ROSEMARY 



much used for weaving garlands, and 

 thus adorned the images of the Lares. 

 In the Middle Ages this aromatic and ever 

 green plant was s\'mbolic of love, of fidelity 

 and of death. Shakespeare, too, mentions it 

 as an emblem of fidelity, when he 

 makes distracted Ophelia sav "There's \^ 

 Rosemary, that's for remembrance ; 

 prav, love, remember". And again 

 we meet with it as a s}'mbol of 

 death in another of Shakespeare's 

 tragedies, when Friar Laurence exhorts 

 old Capulet to dry up his tears and 

 to la\' Rosemary on the ''fair corse" of 

 Juliet. In Germanv Rosemary used 

 at one time to be the favourite 

 llo\'\-er of the people and was ne\'er 

 absent from the smallest garden, 

 ISut noM'-a-da^'s this plant, which 

 has been enshrined in poetr^', is almost 

 unknown to them. In the countr^ 

 districts of (Germany brides 

 \^orc Rosemary in their hair 

 and carried it in their brida 

 boucjuets until well into the 

 sixteenth century'; and 

 the wedding guests also 

 crowned themselves with gar- 

 lands of Rosemar^". Later on 

 Rosemary- was supplanted by Myrtle, conana myrtifoHa. 



