LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 19 



and I thinke yet doth grow in great plenty in His 

 Majestie's private garden at White-Hall. And 

 this is called Spike, without addition, and some- 

 times Lavander Spike : and of this by distillation 

 is made that vulgarly known and vsed oile which 

 is tearmed Oleum Spicce or oile of Spike"] — the 

 sentences within brackets being Johnson's own 

 addition in 1633 when Charles I. was king. A 

 list of medicinal virtues follows, but it is Parkinson, 

 not Gerarde, who tells us that the heads of the 

 flowers " are much vsed to bee put among limen 

 and apparrell " — a custom handed down from 

 mother to daughter in English homes for many a 

 century after. 



As we let our thoughts wander back to the 

 England of old, how well we may picture to our- 

 selves some snugly thatched and roomy homestead 

 with the old-world garden shut in by its sheltering 

 yew hedge, where, in the glow of the sunshine 

 of an August afternoon, the lavender bushes are 

 breathing out their fragrance on the hot quivering 

 air, and the bees change their drone of deep con- 

 tent to an angry hum, as the house-maidens come 

 down the path and begin to cut the long spikes 

 from which such bounteous stores of honey might 

 have been gathered. Within doors, the grey 



