[61] “History of the Coronation of George IV.” R. HUISH.
[62] Published _Nineteenth Century_, June 1902.
As I have seen upon a bridal day, Full many maids clad in their best array, In honour of the bride come with their flaskets Fill’d full with flowers: others, in wicker-baskets Bring from the marish, rushes to o’erspread The ground whereon to church the lovers tread.
Drayton, too, alludes to this practice in the “Polyolbion.”
Some others were again as seriously employ’d In strewing of those herbs, at bridals us’d that be Which everywhere they throw with bounteous hands and free. The healthful balm and mint from their full laps do fly.
And gives a long list of wedding flowers, of which Meadow-sweet (sometimes called bridewort) is one. Gilded Rosemary, or sprigs of Rosemary dipped in sweet waters were used, and Brand gives an account of a wedding where the bride was “led to church between two sweet boys with bride-laces and rosemary tied to their silken sleeves.”[63] Nosegays, too, were gathered for weddings, and Brand quotes a remarkable and cynical passage from “The Plaine Country Bridegroom,” by Stephens: “He shews neere affinitie betwixt marriage and hanging, and to that purpose he provides a great nosegay and shakes hands with everyone he meets, as if he were preparing for a condemned man’s voyage.” Herrick’s lines beginning, “Strip her of spring-time, tender, whimpering maids,” are too well known to repeat, but they tell very prettily which flowers were appropriated to the married and which to the unmarried. Dyer tells us that this custom of strewing them is still kept up in Cheshire, with occasional sad results. Often, the flowers that were strewn were emblematical, and if the bride chanced to be unpopular, she stepped her way to church over flowers whose meanings were the reverse of complimentary!
Drayton’s contemporaries were more amiable.
Who now a posie pins not in his cap? And not a garland baldrick-wise doth wear, Some, of such flowers as to his hand doth hap Others, such as secret meanings bear.
He, from his lass, him lavender hath sent Shewing her love, and doth requital crave, Him rosemary, his sweetheart whose intent, Is that he her should in remembrance have.