Baring-Gould's "Rose of June" and Many Others

Sabine Baring-Gould came to my attention again when reading a modern mystery of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series by Laurie R. King.   He is a character in one of the books, and is portrayed reasonably true to his nature as far as I can tell.  I forget when I first encountered the man's work or what that book was, but I liked it enough to start sending it to friends in a daily posting of a few pages.  At the time I had to transcribe them to make the reading pleasurable, so I quickly petered out...

However, sitting here with the sleet hitting my windows, the idea of the roses of June became appealing so I have dusted off this draft, added some more images to combat the cold that is descending on northeast Connecticut, and made this my first post of 2015.  It is Groundhog Day here in the US...and our local rodent predicted a late spring and 6 more weeks of winter weather.

The following is copied without text change from from Wikisource.  I am so grateful to the people all over the world who make obscure works easily available.

 I am adding for this blog  plates of roses from other works just for fun.  This isn't the most interesting of articles but it illustrates Gould's style.  He also collected information on vampires :-)


The Rose of June is an article on roses in folklore that was published in the New York Times on 
May 28, 1899.

The Rose of June  (1899)

by Sabine Baring-Gould

In the House of Livia, the wife of Augustus, which has been excavated on the Palatine Hill, that rises above the Roman Forum, is a painting. It is above the door of the triclinium or dining room, and it represents a glass vessel full of cut roses. Now, we know that roses were a familiar flower with the ancients, but I do not think we have realized—at least I had not—to what an extent the rose had been cultivated and perfected by the Romans in olden times. That charming little wall painting shows us that they had in their gardens, and twined against their houses, roses of various colors and in great perfection.

Fresco from House of Livia

Livia must have been fond of flowers. Her country villa at Primaporta has also been unearthed, and the atrium or central hall there has all the walls painted to resemble the lattice work of a garden with flower beds inside, and without landscapes in perspective of woodland. It is altogether a lovely production; the atmospheric effect of distance among the trees is quite such as we might expect of a modern artist. The flowers in the garden are mostly anemones and narcissus — Spring flowers — and the rose, if I remember right, is not there shown.

June is the month of roses. It is then that the wild rose wreathes our hedgerows with its bloom. It is everywhere lovely, and the sweetbriar exhales one of the most delicious of fragrances. It was a custom in England for girls to gather a rose on Midsummer Eve, wear it all day, and then place the petals in a Prayer Book and note whether it lost its hue before New Year’s Day, and take omen thereby. This is alluded to in a poem called “The Cottage Maid,” published in 1786:

The moss-rose that, at fall of dew
(Ere eve its duskier curtain drew,)
Was freshly gather’d from its stem,
She values as the ruby gem;
And, guarded from the piercing air
With all an anxious lover‘s care,
She bids it, for her shepherd’s sake,
Await the New Year’s frolic wake.
When faded, in its alter’d hue
She reads—the rustic is untrue;
But, if it leaves the crimson paint,
Her sickening hopes no longer faint.
The rose upon her bosom worn,
She meets him at th’ peep of morn,
And lo! her lips with kisses prest,
He plucks it from her panting breast.

selection of images from an eglantine search

Rose of Provence by Ehret

The sweetbriar is the eglantine of the old English writers, apparently, and not the honeysuckle. Chaucer calls it the Eglantere:

When she sate in a fresh greene laurey tree,
On that further side even right by me,
That gave so passing a delicious smell
According to the Eglantere full well.

It would seem as if all lands on which the sun shines warm had their special roses. There is the rose of Provence, the China rose, the Japan rose, the rose of Damascus, of Sharon, of the Caucasus, the double yellow from Constantinople, the Austrian briar, the rose of Jericho, the true hateful plant of the Dead Sea wastes, and Scotland sends us the Banksia. 

Rosa chinensis

The rose of Virginia, it is said, if transplanted from its native soil languishes and dies. It is like the carps or Marly, which perished when conveyed to the marble basins full of springing, splashing water.

“They resemble me,” said Mme. de Meintenon, “they regret their native mud.”

Socrates was leaving the theatre in which had been represented a comedy of Aristophanes, in which the humorist had rallied philosophy, and above all the philosopher. The audience had enthusiastically applauded these sallies.

