Herbal love 'spells':

Maya has been doing some research into "love" on her blog. I told her that I'd post some of the old 'recipes' or references to herbally-induced-love that I've run across in my herbal researching (for a very sloooow and gradual personal project):

Yarrow, yarrow, long and narrow,
Tell unto me by tomorrow,
Who my husband is to be...

Yarrow away, yarrow away, bear a white blow?
If my lover love me, my nose will bleed now. (that's romantic!)

Viola (also called "heartsease") - Legend has it that Cupid, the God of Love, shot an arrow through a viola, and thus endowed the ubiquitous miniature pansy with aphrodisiacal properties.

Sweet Marjoram is said to be the sacred herb of Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, and was a symbol of marital bliss in ancient times.

In Roman times Bay became the symbol of protection and marital happiness. It appeared at weddings, adorned gifts, and was taken in powdered form to induce virility.

Centuries ago, when a woman put a basil plant on her window sill, she was announcing that she was ready to recieve a suitor. It was also believed that when a man gave a woman a sprig of basil she would fall in love with him and never leave him.

In medieval times, calendula (or pot marigolds) were considered an emblem of love and used as the chief ingredient in a complicated spell that promised young maidens knowledge of whom they would marry.

My favorite one is not a love spell, but a potion to "see fairies", taken from a 16th century herbal:

Take a pint of sallet oyle and put into a vial glasse; and first wash it with rose-water and marygolde water; the flowers to be gathered toward the East. Wash it till the oyle becomes white, then put into the glasse, and then put thereto the budds of young hazle, and the thyme must be gathered neare the side of a hill where fairies used to be; and take the grasse of a fairy throne; then all these put into the oyle in the glasse and sette it to dissolve three dayes in the sunne and then keep it for thy use...