LAVENDER AND ROSEMARY 23 



lavender. It offers, also, a curious instance of 

 gradual change in name -form, upon which, by 

 going back to original derivation, we get an 

 interesting sidelight. The native home of rose- 

 mary is on both coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, 

 and in t|ie days long before it was carried thence, 

 most likely as physic merchandise, to British shores, 

 the shrub was known as rosmarine, or, in Old 

 French, romarin. 



It may be found so called in the literature of the 

 fourteenth century — rosmarine, the bush of the 

 sea-spray. But in process of time, the word, pass- 

 ing into our English tongue, was clipped as such 

 words often become in familiar speech, and the final 

 letters dropped away, leaving it rosmari. By and 

 by, popular sentiment stepped in, and either on 

 account of the incense-Uke scent of its leafage, or 

 the hue of its pale-blue flowers, the Virgin's colour 

 — the plant was dedicated, as so many others in 

 those days were dedicated, and it became the Rose 

 of Mary, as it remains to this day. In truth, it has 

 no more affinity with a rose than the rose of a 

 watering-pot, which has the same Latin name -root 

 of ros, meaning dew. Yet even as it stands thus 

 dedicated to-day, rosemary dates back for nearly 

 five hundred years as an English garden-plant, nor 



