590 pfant "bore, iQege?^^/, and. "bijpic/*. 



The Egyptians regarded it as a symbol of mourning, and the idea 

 descended to the Greeks and Romans, who employed the wood as 

 fuel for their funeral pyres. The Britons probably learned from 

 the Romans to attach a funereal signification to the Yew, and 

 inasmuch as it had been employed in ancient funeral rites, they 

 regarded the tree with reverence and probably looked upon it as 

 sacred. Hence, in course of time, the Yew came to be planted in 

 churchyards, and, on account of its perpetual verdure, was, like the 

 Cypress, considered as a symbol of the resurredtion and immortality. 



" Dark Cypresses the skirting sides adorned, 

 And gloomy Yew-trees, which for ever mourned." — Harte. 



R. Turner remarks that if the Yew "be set in a place subjecfl to 

 poysonous vapours, the very branches will draw and imbibe them : 

 hence it is conceived that the judicious in former times planted it 

 in churchyards on the west side, because those places being fuller 

 of putrefadtion and gross oleaginous vapours exhaled out of the 

 graves by the setting sun, and sometimes drawn into those meteors 

 called igncs fatui, divers have been frightened, supposing some 

 dead bodies to walk ; others have been blasted, &c." Prof. 

 Martyn points out that a Yew was evidently planted near the 

 church for some religious purpose ; for in the ancient laws of 

 Wales the value of a consecrated Yew is set down as _^i, whilst that 

 of an ordinary Yew-tree is stated as only fifteen pence. " Our 

 forefathers," says he, "were particularly careful to preserve this 

 funereal tree, whose branches it was usual to carry in solemn pro- 

 cession to the grave, and afterwards to deposit therein under the 

 bodies of their departed friends. Our learned Ray saj-s, that our 

 ancestors planted the Yew in churchyards because it was an ever- 

 green tree, as a S3mibol of that immortality which they hoped and ex- 

 pected for the persons there deposited. For the same reason this and 

 other evergreen trees are even yet carried in funerals, and thrown 

 into the grave with the body; in some parts of England and in 

 Wales, planted with flowers upon the grave itself." Shakspeare 

 speaks of a " shroud of white, stuck all with Yew," from which one 

 would infer that sprigs of Yew were placed on corpses before burial. 

 Branches of Yew were, in olden times, often carried in procession on 

 Palm Sunday, instead of Palm, and as an evergreen Yew was some- 

 times used to decorate churches and houses at Christmas-time. 



Parkinson remarks that in his time it was used "to deck up houses 

 in Winter ; but ancient writers have ever reckoned it to be dan- 

 gerous at the least, if not deadly." Many of the old writers were 

 of Parkinson's opinion as to the poisonous characfter of the Yew. 

 Caesar tells how Cativulcus, king of the Eburones, poisoned him- 

 self by drinking a draught of Yew. Dioscorides says that a decoc- 

 tion of the leaves occasions death ; Galen pronounces the tree to 

 be of a venomous quality and against man's nature ; and White, in 

 his ' History of Selborne,' gives numerous instances in which the 

 Yew has proved fatal to animals. Gerarde does not consider the 



