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The Egyptians regarded it as a symbol of mourning, and the idea
descended to the Greeks and Romans, who employed the wood as
fuel for their funeral pyres. The Britons probably learned from
the Romans to attach a funereal signification to the Yew, and
inasmuch as it had been employed in ancient funeral rites, they
regarded the tree with reverence and probably looked upon it as
sacred. Hence, in course of time, the Yew came to be planted in
churchyards, and, on account of its perpetual verdure, was, like the
Cypress, considered as a symbol of the resurrecition and immortality.
“ Dark Cypresses the skirting sides adorned,
And gloomy Yew-trees, which for ever mourned.”—Harie.
R. Turner remarks that if the Yew “ be set in a place subjea to
poysonous vapours, the very branches will draw and imbibe them :
hence it is conceived that the judicious in former times planted it
in churchyards on the west side, because those places being fuller
of putrefaaion and gross oleaginous vapours exhaled out of the
graves by the setting sun, and sometimes drawn into those meteors
called ignes fatui, divers have been frightened, supposing some
dead bodies to walk ; others have been blasted, &c.” Prof.
Martyn points out that a Yew was evidently planted near the
church for some religious purpose ; for in the ancient laws of
Wales the value of a consecrated Yew is set down as / i , whilst that
of an ordinary Yew-tree is stated as only fifteen pence. “ Our
forefathers,” says he, “ were particularly careful to preserve this
funereal tree, whose branches it was usual to carry in solemn procession
to the grave, and afterwards to deposit therein under the
bodies of their departed friends. Our learned Ray says, that our
ancestors planted the Yew in,churchyards because it was an evergreen
tree, as a symbol of that immortality which they hoped and expected
for the persons there deposited. For the same reason this and
other evergreen trees are even yet carried in funerals, and thrown
into the grave with the body ; in some parts of England and in
Wales, planted with fiowers upon the grave itself.” Shakspeare
speaks of a “ shroud of white, stuck all with Yew,” from which one
would infer that sprigs of Yew were placed on corpses before burial.
Branches of Yew were, in olden times, often carried in procession on
Palm Sunday, instead of Palm, and as an evergreen Yew was sometimes
used to decorate churches and houses at Christmas-time.____
Parkinson remarks that in his time it was used “ to deck up houses
in Winter ; but ancient writers have ever reckoned it to be dangerous
at the least, if not deadly.” Many of the old writers were
of Parkinson’s opinion as to the poisonous characiter of the Yew.
Cæsar tells how Cativulcus, king of the Eburones, poisoned himself
by drinking a draught of Yew. Dioscorides says that a decoction
of the leaves occasions death ; Galen pronounces the tree to
be of a venomous quality and against man’s nature ; and White, in
his ‘ History of Selborne,’ gives numerous instances in which the
Yew has proved fatal to animals. Gerarde does not consider the
berries poisonous, but thinks non-ruminating animals are injured
by eating the foliage. He tells us that “ Nicander, in his booke of
counter-poisons, doth reckon the Yew-tree among the venomous
plants, setting downe also a remedy, and that in these words, as
Gorraeus hath translated them:—
‘ Shun the poys’nous Yew, the which on Oeata grows,
Like to the Firre, it causes bitter death,
Unlesse besides they use pure wine that flowes
From empty'd cups, thou drinke, when as thy breath
Begins to fade, and passage of thy life
Grows straight.' ”
Virgil attributed the notoriously unwholesome qualities of the honey
of Corsica to the bees feeding upon the Yew, and he warns beekeepers
to be careful that no Yew-trees grow near their hives.
Owing to its being so frequently found in churchyards, a ghastly
superstition has arisen respecting this sinister tre e : it is said that
it preys and invigorates itself upon the dead who lie beneath its
sombre shade. Thus, in ‘ In Memoriam,’ we read:—
“ Old Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the underlying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.”
Even in the principal use the Yew was put to, the tree maintained
its connecftion with death, for from its wood man fashioned an instrument
of warfare and destruction. Its great pliancy and toughness
made it particularly suitable for bows, and for this purpose it was
unrivalled. Virgil tells us that in his time “ the Yews were bent
into Ituraean bows Chaucer speaks of “ the Shooter Yew and
Browne writes of
“ The warlike Yewgh by which more than the lance
The strong-armed English spirits conquered France.”
Camden has recorded a grim legend in connecftion with the name
of Halifax. It seems that a certain amorous clergyman fell in love
with a pretty maid who refused his addresses. Maddened by her
refusal he cut off her head, which being hung upon a Yew-tree
till it was quite decayed, the tree was reputed as sacred, not only
whilst the virgin’s head hung on it, but as long as the tree itself
lasted; to which the people went in pilgrimage, plucking and
bearing away branches of it as a holy relique, whilst there remained
any of the trunk ; persuading themselves that those small
veins and filaments resembling hairs were the hairs of the virgin.
But' what is yet stranger, the resort to this place, then called Houton,
a despicable village, occasioned the building of the now famous town
of Halifax, in Yorkshire, the name of which imports “ holy hair.”
In the cloister of Vreton, in Brittany, there grew a Yew-tree
which was said to have sprung from the staff" of St. Martin. B e neath
it the Breton princes were accustomed to offer up a prayer
before entering the church. This tree was regarded with the