Dill

Dill, Anethum graveolens, is a feathery aromatic annual of the carrot family, grown since antiquity for its seed and leaf. Its English name is generally traced to an Old Norse or Saxon word, dilla, to lull or soothe, recording its old domestic use to quiet fretful infants, a folk practice noted here as history. It is named among the herbs of the ancient world; the Gospel of Matthew lists dill among the small garden herbs the Pharisees scrupulously tithed, an image of attention to trifles at the expense of weightier matters.

Dill was important enough to European agriculture that Charlemagne's ninth-century estate ordinance, the Capitulare de villis, names it among the herbs every imperial garden was required to grow, a rare case of a kitchen herb entering government regulation. Its seed remains best known today for flavouring the brined dill pickle of central and eastern European and American Jewish cuisine, a use that carries the herb's old reputation for easing digestion into an entirely secular, everyday food, and the plant's Old Norse root gives related Scandinavian languages their own closely matching words for it, dill in both Swedish and Norwegian, a name that crossed into English largely unchanged.

Culpeper placed dill under Mercury, the planet of the airy, quick and communicative in his scheme, a fitting ruler for a light, fine-leaved, fast-growing herb. In European folk magic dill had a double edge: it was hung in the house and laid in the cradle to guard against witchcraft and the evil eye, and it was also an ingredient of charms to win love and to still a scolding tongue. A folk rhyme paired it with vervain as herbs that hinder witches of their will. These protective and calming meanings grow directly from the plant's soothing reputation and its clean, settling aroma.

In Scandinavian folk tradition dill was tucked into a bride's shoe or carried at a wedding for luck, and brewed as dill water it was a long-standing remedy given to colicky infants, a practice that survives today in commercial gripe water preparations, continuous folk medicine given here as history rather than guidance. Dioscorides and other classical physicians recommended dill for digestive complaints and to increase a nursing mother's milk, an ancient use that helped shape its later reputation as a herb particularly suited to infants and young mothers, a tradition of folk pharmacy repeated here as history and not as medical advice.