Socrates encountered Aristophanes outside the theatre; he advanced to him, and thrust a bunch of roses under his nose. The thorns pricked the face of the poet, and he drew back.

Then said Socrates, “Forgive the nose-gay its prickles for the sake of its perfume, as I do your play for its poetry.”

In 1794, some days before the ninth Thermidor, Gen. Hoche, dismissed his command, was interned in the Conciergerie. There were many fellow-prisoners there, and time hung heavy on their hands. They took their meals together.

One morning Hoche received a present in his cell of a magnificent bunch of roses, sent him from an unknown hand. At the hour of table d’hôte he appeared with the roses in his hand.

“Oh, General! what lovely roses! Oh, General, give us some, we entreat you!” was the exclamation from all.

There were ladies as well as gentlemen in the prison. The young officer at once began to distribute the flowers, beginning with the former. And with these beautiful blooms it was as though sunshine and gaiety had penetrated the gloomy walls of the prison.

All at once the door opened. A men entered in black, holding a paper, followed by an escort of soldiers.

He unrolled his paper. Those whose names he read out were to follow to the guillotine.

“Citizen!” said a young women to Hoche. “I go so to my death wearing your rose.”

“And I also!”

“And I as well!”

That day, when the tumbril passed through the streets to the Place de la Révolution, an unusual spectacle presented itself to the lookers-on. Every man who went to death had a rose between his lips and every woman had a rose in her bosom.

In Rome, on Mid-Lent Sunday, the Pope takes the Golden Rose to St. Peter’s—but then it is of gold. Even in Italy the rose hardly appears so early. But it is earlier than June in France, for since 1227 the youngest peer was expected to present at Court la baillée aux roses, a tribute of roses. In 1541 this gave rise to a dispute between the Duke de Bourbon-Montpensier and the Duke de Nevers, one of whom was a Prince of the blood. The claims of the two pretenders were submitted to the Parliament of Paris, and were argued by the most celebrated lawyers of the period. After both sides had been heard, the Parliament gave its decree on Friday, June 17, 1541, “That having regard to the rank of Prince of the blood joined to his peerage, the Court orders that the Duke de Montpensier shall offer the tribute of roses.”

In 1589 the league, no longer considering the Parliament as A Court of Peers, abolished the baillée aux roses.

The rose festival of Salency is, however, celebrated on June 8. The institution is attributed to St. Medard, Bishop of Noyon, who died in 545, and who was born at Salency. It is even said that he charged his family estate there with a sum of money, to be given annually, with a crown of roses, to the most virtuous girl in the village. He is said to have accorded the first crown to his sister, and so he is represented in a painting above the altar in his chapel at Salency. According to the terms of the foundation, not only must the girl be irreproachable, but also her parents must have been good. The seigneur of Salency had the right to choose the “Rosière” out of three girls, natives of the village, presented to him. When he had named her, the parish was informed of it from the pulpit on the following Sunday, and all who had any just cause or impediment to advance were bidden to do so. On June 8, the Feast of St. Medard, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the “Rosière,” dressed in white, attended by twelve girls in white with blue sashes, and twelve boys, her father and mother, and relations, went to the Castle of Salency, where the procession was met by the seigneur, or his bailiff, who conducted the train to the church.

There vespers were sung, and the rose-girl assisted, kneeling at a faldstool in the chancel. After vespers a procession was formed to the chapel of St. Medard at the further end of the village. There the curé took the crown of roses from the altar, blessed it, and, after a short, and appropriate discourse, crowned the girl with it, and gave her a purse containing 25f. The procession then re-formed, returned to the parish church, where a Te Deum was chanted, with an anthem in commemoration of St. Medard, the instituter of the ceremony.

This beautiful usage, interrupted by the Revolution, was re-established in 1812, and takes place now every year; but it has undergone certain modifications. The “Rosière” now receives 300f., of which sum the Municipal Council gives half.

In the chapel of St. Medard is a board on which are inscribed the names of all the “Rosières”; a few of the names have been effaced, because they have misconducted themselves since they have received the crown of St. Medard; but, as a general rule, the custom tends to encourage the girls to rival each other in virtue.

