named.