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From - Plant Lore, Legends and Lyrics – 1892 – Richard Folkard :
Rapin tells us that among the ancients there were many
conjectural reports as to the origin of the Oak, and the country which first
knew the sacred tree: but the popular tradition which met with most credence,
he considers, was as follows:
“When Jupiter the world’s foundation laid,
Great earth-born giants heaven did invade;
And Jove himself – when he did subdue –
His lightning on the factious brethren threw.
Tellus her sons’ misfortunes does deplore,
And while she cherishes the yet-warm gore
Of Rhoecus, from his monstrous body grows
A vaster trunk, and from his breast arose
A harden’d Oak; his shoulders are the same,
And Oak his high exalted head became.
His hundred arms, which lately through the air
Were spread, now to as many boughs repair.
A sevenfold bark his now stiff trunk does bind;
And where the giant stood a tree we find.
The earth to Jove straight consecrates this tree,
Appeasing so his injured deity.
Thus Oaks grew sacred, in whose shelter plac’d,
The first good men enjoy’d their Acorn feast.”
To do full justice to the legendary lore connected with the
Oak, it would be necessary to devote a volume to the subject: the largest,
strongest and as some say, the most useful of the trees of Europe, it has been
generally recognised as the king of the forest,
“Lord of the woods, the long-surviving Oak.”
An emblem of majesty and strength, the Oak has been revered
as a symbol of God by almost all the nations of heathendom, and by the Jewish
patriarchs. It was underneath the Oaks of Mamre that Abraham dwelt a long time,
and there he erected an altar to the Lord, and there he received the three
angels. It was underneath an Oak that Jacob hid the idols of his children, for
this tree was held sacred and inviolable (Gen. xxxv. 2-4). Under the “Oak of
weeping” the venerable Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, was interred. The messenger of
the Lord that appeared to Gideon sat beneath an Oak; and it was a branch of one
of these trees that caught the flowing hair of Absalom, and so caused the death
of King David’s beloved son. The Oaks of Bashan are several times mentioned in
the Bible, and in the sacred volume we are informed that the Israelites
worshipped and offered sacrifices beneath the shadow of Oaks which they
considered as sacred (Hosea iv.13; Ezekiel vi.a3; Isaiah i.29).
The ancient Greeks attributed the deluge of Boeotia to the
quarrels between Jupiter and Juno. After the rain had ceased and the water
subsided, an oaken statue became visible, erected, it is supposed, as a symbol
of the peace concluded between the king of the gods and his consort. The Oak
was thought by the Greeks to have been the first tree that grew on the earth,
and to have yielded for man Acorns and honey, to ensure nourishment and
fecundity. They called it, indeed, the mother-tree, and they regarded it as a
tree form which the human race had originally sprung – a belief shared by the
Romans, for we find Virgil speaking
“Of nymphs and fauns, and savage men, who took
Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn Oak.”
Acorns were the first food of man, and there is an old Greek
proverb in which a man’s age and experience are expressed by saying that he had
eaten of Jove’s Acorns. Some of the classic authors speak of the fatness of the
earliest inhabitants of Greece and Southern Europe, who, living in the primeval
forests, were supported almost wholly upon the fruit of the Oak; these
primitive people were called Balanophagi
(eaters of Acorns).
Homer mentions people entering into compacts under Oaks as
places of security, for the tree was highly reverenced by the Greeks, and held
a prominent place in their religious and other ceremonies. The Arcadians
believed that by stirring with an Oak-branch the waters of a fountain near a
temple of Jupiter, on Mount Lycius, rain could be caused to fall. The Fates and
Hecate were crowned with Oak-leaves; and a chaplet of Oak adorned the brow of
the Dodonaean Jove.
The Pelasgic oracle of Jupiter, or Zeus, at Dodona, was
situated at the foot of Mount Tamarus, in a wood of Oaks, and the answers were
given be an aged woman, called Pelias: and as pelias, in the Attic dialect, means dove, the fable arose that the
doves prophesied in the Oak groves of Dodona. Respecting the origin of this
oracle, Herodotus narrates that two priestesses of Egyptian Thebes were carried
away by Phoenician merchants: one of these was conveyed to Libya, where she
founded the oracle of Jupiter Ammon; the other to Greece. The latter remained
in the Dodonaean wood, which was much frequented on account of the Acorns.
