, and before the story-telling begins, "the gentlemen walked
with the ladies into a goodly garden, making chaplets and nosegays of
divers flowers, and singing silently to themselves." Both sexes wore
them on festive occasions, and in summer young girls wore no
head-covering save a garland. The knight at the tournament decked his
helm with a chaplet of some chosen flower, deftly woven by the fair
one in whose name he made venture; and many a merry company, wreathed
with flowers or foliage, rode forth on May-day, with trumpets and
flutes, to celebrate the festival.

Another favourite flower for garlands was the cornflower, as we learn
from the poets, who tell of ladies dancing the carole (a popular dance
in which all moved slowly round in a circle, singing at the same
time), their heads crowned with garlands of cornflower. Violets and
periwinkles, and meadow flowers, white, red, and blue, were also
gathered to indulge this pretty fancy.

The gillyflower is another flower frequently mentioned. This name has
been applied to various flowers, but originally it belonged to the
carnation, and was used for such in Shakespeare's time. In the _Roman
de la Rose_ it is called the gillyflower-clove, thus definitely
defining it. One of its virtues, according to an old writer, was "to
comfort the spirites by the sence of smelling," and also "to be of
much use in ornament." But indeed most flowers were not only used for
chaplets, and for strewing on the floor, but were also painted on the
chamber walls, and embroidered on the hangings, to serve in winter
days as sweet memories and as sweeter hopes.

Apparently the earliest records of gardens, after Roman times, date
from the ninth century, and are mostly to be found amongst monastic
archives. A garden was an important, and even essential, annex of a
monastery, not only because of the "herbularis" or physic garden, from
the herbs of which the monks compounded salves and potions for the
wounded knight or the plundered wayfarer who might take shelter within
its protecting walls, but also because of the solace which the shady
trees and the gay flowers brought to the sick, for a monastery was
generally a hospital as well. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, speaking of an
abbey garden, gives a charming picture of one of these cloistered
pleasaunces for the sick and the aged. He says:

Within the enclosure of this wall many and various trees,
prolific in various fruits, constitute an orch