New Free Rice--Ninth Pleasurable Essay

Actually, cordial is not a word in freerice.com, but I ran into it in this brief 1603 medical quotation and decided to clarify it for us: "If it be neither cordiall, nor stomacall." I knew the word cordial had something to do with being polite and with a drink, called a cordial, but it took me a moment to sort out the meaning here. Then, it dawned on me. Of course, it relates to "the heart" (Latin cors/cordis). Cordial can be an adjective or a noun. It meant, at first, "of or belonging to the heart." "Do you have a cordial ailment?" would have been a good question to pose a four hundred years ago. Or, "The new ring she was sporting on her fourth finger presumed a cordial relationship of some kind.."

It was not a long journey from "belonging to the heart" to something that stimulates or comforts the heart. A cordial, then, is something that restores, revives, cheers. From 1533: "All thinges whiche be cordiall, that is to say, which do in any wise comfort the hart.." One might have a cordial julep (Milton) or a cordial wine (Coleridge). In Winter's Tale, Shakespeare could write: "This Affliction has a taste as sweet/ As any Cordiall comfort."

Nor is the distance great from cordial as "belonging to the heart" or cordial as "stimulating the heart" to cordial as "coming from the heart" or heartfelt, hearty, genuine, warm. "He gave a cordial greeting to his guests." Thus, where the heart is involved, cordial is not far away. In this cold, cold world of ours, let's look for opportunities to employ it, in many forms.

Dittany and Dittander

Speaking of the heart, the plant known as dittany, also known as Dittany of Crete (Origanum dictamnus), is called,in the Cretan dialect Erontas or love. Dittander, the freerice.com word, is a different plant--the Pepperwort--but isn't as interesting as dittany, for my purposes. So, dittany it will be.

Let's get to the love angle after we explain a little about the medicinal properties of this 10 inch-tall perennial plant. Picture is here. It received its name Dittany, as the OED says, because of its growing on the mountain Dicte on Crete. It has diuretic and emmenagogic virtues. That means, it helps expel liquids (usually unhealthy ones) from the body. We meet it in the late 14th century in English: "Diptannus..is of so grete vertue that it dryueth and putteth out yren out of the body, therfore beesyts smyte wyth arowes ete therof." That is, even the beasts used the plant to heal themselves after being wounded; it helped with the body's "flows" or eliminations. One quotation from the 16th century talks about its "vertue" in "staunch[ing]" the blood.

Dittany and Preachers

I love the way that 17th century Puritan and other Anglican preachers either invented new words, taken from the Latin or Greek, or used common terms as a means of making more precise and glorious the theological doctrines they exposited. In fact, if I ever were to dive into the world of Puritanism again, I might focus on the language of Puritanism and the way that these preachers invented words or took them from other areas of human investigation in order to drive home the truth of the Gospel. For example, just a few days ago, I was writing on infeftment (enfeoffment), an obscure word from Scots law. It means to give symbolical possession of heritable property. The Rev. John Willison (1680-1750), Scottish preacher, took over this techical term and applied it to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, where God gives believers in Christ "seisine and infeftment of all the benefits of the covenant."

Well, the Puritan preachers did the same thing for dittany, of all things. Picking up on the ability of dittany to expel noxious fluids from the body, perhaps caused by arrows (recall the quotation above), Bishop Joseph Hall wrote in a 1624 sermon:

"The shaft sticks still in thee;..None but the Sovereign Dittany of thy Saviour's Righteousness can drive it out."

Then, Archbishop (Dublin) Richard Trench, writing in the 19th century but clothing himself with the armor of 17th century vocabulary, could write, possibly indebted to Hall:

"The arrow which drinks up his spirit, there is no sovereign dittany which will cause it to drop from his side."

Isn't this a wonderfully insightful and suggestive use of language? Those opportunities to use language in this way, as well as humorously, are all around us...

Finishing on Dittany

But before finishing this little ditty on dittany, I want to return to the Cretan meaning of the word--"love." What is the connection of dittany to love? As this site says,

"Its local name in Crete ("love") is due to the fact that it likes to grow in very steep slopes on the rocky mountains of Crete. The young men used to show their courage and their love to their beloved ones by risking their lives picking it up and offering it to them."

Isn't that a great story? I can just hear it now, "Thomas was injured last night. How did he get hurt? Falling off the mountain. Why was he falling off the mountain? Gathering dittany." Many women tend to like heroic men, and almost all women like men who seem to think enough of them to go through acts of personal danger to do something kind for them. This isn't feminism "70s style," but it is the way life works.

Conclusion

Each essay can only provide a tiny scrap of life but this is the way we learn. We don't really learn by reading about the "Middle Ages" in an hour. We learn by mastering one or two facts, things about people, dates, ideas at a time. I think my learning is "ort-learning," named after the fairly rare word ort, which means a "scrap" or a "fragment." It was originally used to denote the "leavings" or fodder left by cattle after eating. Thus, it can mean a "piece of refuse." Shakespeare knew the word: "Let him have a beggar's orts to crave." But, this word also had a figurative usage (which has dropped out of our speech), meaning a fragment, especially of wisdom, wit or knowlege. That is the way I want to recover the word, and knowledge, today.

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