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:--
Within an arbour, shadow’d by a vine Mix’d with Rosemary and Eglantine.
Rosemary was one of the chief funeral herbs. Herrick says:--
Grow it for two ends, it matters not at all, Be’t for my bridall or my buriall.
Sprigs of it were distributed to the mourners before they left the house, which they carried to the churchyard and threw on the coffin when it had been lowered into the grave. In _Romeo and Juliet_ Friar Laurence says:--
Dry up your tears and stick your Rosemary On this fair corse
Brand quotes passages from Gay, Dekker, Cartwright, Shirley, Misson, Coles, “The British Apollo” and “The Wit’s Interpreter,” which connect Rosemary with burials; and it was also planted on graves.