In the churchyard of Barnes, in Surrey, near the entrance to the church, is an old mural tablet to the memory of Edward Rose, citizen of London, who died in the seventeenth century, and bequeathed the sum of £20 annually to that parish forever, on condition that the railing inclosing his grave should be maintained and that rose trees should be planted about it, trained and kept in a flourishing condition. The terms of this eccentric benefaction are very properly compiled with.

The Wars of the Roses must not be passed over, with the choice of badges by the York and Lancaster parties.

  Plant. Let him that is a free-born gentleman,
And stands upon the honor of his birth,
If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,
From off this briar pluck a white rose with me.
  Somerset. Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.
  Warwick. I love no colors; and without all color
Of base insinuating flattery,
I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.
  Suffolk. I pluck this red rose with young Somerset,
And say, withal, I think he held the right.
First Part “Henry VI.,” Act II., Sc. 4.

The story goes that when young St. Benedict retired from the world to Subiaco, finding himself regret the luxury and downy beds of his home, he threw himself on a bank or briars near the entrance to the cave he occupied. “Here,” says Mr. Hare, “seven centuries afterward St. Francis coming to visit the shrine, knelt and prayed before the thorns which had such glorious memories, and planted two rose trees beside them. The roses of St. Francis flourish still, and are carefully tended by the monks, but the Benedictine thorns have disappeared.”—“Days Near Rome,” I. p. 316.

There is a beautiful story connected with St. Dorothaea. Her acts are apocryphal, but, unlike most of these fabrications, they contain an element of poetry.

Dorothaea was a native of Caesarea in Cappadocia, and in the persecution of Diocletian she was brought before the Governor, Sapricius. He threatened her with torture unless she would renounce Christ. She replied: “Do thy worst. I fear no pain. If only I may see Him for whom I am ready to die.”

Sapricius said: “Who is He?”

Dorothaea replied: “He is Christ, the Son of God.”

Sapricius asked: “And where is this Christ?”

Dorothaea replied: “In His omnipotence He is everywhere; in His humanity He is in heaven, to which He invites us, where the lilies bloom white, and the roses ever flower, where the fields are green, the mountains wave with fresh grass, and the spring of the water of life bubbles up eternally.”

Then said a lawyer present named Theophilus: “In faith, I should like to see these roses; prithee send me some.”

Thereupon Dorothaea answered and said: “I will.”

The Governor pronounced sentence against her that she should be decapitated. The story goes on that Theophlius went home to his companions, and to them told with great laughter how he had asked the virgin to send him flowers from the paradise to which she aspired. Then all at once he saw a vision. Beside him stood a luminous figure in white, who held in his hand a bunch of the most wondrous roses, the scent of which filled all the room.

He spake, “The Crown is won
 As Dorothaea said;
The martyr sendeth now to thee
 Some roses white and red.”
The fairest flowers of earth
 Might not with those compare
The angel held; they streamed with light
 And fragrance passing rare.

According to the legend, Theophilus believed, and was so impressed that he went before the magistrate, and was sentenced to the same death as Dorothaea, and thus received the “baptism of blood.”

It is possible that there may be some foundation or truth in the story; that Theophilus may have been so impressed with the words spoken by the martyr, by the seriousness of the promise, and by her wondrous endurance that he dreamt that what she had said came true. But, if so, then the circumstances have been dressed up by a later hand.

Me and My Cow Parsley Seeds :-)

The last post prompted my husband Jack to insist I share this photo of me :-)

Several years ago I first noticed this exuberant, large leaved plant growing along the road I commute on every day. It kept growing, and growing and growing!  Finally these huge umbels developed looking just like gigantic Queen Anne's Lace.


I was in love.

It was easy to look up.  Just query "9 foot tall plant looking like Queen Anne's Lace on steroids"! Heracleum maximum , giant cow parsley.

Another description I saw was " looks like Queen.Anne's Lace with an attitude".

I stopped later in the year and gathered the seed which I threw everywhere around my house hoping in would be happy somewhere.  One plant grew. (and grew, and grew...)

It comes back every year and there is a younger plant now growing near it.  The dryness of my property keeps it in check.

Update, July 2015:  Finally, a new plant seeded itself next to the house!  It was hiding behind a pile of kayaks and when I put them in the newly built shed, there it was!  I go around each fall flapping the giant seed head like a fairy wand hoping it would find additional spots.  This year the original plant was short.  I wonder why.

