Good morning. Today is sextidi, the 6th of Messidor, Year CCXXXI. We celebrate le romarin, a powerful herb with scented needles.
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In the days before chemistry was used to make medicine, people would desperately free associate cures, assuming that good smells would drive out the ill odors of disease. The first perfumes in Europe were thus not strictly for smelling better – and not at all for sexual attraction – but considered olfactory medicine, aromatherapy. The first alcohol-based perfume was Hungary water, which originated in the court of some Hungarian queen (it's hard to pin down which one) and was comprised of rosemary and a dash of thyme in brandy. It was believed to cure headaches, and much adored by Charles V of France, who popularized it (and named it Hungary water) in the 14th century. This style of herbal perfume was predominant in Western Europe until the French finally had a second idea and invented eau de cologne – extracting floral essences (enflorage) – 400 years later.
Rosemary's scent is so powerful and unique, it's been considered a symbol of steadfastness in love. I'm normally not a big "language of flowers" gal, as most of it seems to be arbitrary marketing fluff invented pretty recently to boost the sales of this or that plant, but for starters, rosemary's symbology goes back centuries and can be found in folk tales from pre-literate areas. And then there's the science of how strongly scent and memory are linked, which makes the association actually seem to work.
Here's one of those fairy tales from the Catalan region between France and Spain:
