The Yew— Taxus baccata 



Yew is supposed to be a coiTuption of mn* Jeliovali, im- 

 mortal. It loves the solitary churchyard, lone mouutaiu-side, aud 

 every out-of-tlie-way corner. Turner, 1664, remarks: — "The yew 

 is hot and dry, having such attraction that if planted near a place 

 subject to ' poysonous ' vapours its very branches will draw and 

 imbibe them. For this reason it was planted in churchyards, and 

 commonly on the west side, which was at one time considered full 

 of putrefaction and gross oleaginous gasses exhaled from the graves 

 by the setting sun. These gasses, or ' will-o'-the-wasp,' 'divers' 

 have seen and believed them dead bodies walking abroad." Turner 

 continues to tell us that " where so ever it grows, it is both dangerous 

 and deadly to man and best ; the very lying under its branches has 

 been found hurtful, yet the growing of it in churchyards is useful." 

 Galen and Dioscoridcs both wrote of the yew as venomous if taken 

 inwardly, and if " a doe sleep under its shade it causethe siclceness, and 

 ofttimes deathe." Even if birds were to eat the fruit they would 

 lose their feathers. Meander, 1771, reckoned the yew the most 

 "poysons " of plants. " If eaten, doth cause death unless pure wine 

 is at hand, which will make life grow ' strait.' " Theophrastus says, 

 beasts that labour will, if they eat the tree, die, but such as chew 

 the cud receive no hurt. Gerarde, 1598, on the evil effects of the tree, 

 says, " All which I boldly affirm as untrue, because I have eaten my 

 full of the berries and slept in the branches, not once, but oft, without 

 hurt." Lobel observes that in Britain the tree is not poisonous, but 

 in hot countries it has such " malignant qualities." It is not well 

 established why it of all trees was planted in churchyards. John 

 Eay says, 1665, as an emblem of immortality ; others, to be out of 

 cattle way, while yet some others affirm because being used for 

 the sjjrinkling of holy water, and therefore must be grown on 

 consecrated ground. Sir Thomas Brown, 1658, thinks that as the 

 Christians used to decorate tlieir coffins with yews as immortals and 

 ivhich taking root grew into trees. 



In Catholic countries yew is used on Palm Sunday, and may have 

 been planted in churchyards to be at hand on such occasions. 



The Ankerwyke yew was a tree of considerable size in 1215, at the 

 signing of Magna Charta. At Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, there 

 is one reckoned at 1,200 years of age. St. Pierre, in 1772 saw one in 



