A further post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival.

CHAPTER XI.

SUNDIALS: GARDEN ORNAMENTS: DOVES: PEACOCKS: BIRDS AND BEES.

The old-fashioned herb garden demands a sundial, for as Charles Lamb said: “Sundials are so ancient, Adam must have had one in Paradise.”

They were always to be found in monastery gardens, inscribed with Latin mottoes:

Hora est orandi. (It is time for prayer.)

Sic transit gloria mundi. (Thus passes the glory of the world.)

Dum lucem habetis credite in lucem. (While ye have light, believe in the light.)

These were all favourites, and so were the mottoes:

Every hour is the hour of prayer.
God is Light to me.

Herrick’s “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may” is still a popular sundial motto, and the Victorians liked “To-day is mine, to-morrow thine.”

On a sundial in a garden in Southern France I once saw a terse little Bonjour.

An admonitory motto is:

Take time, make time,
Find time, mind time,
Choose time, use time.

King Alfred’s maxim:

8 hours to sleep
8 hours in prayer,
8 hours for work
And all for the love of God,

would be a good motto, but perhaps a little bit too long. An appropriate sentiment for modern times would be:

Carpe, fugit (Seize it, it flies);

or Goethe’s lines:

“Haste comes from the evil one,
Leisure from God.”

In our own Hampshire garden there is an old Stuart dial bearing this verse:

Amidste ye floweres
I tell ye houres,

Time fades away
As flowers decay.
Beyonde ye tombe
Freshe floweres bloom.
So ye shall rise

Above ye skies.

Tudor gardeners sometimes made beautiful sundials formed of box-edgings cut into the proper numerals, with a clipped yew tree in the centre to act as gnomon.

Like everything else there is a right and a wrong way of erecting a sundial, and it cannot be put down anywhere as a mere garden ornament.

Choose a sunny spot on a sunny day away from over-shadowing trees, and when the pedestal has been placed firmly on the ground, fix the dial at noon, which will be one o’clock summer time. If possible choose one of the four days of the year – April 15th, June 14th, September 1st, December 25th [-] on which solar time and clock time are alike.

Place the dial on the top of the pedestal and make sure it is perfectly flat and rigid, and move it until the shadow of the gnomon faces direct upon noon time.

There are small studs let into holes round the dial, and these must be lifted out when the dial is in correct position and the places marked in the stone. Lift the dial, scoop out holes in the marks, and with a little Portland cement and water moisten the cavities. Replace the dial, fit the studs into the holes and set a weight on the top for a few hours. When the cement is set so is the sundial: set to record time eternally.

Garden ornaments were a great feature in old gardens and nearly all of them were beautiful and worthy of their lovely setting.

In the garden of a friend’s house, once an old water mill named in Domesday Book, a beautiful stone figure of St. Francis is the guardian spirit. A woodland stream sings eternally in this garden, so birds’ baths and drinking troughs are unnecessary. The figure of St. Francis, with a bird nestling on his shoulder, stands on an ancient mill stone, looking at the house whose hospitality is truly Franciscan; for all in trouble, poverty or sickness come knocking at the door and are received with open arms.

Few large gardens of the past were without a dovecote. Not the little thatched dovecote we see to-day, but noble buildings of stone that would house hundreds of birds.

These royal dovecotes are still occasionally seen near old mansions and ecclesiastical buildings, a reminder of the days when doves were kept more for utility purposes than for garden ornaments. In the Middle Ages no fresh meat, except the game brought in by the hunter, was to be had in winter, so the dovecotes were raided and their occupants came to a sad end in pigeon pies.

Herbs had their place in dove keeping, for, in the little doorways of the houses, sprigs of rue were hung up to keep evil from their portals.

Peacocks proudly strutted about Tudor gardens and were looked upon as watchmen as well as ornaments and pets, for when strangers appeared they often uttered their piercing cry.

The herb garden should be essentially a place set apart for our repose, and shared with those creatures symbolical of the soul, birds, butterflies and bees.

The common garden birds will make a sanctuary of a door step, and all birds seem to love the habitation of man. But they will not stand persecution, and the gardener who wants bird music as well as flowers and sweet scents in his garden must be prepared to let trees and bushes go unpruned until the nesting season is well over, for what the gardener abhors the birds delight in.

There are berried trees, lovely and decorative and beloved by the birds, that would form a natural thicket round the herb garden and provide sanctuary at the same time.