There she had a temple built at the foot of an Oak in honour of Jupiter, whose priestess
she had been in Thebes and here afterwards the oracle was founded. This
far-spreading speaking Oak was a lofty and beautiful tree, with evergreen
leaves and sweet edible Acorns (the first sustenance of mankind). The Pelasgi
regarded this tree as the tree of life. In it the god was supposed to reside,
and the rustling of its leaves and the voices of birds showed his presence.
When the questioners entered, the Oak rustled, and the Peliades said, “Thus
speaks Zeus.” Incense was burned beneath the tree, and sacred doves continually
inhabited it; and at its foot a cold spring gushed, as it were, from its roots,
and from its murmur the inspired priestesses prophesied. The ship Argo having
been built with the wood of trees felled in the Dodonaean grove, one of its
beams was endowed with prophetic or oracular power, and counselled the hardy
voyagers. Socrates swore by the Oak, the sacred tree of the oracles, and
consequently the tree of knowledge.
The Romans regarded the Oak as sacred, and the chosen tree
of Jupiter, who was sheltered by it at his birth. Thus Lucan mentions “Jove’s
Dodonaean tree,” and Ovid, in alluding to the primitive food of man, speaks of
Acorns dropping from the tree of Jove. The Oak, says Virgil, is
“Jove’s own tree,
That holds the worlds in awful sovereignty,
For length of ages lasts his happy reign,
And lives of mortal men contend in vain;
Full in the midst of his own strength he stands,
Stretching his brawny arms and leafy hands;
His shade protects the plains, his head the hills commands.”
We have seen how Acorns formed the earliest food of mankind,
and in ancient Tome the substitution of Corn was attributed to the bounty of
Ceres, who, through the instrumentality of Triptolemus, taught the inhabitants
of the earth its use and cultivation.
“The Oak, whose Acorns were our food before
That Ceres’ seed of mortal man was known,
Which first Triptoleme taught how to be sown. “ - Spenser.
To commemorate this gift, Oak was worn in the festivals in
honour of Ceres, as also by the husbandmen in general at the commencement of
the harvest. In the Eleusinian mysteries, Oaken chaplets were worn.
“Then crowned with Oaken chaplets, marched the priest
Of Eleusinian Ceres, and with boughs
Of Oak were overshadowed in the feast
The teeming basket and the mystic vase.” –Tighe
A Roman who saved the life of another was adjudged a crown
of Oak-leaves: thus Lucan writes:
“Straight Laelius
from amidst the rest stood forth –
An old centurion, of distinguished worth;
The Oaken wreath his hardy temples wore,
Mark of a citizen preserved he bore.”
This civic crown of Oak conferred many notable tokens of
honour upon its possessor, who was exempted from all civil burdens, and enjoyed
many rights. At Roman weddings, boughs of Oak were carried during the
ceremonies as emblems of fecundity.
“With boughs of Oak was graced the nuptial train;
And Hecate (whose triple form surveys
And guards from rapine the nocturnal path)
Entwined with boughs of Oak her spiral snakes.” – Tighe
Like the Greeks and Romans, the Scandinavians, in their
mythology, traced the origin of mankind from either the Ash or the Oak. By the
Teutons and Celts the Oak was invested with a mystical sacred character, and it
was connected with the worship of their god Teutates. Among the German people,
who consecrated the Oak to the god Thunar, the cultus of the sacred tree
lingered for a long time, even after Boniface, the apostle of the Germans, at
Geismar, on the Weser, had caused the Oak consecrated to the god of thunder to
be uprooted. After the establishment of Christianity, the Oak was long supposed
to be the abiding-place of the terrible Northern god, and was, consequently,
regarded with superstitious awe. Bishop Otho, of Bamberg, in the year 1128,
found at Stettin pagan temples, situate near an Oak and a fountain, which had
been objects of worship, and were still regarded with superstitious awe, as
being consecrated to a god. As the good bishop could not induce the people to
cut down these sacred Oaks, he persuaded them that they were inhabited by evil
spirits and demons; and, in course of time, the people who before had
prostrated themselves before the trees, shunned them in superstitious dread and
terror.
