HERBS USED IN DECORATIONS, ETC. 129 



The double daisy, thrift, the button batchelor, 



Sweet William, sops-in-wine, the campion ; and to these 



Some lavender they put, with rosemary and bays. 



Sweet marjoram, with her like sweet basil rare for smell, 



With many a flower, whose name were now too long to tell. 



PolijotbioTi^ Song XV. 

 Oh, thou great shepheard, Lobbin, how great is thy griefe? 



Where bene the nosegays that she dight for thee ? 

 The coloured chaplets wrought with a chiefe. 



The knotted rush-rings and gilt rosmarie? 



November, ShcphearSs Calender Spenser. 



Rosemary has always been of more importance than 

 any other herb, and more than most of them put 

 together. It has been employed at weddings and 

 funerals, for decking the church and for garnishing 

 the banquet hall, in stage-plays, and in " swelling dis- 

 content," of a too great reality ; as incense in religious 

 ceremonies, and in spells against magic ; "in sickness 

 and in health " ; eminently as a symbol, and yet for very 

 practical uses. It is quite an afterthought to regard 

 it as a plant. In "Popular Antiquities," Brand gives 

 such an admirable account of it that one would like 

 to quote in full, but must bear in mind the warning, 

 quoted from " Eachard's Observations" in those pages : 

 " I cannot forget him, who having at some time or 

 other been suddenly cur'd of a little head-ache with 

 a Rosemary posset, would scarce drink out of anything 

 but Rosemary cans, cut his meat with a Rosemary 

 knife. . . . Nay, sir, he was so strangely taken up 

 with the excellencies of Rosemary, that he would needs 

 have the Bible cleared of all other herbs and only 

 Rosemary to be inserted." At weddings it was often 

 gilded or dipped in scented waters, or tied " about 

 with silken ribbands of all colours." Sometimes for 

 want of it Broom was used. Mr Friend quotes an 

 account of a sixteenth century " rustic bridal " at 

 which " every wight with hiz blu buckeram bridelace 

 upon a branch of green broom — because Rosemary iz 



