64 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



So deadly has the yew been reputed to be that to sleep 

 beneath Its shade was held a form of suicide.^ This 

 belief has flourished for some two thousand years at least, 

 being in full vigour long before the Christian era. Gerard, 

 however, writing his General Historic of Plants in 1633, 

 declares, bringing the matter to the test of experiment : 

 " I have not only slept under the shadow thereof, but 

 amongst the branches also, without any hurt at all, and 

 that not one time but many times." Shakespeare, in King 

 Richard 11., applies the epithet " doubly fatal " to the 

 yew, referring not alone to its poisonous nature, but to 

 the deadly skill in archery of those who — 



bend their bows 

 Of double-fatal yew against thy State. 



Pliny, in his Historia Mundi, written in the first century 

 of the Christian era, declares, in the quaint translation of 

 him by Holland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth — " The 

 yugh fearefull to looke upon, a cursed tree " ; and it will be 

 remembered that when the Witches in Macbeth were 

 making their gruesome mixture of eye of newt and toe 

 of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog, adder's fork and 

 blindworm's sting, and such-like untempting ingredients, 

 they did not forget to throw into the horrible mess some 

 slips of yew. The yew was always regarded as something 

 decidedly uncanny. 



The flowers of the yew will be found in March ; they 



' 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. Wheresoever it grows it is both dangerous and deadly to man and 

 beast ; the very lying under its branches has been found hurtful. — Turner, 

 Botanologia 1664. 



