Sometimes the plant was associated with rue as when in "The Winter's Tale"[72] Perdita says,
Give me those flowers, Dorcas:—reverend sirs,
For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour the whole winter through.
[72] Act IV, Scene III.
Most important was rosemary at Christmas-tide. It had a place among the holly, bay, ivy, and mistletoe to which it added its peculiar and delicious perfume. Moreover, it was said that rosemary brought happiness to those who used it among the Christmas decorations.
Rosemary also garlanded that most important dish of ceremony—the boar's head, which the butler (or sewer) bore into the hall of great houses and famous institutions, like the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and the City Companies, on a silver dish, preceded by a flourish of trumpets. The carol he sung began:
The boar's head in hand bring I,
With garland gay and rosemary.
Lyte said: "Rosemary comforteth the brain and restoreth speech, especially the conserve made of the flowers thereof with sugar." Worn on the person it was thought to strengthen the memory and to make the wearer successful in everything. The famous Hungary-water, so favorite a perfume in the days of Elizabeth and after, was distilled from rosemary. The leaves were used as a flavor in cooking (just as the Italians use it to-day). Placed in chests and wardrobes, rosemary preserved clothing from insidious moth. According to astrologers, rosemary was an herb of the sun.
"The common Rosemary (Libanotis Coronaria sive Rosmarinum vulgare) is so well known," says Parkinson, "through all our land, being in every woman's garden, that it were sufficient to name it as an ornament among other sweet herbs and flowers in our gardens, seeing every one can describe it; but that I may say something of it, it is well observed, as well in this our Land (where it hath been planted in Noblemen's and great men's gardens against brick walls) as beyond the Seas in the natural places where it groweth, that it riseth up unto a very great height, with a great and woody stem of that compass that, being cloven out into thin boards, it hath served to make lutes, or such-like instruments, and here with carpenter's rules and to divers other purposes, branching out into divers and sundry arms that extend a great way and from them again into many other smaller branches whereon are set at several distances at the joints, many very narrow long leaves, green above and whitish underneath, among which come forth toward the tops of the stalks, divers sweet gaping flowers, of a pale or bleak bluish color, many set together, standing in whitish husks. The whole plant as well, leaves as flowers, smelleth exceeding sweet.
"Rosemary is called by the ancient writers Libanotis, but with this difference, Stephanomatica, that is Coronararia, because there were other plants called Libanotis, that were for other uses, as this for garlands, where flowers and sweet herbs were put together. The Latins called it Rosmarinum. Some would make it to be Cueorum nigrum of Theophrastus, as they would make Lavender to be his Cueorum album, but Matthiolus hath sufficiently confuted that error.