The ancient Britons dedicated the Oak to Taranis, their god
of thunder; and the Celts, under the form of an Oak, are by some authorities
stated to have worshipped Baal, the god of fire. On the occasion of the
auto-da-fe, we are told that fagots of “grey” Oak were always selected. The
festival of Baal was kept at Yule (Christmas); and on the anniversary, the
Druids are said to have ordained that every fire should be extinguished, and
then re-lighted with the sacred fire, which, in their sacerdotal character,
they always kept burning. In this rite, it is supposed, may be traced the
origin of the Yule-log, the kindling of which, at Christmas-time, is still kept
up in England, though in this country the log is often of Ash. Among the
Germans, Czechs, Serbs, and Italians, however, the Yule-log is always of Oak.
The mistletoe which grew on an Oak was regarded by the
Druids as the most holy; it was beneath the shade of venerated Oaks that they
performed their sacred rites...
When an Oak died, the Druids stripped off its bark, and
shaped it reverently into the form of a pillar, a pyramid, or a cross, and
still continued to worship it as an emblem of their god.
In Anglesea, the ancient Mona, are still dug up great trunks
of Oak, relics of the Druids’ holy groves. The central Oak was the peculiar
object of veneration. The poet relates how men of old,
“When through the woods the Northern blast
Howled harsh appeased with horrid cries and blood
The Scythian Taranis; or bowed around
The central Oak of Mona’s dismal shade.”
The Druids it is believed revered the form of the cross. It is
stated to have been their custom to seek studiously for a large and handsome
Oak-tree, growing up with two principal arms in the form of a cross beside the
main stem. If the two horizontal arms were not sufficiently adapted to the
figure, they fastened a cross-bean to it. Then they consecrated it by cutting
upon the right branch the word Hesus, upon the middle stem Taranis, and upon
the left branch Belenus, and over them the word Thau. The tree thus inscribed
was deemed peculiarly sacred, and to it they directed their faces when offering
prayer.
It was beneath the shade of the Oak the Druidic criminal
trials were held – the judge and jury being seated under the branches, and the
prisoner placed in a circle traced by the wand of the chief Druid. With the
Saxons, the Oak retained its sacred character, and their national meetings were
held beneath its shelter. It was below the Oaks of Dartmoor that they held
their conference with the Britons, whose land they were invading.
In Great Britain, the Oak remained an object of venerations
long after the establishment of Christianity. It was under an aged Oak the St.
Brigid of Ireland established her retreat for holy women, whence called
Kildara, or cell of the Oak. Here had been burning for many centuries the
sacred fire of the Druids, but by the piety of St. Brigid the light of
Christianity was henceforth to emit its flame from beneath
“The Oaks of St. Bride, which demon nor Dane
Nor Saxon, nor Dutchman could rend from her fane.”
Many of the Druidical sacred Oaks were utilised by the early
preachers of the Christian faith, who from beneath their boughs preached the gospel
of Christ to the pagan inhabitants. Hence, these trees became noted throughout
the country as Gospel Oaks, a name which still appertains to many ancient trees
existing at the present time in England. It is right to say, however, that
other authorities consider the origin of the name to have been the custom of
reading the Gospel of the day at a certain tree, when the priest went round the
fields to bless the crops.
The Sclavonians worshipped the Oaks, which they enclosed in
a consecrated court. This spot was the sanctuary of all the country, and had
its priest, its festivals and its sacrifices. The inner sanctuary, where grew
the sacred Oak, was reserved especially for the priests, sacrificers, and
people in danger of their life, who had sought of the priests an asylum. It is
said that the ancient Russians, upon arriving at the Isle of St. George,
offered up sacrifices beneath a great Oak, before which the people and priests
chanted Te Deum. After the ceremony, the priest distributed the branches of the
Oak among the people.
