OF SUNDRY HERBS 95 



herb, but few of the old herbalists have much to say in its 

 favour. Turner recommends the seed as being efficacious 

 " against the bitings of the shrew-mouse and other venemous 

 beasts." Folkard tells us that the London Rocket first 

 appeared in the metropolis in the spring succeeding the 

 Great Fire of London, when young rockets were seen every- 

 where among the ruins, where they increased so marvel- 

 lously that in the summer the enormous crop crowding over 

 the surface of London " created the greatest astonishment 

 and wonder." 



ROSE 



" Let us crown ourselves with Roses before they be 

 withered." Wisdom, II. i. 



" Dry roses put to the nose to smell do comfort the 

 brayne and the herte and quickeneth the spyryte." 

 R. Banckes, The Crete Herball, 1525. 



" Of their sweet death are sweetest odours made." 

 SHAKESPEARE. 



" Rose I Thou art the fondest child 

 Of dimpled spring the wood nymph wild." 



THOMAS MOORE. 



Our ancestors prized the rose above all for its sweet scent, 

 and in spite of the magnificence of our modern roses, the 

 old-fashioned housewife would have had none of them in 

 her garden. For rose-water she needed the cabbage and 

 damask roses, and these, with musk and Provence roses 

 and sweet-briar, are the only roses for a herb garden. 

 England's association with the rose is of very ancient date, 

 for did not Pliny doubt whether the country was called 

 Albion from the white cliffs, or the white roses which grew 

 here in such glorious abundance ? Like gillyflowers, another 

 favourite with our ancestors of the Middle Ages, roses were 

 often accepted as quit rent. In 1576 the Bishop of Ely 

 granted to Sir Christopher Hatton the greater portion of 

 Ely House, Holborn, on condition that the latter paid yearly 

 a red rose, and the Bishop had also the right of free access 

 to the garden with the privilege of gathering twenty bushels 

 of roses every year. The Baillee des Roses existed in France 



