FIR TRIBE 201 



pagan worship ; and it is not unlikely that the very presence of the venerable 

 Yew-trees would prove an attraction to these sites. The old pagans, like the 

 modern heathen, loved to place trees around the place of worship. We 

 may trace the custom even in those times when Israel, falling into the 

 idolatries of the surrounding nations, had altars in groves and on high places, 

 and forsook the God of their fathers, to worship the idol beneath the green 

 tree. 



But many Yews, on which we yet look as we go up to the house of 

 prayer, have been planted since the Christian faith shed its glorious influence 

 over the hearts and homes of this land. When the doctrine of the im- 

 mortality of the body, as well as that of the soul, came to be fully and 

 generally recognised, the Yew, one of the greenest and longest-lived of trees, 

 would yet seem an appropriate plant to place by the grave. The association 

 of this tree with a spot at once dear and solemn would be long ere it lost its 

 hold on the heart of the Christian ; and the thoughtful man yet likes to sit 

 beneath its boughs, and think of the times long since passed away, and the 

 men whose remains it overshadows. Then the convenience of such a tree, 

 as afibrding shelter to those who have come over field and hill to the sound 

 of the bell, and are awaiting the service, would afford another reason for 

 planting the Yew near the church-porch ; and the practice of placing ever- 

 greens on the coffin and in the grave would fit it for a further use. No 

 record seems in existence which tells that the Yew was placed there that it 

 might furnish the men of the time with wood for the bow ; thoiigh we 

 know that the wood of the consecrated Yew of the churchyard was worth 

 more than the wood of an ordinary tree. Thus, the ancient law of Wales 

 records : " A consecrated Yew, its value is a pc and ; a Yew-tree not conse- 

 crated, fifteen pence." 



In the olden times of England, the wood of the Yew was of no incon- 

 siderable importance ; indeed, it was second only to that of the oak itself, 

 as an old proverb might remind us, which says — 



" England were but a fling, 

 But for the bow and the grey goose-wing." 



And the Yew-wood was far preferred to that of any other tree for the 

 weapon of the archer. From England's earliest days, the bow figures in her. 

 history, and the imagination reverts to the story of King Alfred sitting on 

 the peasant's hearth, mending his bows and arrows, and to many a tale of 

 Robin Hood and his merrie men, in which legend and history are inter- 

 mingled. Chaucer calls the tree the " Shooter Yew," and describes his 

 archer as carrying a " mightie bowe ;" and, many years later, Spenser refers 

 to the material of which such bows were made — 



" Long ho tliem bore above tlie subject plaine, 

 As far as Eugheu bowc a shaft may send." 



The churchyard Yews scattered over the kingdom could have furnished 

 but few of the bows required, though doubtless they, as well as many 

 other trees, both wild and planted, contributed their due proportion, when, 

 by a statute of Edward IV., every Englishman and Irishman residing in 



III.— 26 