It is curious to notes how the old Grecian belief in the
sacred and supernatural character of the Oak has lingered in Italy. Prof. De Gubernatis
tells us that in the Campagna of Rome, about seventeen years ago. A young shepherdess,
during a storm, sought shelter under an Oak, and prayed to the Madonna. Whilst she
prayed, a gracious lady appeared before her, and, thanks to her intercession,
no rain fell of the Oak, and the girl was enabled to reach home without being
wetted by a single drop. Everyone saw it was a miracle; the cure examined her,
and from his representations the young girl was received into a convent at
Rome, where she probably is preparing herself for canonisation. Under similar
circumstances, two centuries ago, a Tuscan shepherdess, Giovanna of Signa, was
canonised. In the district of Signa, near Ginestra, the villagers still show a
sacred Oak, which people kneel to and adore. The story runs that one day the shepherdess
Giovanna, surprised by a storm, called around her the shepherds and their
flocks, and stuck her shepherdess’s crook into the ground; when, wondrous to
relate, at the same instant shot forth an Oak, which sheltered beneath its branches
shepherds and sheep. No one was wetted by the rain. On account of this miracle,
Giovanna was made a saint, and near the sacred Oak a little chapel was erected
to the Virgin. Strange to say, the tree throws down anyone climbing into its
branches to cut boughs; but people are permitted to pluck sprays, which are
believed to guard themselves and their houses form the effects of storms,
provided that the names of Jesus and Mary are invoked with certain ceremonies.
Among the Bolognese, who inhabit a district once occupied by
the Celts, and consequently Druidic, the sacred character of Oak-trees was long
acknowledged. In the fourteenth century, there stood in Bologna an ancient Oak,
which was regarded with the greatest reverence, and beneath its boughs all
important gatherings of the people took place. In their religious processions
the children still carry garlands of the Oak and Olive. In the country districts,
images of the Virgin are often suspended from Oak-trees, and these effigies are
called after the trees, the little Madonnas of the Oak. A legend of Bologna
relates that in a chapel an image of the Virgin had long been neglected, and
overlooked, till one day, a pious shepherd took it away, and placed it in the
trunk of a Cork-tree (a species of Oak, the Quercus Suber). Henceforth he
visited it daily, and to honour the Virgin, played on the flute. The thief
having been denounced, the shepherd was seized and condemned to death; but
during the night, through the intervention of the Madonna, the statue and the
shepherd both returned to their favourite tree, an notwithstanding subsequent
efforts to remove them, they again took up their place beneath tits boughs. Then
the people recognised a miracle performed by the Virgin, and falling on their
knees before the statue in the Oak, they asked pardon of the shepherd.
The time-honoured
belief in the sacred and supernatural attributes of the Oak have doubtless
caused it to be regarded, even at the present day, as a tree which would
vicariously bear the diseases of men. Thus, in England, Cross Oaks, which were
trees planted at the juncture of cross-roads, were formerly resorted to by
people suffering from the ague, for the purpose of transferring to them their
malady: this they did by pegging a lock of their hair into one of the trees,
and then, by a sudden wrench, transferring the lock from their heads to the
Oak, and with the lock the ague.
In Germany, there still exists a custom of creeping through
an Oak cleft to cure hernia and other disorders. There was, near Wittstock, in
Altmark, a bushy Oak, the branches of which had grown together again at some
distance from the stem, leaving open spaces between them. Whoever crept through
these spaces was freed from his malady, whatever it might be, and many crutches
lay about, which had been thrown away by visitors to the tree whose ailments
had been cured. In Russia, a similar custom is extant, the favourite tree there
being the Queres Ilex.
A belief that Oak-trees were the homes of Dryads,
Hama-dryads, spirits, elves and fairies has existed since the days of the
ancient Greeks. Pindar speaks of a Hamadryad as “doomed to a term of existence
coeval with the Oak.” Callimachus represents Melia “deeply sighing for her
coeval Oak,” and tells us that
“The Dryads laugh when vernal showers return;
O’er Autumn’s fading leaves the Dryads mourn.”
Preston, in his translation of Apollonius, makes a Hamadryad
plead in vain for her existence, threatened by destruction of the Oak in which
she dwelt:
“As in the mountain, with repeated stroke,
The churlish fellow felled the stubborn Oak;
Impious, he scorned the Hamadryad’s prayer,
And smote the tree coeval with the fair.
