* Many of the holiday-makers carry packets of basil leaves and flowers, which they place upon the grave of the Mother Pilgrim, silently repeating as they do so the 'Fatiha' or prayers for the dead.

The bitterness of his own failure made him call his wife a basil plant"a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains."

Boccaccio and Keats have made the name of the sweet basil sound pleasantly in the ears of many people who know nothing of botany.