Were the dill and "sweetest fennel" chosen Sabbath favorites for their
old-time virtues and powers?

"Vervain and dill
Hinder witches of their ill."

And of the charmed fennel Longfellow wrote:--

"The fennel with its yellow flowers
That, in an earlier age than ours,
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore."

And traditions of mysterious powers, dream-influencing, spirit-exorcising,
virtue-awakening, health-giving properties, hung vaguely around the
southernwood and made it specially fit to be a Sabbath-day posy. These
traditions are softened by the influence of years into simply idealizing,
in the mind of every country-bred New Englander, the peculiar refreshing
scent of the southernwood as a typical Sabbath-day fragrance. Half a
century ago, the pretty feathery pale-green shrub grew in every country
door-yard, humble or great, throughout New England; and every church-going
woman picked a branch or spray of it when she left her home on Sabbath
morn. To this day, on hot summer Sundays, many a staid old daughter of
the Puritans may be seen entering the village meeting-house, clad in
a lilac-sprigged lawn or a green-striped barege,--a scanty-skirted,
surplice-waisted relic of past summers,--with a lace-bordered silk cape
or a delicate, time-yellowed, purple and white cashmere scarf on her bent
shoulders, wearing on her gray head a shirred-silk or leghorn bonnet, and
carrying in her lace-mitted hand a fresh handkerchief, her spectacle-case
and well-worn Bible, and a great sprig of the sweet, old-fashioned