Blackthorn, hawthorn, wild cherry, dogwood, wild currant, barberry, hazel, guelder rose, elder, coton-easter, wild rose, arbutus and yew are some of them.

It was a pretty custom, in the good old days when people still believed in fairies, to leave one corner of the garden entirely untouched for the little people, and this was called the fairies’ corner. It was well-known that any one ill-bred enough to spy on fairy revels would be rewarded with a squint, so these little corners were left unmolested and became a paradise for the birds.

Such a corner should have flowers as well as shrubs in it, and those especially appreciated by the birds are sunflowers, forget-me-nots and thistles. The sunflowers bring the blue-caps, and the thistles will attract a charm of gold-finches, and birds of all kinds, colours and species, will seek the sanctuary.

But ripe berries, safety and nesting places are not all the birds will need: good drinking water and bathing places secure from cats must be provided for the guests.

If there are no lily ponds, fountains or woodland streams the garden must have a stone bird bath of good and simple design, and failing this, flat dishes of earthenware may be placed about and constantly refilled. Birds are thirsty creatures, and the larger ones are always extravagant with the bath water.

Perhaps the most charming of all features in the Tudor herb garden, and one seldom absent, was a row of beehives. Carefully tended and cherished, the bees of the household would even be provided with a winter dwelling place, a roofed house of stone, where the hives were set on shelves to protect them from the cold. In Catholic times this shelter would hold a shrine to St. Ambrose, the patron saint of bees. In the middle ages bees were a necessity, for sugar was a luxury and used only in medicines and on the tables of the richest in the land. Mead, the principal drink of the peasant class, was made from honey, and dishes of all sorts were sweetened with it.

Beeswax, too, was much in demand for candles, and up to the eighteenth century candlelight was used for the greatest of occasions.

Gifts of wax were constantly given to the church for candles on the altar, and to this day we often hear of large pieces of land left hundreds of years ago to the church, the rents from them to buy wax. These lands are known by such names as Christmas Field, Candlemas Field, and their rents provided wax candles for the particular feast. One field, called Judas Light, probably paid for the great Paschal Candle.

In Christian symbolism the bee stands for Chastity, and there is a special prayer for the blessing of the hives.
The old naturalists studied the bee and contemplated it; marvelled at it without understanding its ways, and reclaimed it from its wild state and turned it into a domestic insect.

Aristomachus, the Sicilian sage, gave half a century to the study of bees, and Virgil so delighted in them that he devoted the fourth book of his Georgics to their ways.

“When having told of flocks and trees,
He sung the waxen work of lab’ring bees.”

The ancients believed that the bees were driven out of Paradise with other living things, but that God gave them a special blessing of usefulness and content. In the seventeenth century people imagined that the hive was ruled by a king, and the naturalists of the period, and Shakespeare, too, constantly allude to this belief.

Here is an extract from a seventeenth century history book: “The King of the Bees, as he is of a more eminent stature and goodly corporation than the rest: so likewise (which is singular in a King), he excelleth in mildness and temperance of behaviour.

“For he hath a sting, but maketh it not an instrument of revenge. If he be lusty and strong, he marcheth before his whole winged army, exposing himself to all perils.”

The writer also tells his readers that “Bees hate extremely those that have curled or crisped haire.”

There is no lore so fascinating as bee lore. According to country tradition St. Gregory opens the flowers for the bees on March the twelfth, and on March the twenty-first St. Benedict calls them forth for the year’s gathering. It is said, too, that the bees may be heard singing in their hives on Christmas Night.

Most people know of the old country superstition of “telling the bees” of any event of importance in the family; especially of the death of the master of the house. On this occasion one must knock gently three times on the hives with the house door key, whispering:

“Brownie! Brownie! Awake! Awake!
Your Master is dead and another tha’ must take.”

The wax of bees was used to achieve that lovely, golden polish which still lingers on very old furniture; for the only furniture cream used by Tudor maid-servants was composed of beeswax and elbow grease.

Witches, too, required a great deal of wax for the images in which they stuck pins and cast wicked spells over their enemies.

Bees love the sweet scents of the herb garden and gather their honey, the most perfect food in the world, from the plants that give us healing, and while they gather the sweet juices they fertilize the fruits and flowers.

If only princes may possess Bacon’s dream garden with its gilded cages of singing birds, its green spaces, alleys, and “carpentry work,” the very humblest of cottage gardens has only to provide sweet herbs and old-fashioned flowers in gay profusion and the bees will come to it. Their busy murmur, like happy, contented matrons singing at their work, is as lovely as the songs of birds.