Here’s Rosemary for you, that’s for remembrance.—

Hamlet, iv. 5.

Rosemary’s for remembrance,
Between us day and night,
Wishing that I may always have
You present in my sight.

C. Robinson.

The double daisy, thrift, the button batchelor,
Sweet William, sops-in-wine, the campion; and to these
Some lavender they put, with rosemary and bays,
Sweet marjoram, with her like sweet basil rare for smell,
With many a flower, whose name were now too long to tell.

Polyolbion, Song xv.

Oh, thou great shepheard, Lobbin, how great is thy griefe?
Where bene the nosegays that she dight for thee?
The coloured chaplets wrought with a chiefe,
The knotted rush-rings and gilt rosmarie?

November, Shepheard’s Calender.—Spenser.

Rosemary has always been of more importance than any other herb, and more than most of them put together. It has been employed at weddings and funerals, for decking the church and for garnishing the banquet hall, in stage-plays, and in “swelling discontent,” of a too great reality; as incense in religious ceremonies, and in spells against magic; “in sickness and in health”; eminently as a symbol, and yet for very practical uses. It is quite an afterthought to regard it as a plant. In “Popular Antiquities,” Brand gives such an admirable account of it that one would like to quote in full, but must bear in mind the warning, quoted from “Eachard’s Observations,” in those pages: “I cannot forget him, who having at some time or other been suddenly cur’d of a little head-ache with a Rosemary posset, would scarce drink out of anything but Rosemary cans, cut his meat with a Rosemary knife.... Nay, sir, he was so strangely taken up with the excellencies of Rosemary, that he would needs have the Bible cleared of all other herbs and only Rosemary to be inserted.” At weddings it was often gilded or dipped in scented waters, or tied “about with silken ribbands of all colours.” Sometimes for want of it Broom was used. Mr Friend quotes an account of a sixteenth century “rustic bridal” at which “every wight with hiz blu buckeram bridelace upon a branch of green broom—because Rosemary iz skant thear—tyed on hiz leaft arm.” A wedding sermon by Robert Hacket (1607) is also quoted: “Rosemary... which by name, nature, and continued use, man challengeth as properly belonging to himselfe. It overtoppeth all the flowers in the garden, boasting man’s rule. Another property of the Rosemary is, it affecteth the hart. Let this Rosmarinus, this flower of men, ensigne of your wisdom, love and loyaltie, be carried not only in your hands, but in your heads and harts.” Ben Jonson says it was the custom for bridesmaids to present the bridegroom with “a bunch of Rosemary, bound with ribands,” on his first appearance on his wedding morn. Together with an orange stuck with cloves, it often served as a little New Year’s gift; and the same author mentions this in his Christmas Masque. The masque opens by showing half the players unready, and clamouring for missing properties; and Gambol, one of them, says, of New Year’s Gift: “He has an orange and Rosemary, but not a clove to stick in it.” A little later, New Year’s Gift enters, “in a blue coat, serving-man-like, with an orange and a sprig of Rosemary, gilt, on his head.” Wassel comes too, “like a neat sempster and songster, her page bearing a brown bowl drest with ribands and Rosemary before her.”

For less festive occasions it had other meanings: “As for Rosmarine, I lett it runne all over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance, and therefore to friendship; whence a sprig of it hath a dumb language that maketh it the chosen emblem of our funeral wakes and in our buriall grounds.” Sir Thomas More thought this, but others beside him “lett Rosmarine run all over garden walls,” though perhaps they had less sentiment about it; Hentzner (Travels) (1598) says that it was a custom “exceedingly common in England.” At Hampton Court, Rosemary was “so planted and nailed to the walls as to cover them entirely.”[74] The bushes were sometimes set “by women for their pleasure,[75] to grow in sundry proportions, as in the fashion of a cart, a peacock or such things as they fancy,” or the branches were twined amongst others to make an arbour. Brown refers to this:—