^ The ^Aromatic Herbs {% 



you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure 

 when you walk or tread.' Thyme in old flower language is 

 the symbol of courage, and in Lancastrian days ladies 

 embroidered a bee hovering over a sprig of thyme on the 

 scarves they gave their knights. In Elizabethan days 

 thymes were used in many ways. Parkinson tells us : 

 ' We preserve them with all the care wee can in our 

 gardens, for the sweete and pleasant scents and varieties 

 they yeeld. . . . There is no herbe almost of more use 

 in the houses both of high and low, rich and poore, 

 both for inward and outward occasions ; outwardly for 

 bathings among other hot herbes, and among other sweete 

 herbes for strewings ; inwardly in most sort of broths with 

 Rosemary, as also with other farsing herbes, and to make 

 sawce for divers sorts both fish and flesh. ... It is held 

 by divers to bee a speedy remedy against the sting of a 

 Bee, being bruised and layd thereon.' And one recalls 

 that quaint passage in Bullein's Bulwarke of Defence, 

 which Bulwarke is kepte with Hillarius the Gardiner (1562), 

 \ There be no flowers growing in fields or gardens better 

 beloved of Bees than the flowers of Thyme. . . . And 

 thus I do conclude of Time, desiring God that we may 

 spende the tyme well to his glory, and profite of our 

 neighbour : for tyme cannot be called againe, but by 

 litle and litle slippes away ; they which godly observe the 

 tyme, in tyme to come shall receive the fruictes of theyr 

 owne labours, wyth happy lives, quiet mindes, and blessed 

 endes : whereas the shamefull abuses of time, and mis- 

 users of themselves, although evyll spent tyme seeme well 

 unto them, yet theyr lives be wicked, their labor fruict- 

 lesse, and their end horrible ; as once shall appeare when 

 death doeth come, whych is the end of every tyme.' 



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