ox THE OLD AND REMARKABLE YEW TREES IN SCOTLAND. 397 



extant in a thriving and vigorous condition at Wliittingharae, 

 East Lothian. It stands on the brow of a gentle eminence, 

 sloping to the north, and which it entirely covers. In fact, it has 

 less the appearance of a tree at a little distance than of an enormous 

 bank of the densest foliage. The circumference of its branches, 

 which sweep the sward on all sides, is close on 1 00 yards ; and in 

 one direction the lateral spread of branches is 96 feet. The trunk 

 of the tree is 1 1 feet in circumference at a foot from the ground, 

 and 10 feet at five feet above the ground-level. The trunk of the 

 yew, which reminds one of the central pillar of a cathedral chapter- 

 house, is 10 feet high before it sends out its branches, which form 

 the roofing of the canopy-like and arched groining, to carry out 

 the architectural simile. Within this gloomy and dark leafy 

 canopy there is, curiously enough, a spring of clear cold water, 

 which is noAV imprisoned and conducted in a leaden pipe to a tap. 



At one point only is it jiossible to creep below the branches so as 

 to reach the trunk, which when done, an umbrageous chamber is 

 entered, whose gloomy character suits well the dark tradition 

 which haunts the history of this yew tree. The legend is, that 

 in the adjacent castle of the Earl of Bothwell, Earl Morton, 

 Ruthven, and others of the Scottish nobles opposed to Darnley, 

 the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, had met to discuss the 

 means of getting rid of the obnoxious consort of the Queen ; 

 and that, repairing to the sequestered shade of this yew, they 

 formally entered into a covenant or bond to accomplish the death 

 of Darnley, by blowing him up in the Kirk o' Field at Edinburgh, 

 The great age of the tree renders it quite probable the tradition is 

 correct, the more especially as Bothwell was very frequently in this 

 neighbourhood immediately prior to the atrocious murder. A 

 more congenial place for the concocting of a deed of blood could 

 not have been selected by the iron-handed men who plotted the 

 destruction of Mary's unhappy husband. 



The old yew at Dryburgh Abbey is also a well-known tree, and 

 has been recorded by Loudon and others, although its dimensions 

 are not remarkably large, and certainly not so noticeable as those 

 of many yews we have mentioned in this paper. This tree stands 

 close to the Abbey of Dryburgh, Berwickshire,^ and is supposed 

 to have been planted at the time the Abbey was founded in 1136. 



^ Dryburgh Abbey, althongh popularly supposed to be in Roxburghshire, 

 is really in Berwickshire, a strip of that county running here up to the river 

 Tweed, and including the Abbey. 



