142 THE BOOK OF HERBS 



especially with rosemary (to whom it seems to have been 

 a sort of twin) that a brief extract from its interesting 

 history must be made. Herrick's verses show that both 

 for weddings and decorations, rosemary and bays were 

 paired together — bays being also gilded at weddings — 

 and Brand quotes some lines from the " Wit's Inter- 

 preter " to show that alike at funerals, they were 

 fellows : — 



Shrouded she is from top to toe, 

 With Lillies which all o'er her grow, 

 Instead of bays and rosemary. 



And Coles says, " Cypresse garlands are of great 

 account at funeralls amongst the gentiler sort, but rose- 

 mary and bayes are used by the commons both at funeralls 

 and weddings." Parkinson's testimony is eloquent : 

 " It serveth to adorne the house of God, as well as of 

 man ; to procure warmth, comfort, and strength to the 

 limmes of men and women by bathings and anoyntings 

 out, and by drinks, etc., inward : to season the vessels 

 wherein are preserved our meates, as well as our drinkes ; 

 to crown or encircle as with a garland the heads of the 

 living, and to sticke and decke forth the bodies of the 

 dead; so that from the cradle to the grave we have still use 

 of, we have still need of it." No one could give higher 

 praise to its natural virtues, but in other countries, it was 

 endowed with supernatural ones. " Neyther falling sick- 

 ness, neyther devyll, wyll infest or hurt one in that place 

 where a bay-tree is. The Romans call it the Plant of 

 the Good Angell." ^ On the contrary, the withering of 

 bay-trees was a very Ul omen, and a portent of death. 

 Canon Ellacombe says this superstition was imported 

 from Italy, but it seems to have taken root in England. 

 Shakespeare mentions it in Richard II., as if it were 

 no new idea ; and Evelyn tells us, as if he were adding 

 a fresh fact to a store of common knowledge, that in 



1 " Book of Notable Things," C. Lupton. 



