1885.] THE BEA UTIES OF BRITISH TREES. 219 



Then youthful Box which now hath grace 



Youi' lioiises to renew, 

 Grown old, surrender must his place, 



Unto the crisped Yew. 



When Yew is out then Bii-ch comes in, 



And many flowers besides ; 

 Both of a fresh and fragrant kinne. 



To honour Whitsontide." 



It is uot only for Easter decorations that yew-boughs are utilized 

 by the Church ; for out of the lands of palms and olives, the Catholic 

 Church has to make shift with willow and yew on Palm Sunday, so 

 that the latter tree has acquired the name of palm in Ireland and, 

 as Evelyn tells ns, in Kent, though willows are more generally 

 so called. That staunch Protestant, William Turner, " the father of 

 English botany," need not have opened the vials of his wrath upon 

 the Popish priests for this custom, as a deception, since the prayers 

 in the mass for the day expressly add the words, " and other trees," 

 after palm and olive. In the churchwardens' accounts for Wood- 

 bury, Devonshire, in 1775, it is recorded "That a yew or palm tree 

 was planted in the churchyard, ye south side of the church, in the 

 same place where one was blown down by the wind a few days ago, 

 this 25 th of November." The yew was also used in funerals, a 

 custom alluded to by Shakespeare in Twelfth Nirjlit, in the line — 

 " My sluoud of white, stuck all with yew ; " 



and Sir Thomas Browne suggested that sprigs so used have taken 

 root and grown into our churchyard trees. Again, in some parts of 

 the country, corpses were rubbed with an infusion of yew-leaves to 

 preserve them. 



Perhaps the best evidence /a«<te dc mietix to connect the yew with 

 Druidic times, is the fact that it is particularly abundant in the 

 churchyards of Wales and the west of England. Mr. Lees records 

 twelve or thirteen in the churchyard at Mahmilade, one having a 

 girth of over thirty feet. 



Some one has said that the religion of one age becomes the super- 

 stition or witchcraft of the next ; so perhaps the " slips of yew 

 sliver'd in the moon's eclipse " by the weird sisters in Macbeth may 

 point not merely to the well-known poisonous character of the tree, 

 but also to a former reverence for it. 



Man in all ages is apt to be utilitarian ; and if the shade of the 

 " dismal yew " had once been a rendezvous for the clan where the 

 Druid, as chief medicine-man, dispensed justice and wisdom, it was 

 no doubt soon found desirable that the material for the chief weapons 

 of the day should be enclosed, that it might not be browsed, with 

 results possibly fatal, by the cattle. It is probably to its use for 