With streaming tears she pleads a suppliant strain
To that unfeeling churl, but pleads in vain.
‘Oh rustic, stay, nor wound the hallowed rind,
For ages with that stem I live entwined.’”
In Germany, the holes in the trunks of Oaks are thought to
be utilised by the elves inhabiting the trees as means of entry and exit; in
our own country, Oaks have always been reputed as the trees in whose boughs
elves delighted to find shelter. The fairies, too, were fond of dancing around
Oaks: thus Tighe, apostrophising the monarch of the forest, exclaims:
“The fairies from their nightly haunt,
In copse, or dell, or round the trunk revered
Of Herne’s moon-silvered Oak, shall chase away
Each fog, each blight, and dedicate to peace
Thy classic shade.”
In these lines allusion is made to a famous tree in Windsor
Forest, one of a long series of celebrated Oaks – “lusty trees,” which, as
Robert Turner writes, England “did once so flourish with, that it was called
Druina by some.” One of these, known as the Cadenham Oak, in the New Forest, is
said, like the Glastonbury Thorn, to mark the birthday of our Lord by budding
on Christmas Day. Another, renowned as the Royal Oak, is reverenced as having
been the hiding place of Charles II, after the battle of Worcester. In this
tree, not far from Boscobel House, the king, and his companion, Col. Careless,
or Carless, resorted when they thought it no longer safe to remain in the house
– the family giving them victuals on a Nut-hook. From this tree Charles
gathered some Acorns, and set them himself in St. James’s Park:
“Blest Charles then to an Oak his safety owes;
The Royal Oak, which now in songs shall live,
Until it reach to heaven with its boughs –
Boughs that for loyalty shall garlands give.”
In many parts of England, Oak-branches are suspended over
doorways, and gilded Oak-leaves and Oak-Apples are worn, on Royal Oak Day (May
29th), in celebration of King Charles’s restoration, and his
preservation in the Boscobel Oak, which is still extant.
Seven Oaks have given a name to a village in Kent; and Dean
Stanley has described a row of seven Oaks standing at a particular spot in
Palestine to which the following curious legend is locally attached. After Cain
had murdered his brother, he was punished by being compelled to carry the dead
body of Abel during the lengthened period of five hundred years, and then to
bury it in this place. Upon doing so, he planted his staff to mark the grave,
and out of this staff grew up the seven Oak trees.
The aged Oaks of Germany excited the wonder and respect of
Tacitus, who, speaking of one of the giants of the Hercynian forest, exclaims: “Its
majestic grandeur surpasses all belief; no axe had ever touched it;
contemporary with the creation of the world, it is a symbol of immortality.” Sacred
trees, or pillars formed of living trunks of trees, many of which were Oaks,
were to be found in ancient Germany, called Irmenseule. The world-tree of
Romowe, the ancient sacred center of the Prussians, was an evergreen Oak. The Oak
of St.Louis at Vincennes, and the Oak of the Partisans at St. Ouen, are trees
regarded with reverence by the French.
Paulus, a Danish physician, averred that one or two handfuls
of small Oak-buttons mingled with oats given to black horses will change them
in a few days to a fine dapple grey. Bacon says that there is an old tradition that
if boughs of Oak be put into the earth, they will bring forth wild Vines; he
also remarks that in his day country people had “a kind of prediction that if
the Oake-apple, broken, be full of wormes, it is a signe of a pestilent yeare.”
It is said that when the Oak comes out before the Ashe, it is a sign that there
will be fine weather in harvest. The Kentish people have a saying:
“Oak, smoke;
Ash squash.”
And that if the Oak comes out before the Ash, the summer
will be hot; but if after the Ash, that it will be wet. Authorities in dream lore
state that it is a very favourable omen to dream of an Oak-tree: if covered
with verdure, it signifies a long and happy life; if devoid of foliage or
withered, it betokens poverty in old age; to see many young Oaks thriving
foretells male children, who will reap distinction by bravery; Oaks bearing
Acorns betoken great wealth; and a blasted Oak forebodes sudden death.
Astrologers state that the Oak-tree is under the dominion of
Jupiter.
