Gossip about the Yew. 



Statutes were x^assed by many of the early kinf]js of Britain for- 

 biddinfT the exportation of yew wood, and obliging all Venetian and 

 other carrying ships to import ten bow staves with every butt of 

 Malmsey or other wine; and, by the 5th of Edward IV., every 

 Englishman dwelling in Ireland was expressly ordered to have an 

 English bow of his own height, made of yew, -wych hazel, ash, or 

 awburn, which last is supposed to have been laburnum. The last 

 statute that appears in the books respecting the use of yews for bows 

 is the 13th of Elizabeth, c. 14, which directs that bow staves shall be 

 imported into England from the Hanse Towns and other places. 

 The custom of planting the yew in churchyards has never been satis- 

 factorily explained. Sir Thomas Browne conjectures, from its peren- 

 nial verdure, it was nsed as an emblem of the resurrection. He 

 observes further that the Christian custom of decking the coffin with 

 bay is a most elegant emblem, it being asserted that this tree, when 

 seemingly dead, will revive from the root, and its dry leaves resume 

 their wonted verdure ! The yew is called by Shakespeare, in "Eichard 

 II.," the double fatal tree, because the leaves are poisonous, and 

 the wood is employed for instruments of death. The most probable 

 reason, however, for planting the yew in churchyards consisted of 

 protecting the edifices from wind, and bow-making, whilst being in 

 an enclosed place, the cattle were kept from grazing on the poisonous 

 leaves. Evelyn considers that they were planted in churchyards for 

 no other purpose than providing palms for Palm Sunday, which he 

 thinks were no other but the branches of yew trees. A writer in the 

 Gentleman's Magcranc for 1780 dislikes all the reasons assigned, and 

 maintains that they were so planted on account of their gloomy 

 appearance and their noxious quality ; the first intended to add 

 solemnity to the consecrated ground, the other to preserve it from the 

 ravages of cattle. To countenance his first reason he quotes Dryden, 

 who calls the yew " the mourner yew ; " and to make it still more fitting 

 for the place, adds the magic use which Shakespeare makes of it in 

 " Macbeth,"— 



"Liver of blaspheming Jew, 

 Gall of goat and slips of yew, 

 Silvered in the moon's eclipse." 



