@IRc ©y/'o rf3-_-(ei ree/ o^ tft,e ePvricieal/. 



addressing Ulysses : " Tell me thy family, from whence thou art ; 

 for thou art not sprung from the olden tree, or from the rock." 

 The Ash was generally deemed by the Greeks an image of the 

 clouds and the mother of men, — the prevalent idea being that the 

 Meliai, or nymphs of the Ash, were a race of cloud goddesses, 

 daughters of sea gods, whose domain was originally the cloud sea. 

 But besides the Ash, the Greeks would seem to have regarded 

 the Oak as a tree from which the human race had sprung, and to 

 have called Oak trees the first mothers. This belief was shared b) 

 the Romans. Thus Virgil speaks 



"Of nymphs and fauns, and savage men, who took 

 Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn Oak." 



In another passage the great Latin poet, speaking of the ^sculus, 

 a species of Oak, sacred to Jupiter, gives to it attributes which 

 remind us in a very striking manner of Yggdrasill, the cloud-tree 

 of the Norsemen. 



" yEsat/us in primis, qucE quantum vortice ad auras 

 yEt/ierias, tantutn radue in Tartara tendii." — Georg. ii. 



*' High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend, 

 So low his roots to hell's dominion tend.'" — Dryden. 



In the iEneid, Book IV., speaking of the Oak as Quercus, 

 Virgil uses the same expression with regard to the roots of Jove's 

 tree descending to the infernal regions. Juvenal, also, in his sixth 

 satire, alluding to the beginning of the world, speaks of the human 

 race as formed of clay or born of the opening Oak, which thus 

 becomes the mystical mother-tree of mankind, and, like a mother, 

 sustained her offspring with food she herself created. Thus Ovid 

 tells us that the simple food of the primal race consisted largely 

 of " Acorns dropping from the tree of Jove ; " and we read in 

 Homer and Hesiod that the Acorn was the common food of the 

 Arcadians. 



The belief of the ancient Greeks and Romans that the 

 progenitors of mankind were born of trees was also common to the 

 Teutons. At the present day, in many parts of both North and 

 South Germany, a hollow tree overhanging a pool is designated as 

 the first abode of unborn infants, and little children are taught to 

 believe that babies are fetched by the doctor from cavernous trees 

 or ancient stumps. " Frau Holda's tree " is a common name in 

 Germany for old decayed boles ; and she herself, the cloud-goddess, 

 is described in a Hessian legend as having in front the form of a 

 beautiful woman, and behind that of a hollow tree with rugged 

 bark. 



But besides Frau Holda's tree the ancient Germans knew a 

 cosmogonic tree, assimilating to the Scandinavian Yggdrasill. The 

 trunk of this Teutonic world-tree was called Irmitisid, a name 

 implying the column of the universe, which supports everything. 