Old Photo: Tall Lady and Her Tall Bean Plants

How many photographs have been taken of people in gardens standing next to their successful plants?  I find them  enjoyable, getting a contact high from the pride and pleasure they were feeling at that moment.  

The same happens with photos of people interacting happily with their dogs. You know for that tiny moment when the shutter snapped that the person you are looking at was feeling good.  

Art of the Bean - circa 1878 Japanese Ink Drawing

Behold the bean.  This is what art helps people to do...to be able to see what is in front of them every day in all its wonder.   This image from the Library of Congress did not have much information attached...the date followed by a question mark, a description as an ink drawing,  and a cross indexing into the Japanese collections.  I tried reading the artist's signature and looking it up in a variety of spellings -  with no luck.  

At the bottom of this post is a full sized image so you can pretend you are an ant and take a nice relaxing walk up and down the stems and beans.  Enjoy the gentle undulations over the ripening beans!

1880 - Grandmother's Baked Beans on Ponketasset Hill, Concord, Massachusetts

Baked Beans

George Houghton

BAKED beans! The very name is dear to New Englanders! Baked beans! Those two words of five letters each, with their abrupt alliteration, bring back to me my boyhood!

I see my grandmother's home on Ponketasset Hill in old Concord, which I visited at that receptive age of childhood when one sees details most distinctly—too distinctly to ever lose them; and from the perspective of memory stands forth the picture of the kitchen in that quaint, unpainted farm-house, more vivid and more complete, indeed, than when the actual scene was before me.

I see the low room with beams exposed overhead; the two windows, with many small panes, looking out on the farmyard in the year—a little world in itself— and two others opening toward the road, and giving to the inmates a connection with the great outside world. I see the whitewashed walls; the map of the township; the print depicting the Concord fight; the tall, old-fashioned clock in the corner, whose slow “ ticktock " gave to the flight of time a solemn meaning; the low, flag-bottomed chairs with straight backs, and one rocking-chair with a wooden seat and curved back supported by numerous rounds—a pattern that the artists have now monopolized. This last was grandma's chair. It had a plump and comfortable cushion, and stood in some dignity beside one of the front windows. Who shall dare to compute how many blue stockings were knit in that chair?

But the most striking feature of the room is the great open fireplace, with iron dogs supporting the crackling sticks, and a generous hearth, painted red and kept scrupulously clean by frequent applications of the turkey-wing. Above the fire-place is the plain oak mantlepiece, weighted down with responsibility, being commissioned with the care of all varieties of valuables, from the family Bible, a medical almanac and grandfather’s spectacles, to the candles and snuffers, a squad of flat-irons, and the yellow pitcher of buckwheat batter prepared for the morrow's breakfast. To the right of the hearth stand the tongs and shovel, and to the left (you might not at first observe it, for it is flush with the wall) the brick oven, without whose kindly offices the household economy must have come to a standstill.

This oven was put in use only once a week, Saturday being the “baking day,” but it did its work so faithfully on that occasion that it well deserved a long season of rest. Its capacity was fifteen pies, or a huge pot of beans and half a dozen loaves of rye-and-Indian bread. The method of heating it was as follows: Early Saturday morning the oven was filled with brush-wood, which was kindled and allowed to burn until the bricks became a bright red; the brands were then removed, the ashes carefully swept out with a damp broom, and it was now ready for work. 

The apple and pumpkin pies were usually baked first, this process occupying less than half an hour, when they were brought to view by the aid of a long wooden shovel; the oven was then again heated as before, and the beans and brown bread took their turn. These were always baked at the same time; indeed, they must be considered complements, one to the other; and for some cause, inscrutable, but without doubt anterior to mere custom, when one is absent from the table the other always misses its presence and sellers in consequence. The bread was molded in round loaves, and deposited on the bottom of the oven, without pans. The beans were ready to be eaten at supper time, and the pot was afterward returned to the oven and allowed to remain there over night, the beans retaining sufficient heat to be ready for serving at breakfast next morning, when they proved still more savory.

