The sacred Virgin’s well, her moss most sweet and rare Against infectious damps, for pomander to wear.
The pomander developed into being a little scent-case, elaborately made. Mr Dillon describes a silver one of the sixteenth century which he saw in a collection. It was made to be hung by a chain from the girdle, and though “no larger than a plum, contains eight compartments inscribed as follows: ambra, moscheti (musk), viola, naransi (orange), garofalo (gillyflowers), rosa, cedro, jasmins.” Sweet-scented plants were reduced to “sweete pouthers,” and many were distilled into “sweete waters” and “sweete washing waters,” or helped to make “washing balls.” Orange-flower water is spoken of as “a great perfume for gloves, to wash them, or instead of Rose-water,” and less expensive distillations must have contented more economical housewives. Parkinson tells us of sweet marjoram being put into “sweete bags,” and costmary flowers and lavender tied up in small bundles for their “sweet sent and savour.” Regarding “sweet water” there is a delightful description in Ben Jonson’s Masque _Chloridia_, “Enter Rain, presented by five persons... their hair flagging as if they were wet, and in the hands, balls full of sweet water, which as they dance, sprinkle all the room.”
The following entry is made among “Queen Elizabeth’s Annual Expences”:--
Makers of hearb bowres and planters of trees Fee, £25 Stillers of Waters „ 40 John Kraunckwell and his wife, 1584.
These offices must have been of considerable importance, for when money went much further than it does nowadays, an annual fee of £40 for “stilling waters” was a high one.
For never resting time leads summer on To hideous winter, and confounds him there; Sap check’d with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’ershow’d, and bareness everywhere. Then, were not summer’s distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was. But flowers distill’d, though they with winter meet Lese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
Among some charming recipes Mrs Roundell gives a charming one for “Dorothea Roundell’s Sweet-Jar.” But, perhaps, even sweeter is the next recipe, called simply Sweet-Jar.