THE BRABURN YEW-TREE, 199 
the earth! Think of the old Yew-tree in Bra- 
burn churchyard; what a life would the life of 
that tree be could it be written! But rolling 
years, although they each left the print of their 
footsteps in the concentric ring-marks on the 
inner stem, have left no other trace of their 
events; and all that can be learned from the 
contemplation of them is but the number of the 
ages which have glided by, and left the Yew-tree 
yet alive. Yet what cannot be learned directly 
from the tree itself, we may be able to supply 
from other sources of knowledge. 
Eleven hundred and fifty years before the birth 
of Our Lord, the Braburn Yew-tree was a sapling 
just rising from the soil of savage England, The 
sun that shone upon its young branches, shone 
likewise, but with more fervent heat, upon the 
head of the aged Eli and the child Samuel, min- 
istering before the Lord in the tabernacle at 
Shiloh. It lived and grew, and began to lift its 
head and look out upon the land; but no village 
clustering round the ivied church was there, no 
fields golden with corn or green with grass, nor 
any bared and naked by the plough; nothing but 
a tangled wilderness where the wild hart had 
