A thousands souls to death and deadly night.”
Like the Gilliflower, the Rose was occasionally taken as a quit-rent; thus we find in 1576 that the then Bishop of Ely granted to Sir Christopher Hatton the greater portion of Ely House, Holborn, for a term of twenty-one years, on consideration of the tenant paying annually a red Rose for the garden and gate-house, and giving the Bishop free access to the gardens, with the right of gathering twenty bushels of Roses every year.
In the East, the Rose is an object of peculiar esteem. The Oriental poets have united the beauteous Rose with the melodious nightingale; and the flower is fabled to have burst forth from its bud at the song of the warbler of the night. The poet Jami says—“You may place a handful of fragrant herbs and flowers before the nightingale; yet he wishes not in his constant heart for more than the sweet breath of his beloved Rose.”
“Though rich the spot
With every flower this earth has got,
What is it to the nightingale,
If there his darling Rose is not?”—Moore.
Persia is the veritable land of Roses: nowhere does the queen of flowers reign in such glorious majesty. Zoroaster himself, the apostle of the Persians, and the introducer of the worship of the sacred fire, is connected in a legend with the Rose. An astrologer having predicted the birth of a child who would dethrone the King of Babylon, the monarch at once gave orders for the assassination of all women who were about to become mothers. Thousands were slain; but one gave birth secretly to the future prophet. This having come to the King’s ear, he sent for the child, and tried to kill him with his own hand, but his arm was withered on the spot. Alarmed, and furious with rage, he had the babe placed on a lighted stake, but the burning pile changed into a bed of Roses, on which the little one lay quietly sleeping. Some persons present saved a portion of the fire, which has been kept up to the present day in memory of this great miracle. The king made two other attempts to destroy Zoroaster, but his temerity was punished miraculously by a gnat, which entered his ear and caused his death. A festival is held in Persia, called the Feast of the Roses, which lasts the whole time they are in bloom.
“And all is ecstacy, for now
The valley holds its feast of Roses;