Then again I remember the basement kitchen of my own home in Cambridgeport, where there was also a brick oven of the same kind, but long unused, for the reason that it had been found cheaper and more convenient to send the beans to the baker’s, and to buy the brown bread ready made. To me, therefore, the suggestiveness of the name “baked beans” is mainly associated with the shop to which I was accustomed to go each Saturday night, during the Fall and winter, carrying the pot of prepared beans, and early on Sunday morning to return for it. 

How vividly I recall Mr. Ball’s shop on Essex Street, the bakers in their white aprons and brown-paper caps, the oven—a great cavern of blackness, the paste-board tickets by which to identify ownership, the chalk-marks on the side of the pot, the little company of fellow towns-folk bound on the same errand, the warmth of the pot and loaf as I placed them in my basket, their appetizing odor; and, above all, I recall with pleasure the walk home, often accompanied by some gossipy school-chum picked up by the way. Never have I enjoyed the outer world more keenly than during those early morning walks, when, in the solemnity of the staid New England Sunday, the city seemed quite other than the Cambridge of week days. 

In the variable climate which characterizes that suburb of Boston the appearance of nature at seven o’clock, A. 1a., was much diversified, and winter especially was accustomed to prepare a succession of surprises. Sometimes it was quite dark when I left home, and I could feel in the chilly air the threat

of a coming storm; sometimes I waded through two feet of snow, and more than once was unable to go at all, owing to the depth of the drifts, and we had to depend upon a make-shift breakfast. Sometimes, during a thaw, the slush was half the height of my rubber boots, and dense mist blotted the city quite out of sight; and then again, after rain followed by sudden cold, that wonderful spectacle of a world glazed with ice, and dazzling beyond description, would blind me with its intensified sunlight. After a brisk walk on such a morning, a breakfast of baked beans and brown bread became something of which the New Yorker, even in the best of restaurants, and from the most delicately served plate of so-called “ pork and beans," can never catch a suggestion. The New Englander has carried the bean-pot to the ends of the world as his armorial device, but alas! the beans themselves will hardly bear transplanting to a less rigorous climate, or please the palate of a less hardy race.

Civil War Song in Praise of the Bean (video)

It is one thing to like a dish, but totally another to write a song in its praise!!!  This is a great Civil War period song performed by the  97th Regimental String Band.  I think you will really enjoy this!

Thank you to "Donna" on http://civilwartalk.com/ for the lyrics.

Both sides ate lots of beans during the Civil War and thereafter. They even sang songs about beans. One song sung by the soldiers during Civil War was "The Army Bean". The words were written by Anonymous or unknown and the tune was to "Sweet Bye and Bye".

"There's a spot that the soldiers all love,
The mess tent's the place that we mean,
And the dish we like best to see there
Is the old-fashioned white army bean.

'Tis the bean that we mean,
And we'll eat as ne'er ate before,
The army bean, nice and clean,
We'll stick to our beans evermore.

Now the bean in its primitive state
Is a plant we have all often met,
And when cooked in the old army style
It has charms we can never forget.

'Tis the bean that we mean,
And we'll eat as we ne'er ate before,
The army bean, nice and clean,
We'll stick to our bean evermore.

The German is fond of sauerkraut,
The potato is loved by the Mick,
But the soldiers have long since found out
That through life to our beans we will stick.

'Tis the bean that we mean,
And we'll eat as we ne've ate before,
The army bean, nice and clean,
We'll stick to our beans evermore."

Song from "Singing Soldiers: A History of the Civil War in Song". by Paul Glass and Louis C. Singer, Da Capo Press, Inc., New York, N.Y. 1964.

1937 Maryland Beans, Sun Bonnets

It is report card time with the school full of families, and school is ramping up into the pre-holiday tizzy that propels us through the next two weeks.  Book Fairs, Winter Concerts, the Invention Convention,  not to mention children anticipating Santa Claus, have the halls vibrating with anticipation.  Blogging on seeds is just not working!  I think I will take a break and just share photos and odd and ends that have a seedy past of some sort.  The last day or so I have been looking around the Library of Congress.

Loading a truck with string beans, near Cambridge, Maryland is how this photo is described in the 

LOC collection.   Note the woman's sun bonnet. 

 In June 1937 photographer Arthur Rothstein captured this image for the Farm Security Administration.  Eleven photographers canvassed the United States to record rural poverity and the life of farmers.