Yew

'The Yew-tree has been considered an emblem of mourning from a very early period. The Greeks adopted the idea from the Egyptians, the Romans from the Greeks, and the Britons form the Romans. From long habits of association, the yew acquired a sacred character, and therefore was considered as the best and most appropriate ornament of consecrated ground. Hence in England it became the custom to plant Yews in churchyards, despite the ghastly superstition attached to these trees, that they prey upon the dead who lie beneath their sombre shade. Moreover our forefathers were particularly careful in preserving this funereal tree, whose branches it was at one time usual to carry in solemn procession to the grave, and afterwards to deposit therein under the bodies of departed friends. The custom of planting Yew trees singly in churchyards is also one of considerable antiquity. Statius, in his sixth Thebaid, calls it the solitary Yew. Leydon thus apostrophises this funeral tree:

“Now more I love thee, melancholy Yew,
Whose still green leaves in silence wave
Above the peasant’s rude and unhonoured grave,
Which oft thou moistenest with the morning dew.
To thee the sad, to thee the weary fly;
They rest in peace beneath thy sacred gloom,
Thou sole companion of the lonely tomb;
No leaves but thine in pity o’er them sigh:
Lo! Now to fancy’s gaze thou seem’st to spread
Thy shadowy boughs to shroud me with the dead.”

The dark and sombre Yew-tree has from the remote past been invested with an essentially funereal character, and hence is appropriately found in the shade of churchyards and in propinquity to tombs. Blair, addressing himself to the grave, says:

“Well do I know thee by thy trusty Yew,
Cheerless, unsocial plant, that loves to dwell
Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs, and worms;
Where light-heeled ghosts, and visionary shades,
Beneath the wan cold moon (so fame reports),
Embody’d, thick, perform their mystic rounds,
No other merriment, dull tree, is thine.”

The Egyptians regarded it as a symbol of mourning, and the idea descended ot 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 resurrection and immortality.

“Dark Cypresses the skirting sides adorned,
And gloomy Yew-trees, which for ever mourned.” – Harte.

R.Turner remarks that if the Yew “be set in a place subject to poisonous 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 putrefaction 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 ser down as £1, whilst that of an ordinary Yew-tree is stated as only fifteen pence. “Our forefathers,” he says, “were particularly careful to preserve this funereal tree, who branches it was usual to carry in solemn pro cession 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 flowers upon the grave itself.” Shakespeare 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 character of the Yew.

Caesar tells how Cativulvus, 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,
Unless besides they use pure wins 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 tree: 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 connection 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 connection with the name of Halifax. It seems that a certain amorous clergyman fell in love with a pretty main 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 dtaff of St. Martin. Beneath it the Breton princes were accustomed ot offer up a prayer before entering the church. This tree was regarded with the highest reverence; no one ever plucked a leaf from tis sombre boughs, and even the birds refrained from pecking the scarlet berries. A band of pirates, however, happening to visit the locality, two of them spied the tree, and forthwith climbed into its venerable boughs and proceeded to cut bow-staves for themselves: their audacity speedily brought about its own punishment, for they both fell and were killed on the spot.

Both in old Celtic and in Anglo-Saxon the Yew-tree was called Iw. By early English authors its name was variously spelt Yew, Yeugh, Ewgh, Ugh and Ewe.

In Switzerland it is known as William Tell’s Tree.

Dream oracles state that there is but one signification to dreams concerning the Yew, viz., that it is the certain forerunner of the demise of an aged person, through which the dreamer will derive substantial benefits.'

From : Plant Lore, Legend, and Lyrics – 1892 – Richard Folkard