162 ILEX AQUIFOLIUM. 
undergrowth to the oak, the ash, and the pine. In Ireland, the holly is not very 
common ; but about the lakes of Killarney it attains a large size. 
The holly has been much admired from the earliest periods. Its use for orna- 
menting churches and dwellings, at Christmas, is well known, though the origin 
of the practice is uncertain. The custom of putting evergreens in places of reli- 
gious worship prevailed long before the birth of Christ ; and several passages in 
Holy Writ have reference to it : 
" And they found written in the law which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that 
the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month : 
"And that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, 
sayin?, Go forth unto the mount, and fetch olive branches, and pine branches, and 
myrtle branches, and palm branches, and branches of thick trees, to make booths, 
as it is written." 
Nehemiah, viii. 14, 15. 
The holly appears to have been first employed for this purpose by the early 
Christians, at Rome ; and was probably adopted for decorating the churches at 
Christmas, because it was used in the great festival of the Saturnalia, which 
occurred about that period. It was the policy of the Christians to assimilate the 
festivals of the Pagans as nearly as possible in their outward forms, to avoid 
exciting unnecessarily their prejudices ; and it was customary among the 
Romans to send boughs of holly, during the Saturnalia, as emblems of " peace 
and good-will," with the gifts they presented to their friends at that season. It 
was for this reason, independently of any desire to conciliate the Pagans, well 
adapted to be an emblem of the principal festival of a religion which professes, 
more than any other, "to preach peace and good-will to man." Whatever may 
have been the origin of the practice, it appears to have been a very ancient 
usage; for Bourne, in his "Antiquities of the Common People," cites an edict 
of the Council of Bracara, forbidding Christians to begin to decorate their houses 
at Christmas, with green boughs, at the same time that the Pagans decorated 
theirs at the Saturnalia, which commenced about a week earlier. Dr. Chandler, 
in his " Travels in Greece," supposes that this custom was derived from the 
Druids, who, he says, decorated their dwellings with evergreens during winter, 
" that the sylvan spirits might repair to them, and remain unnipped with frost 
and cold winds, until a milder season had renewed the foliage of their darling 
abodes." The earliest record of this custom in England, perhaps, is in a carol 
in praise of the holly, written in the time of Henry VI., and preserved in the 
Harleian MSS., in illustration of which, it must be observed, that the ivy, being 
dedicated to Bacchus, was used as a vintner's sign in winter, and hung outside 
of the door. 
" Nay, Ivy, nay, it shall not be I wys; 
Let Holy hafe the maystry as the maner ys. 
Holy stond in the halle, fayre to behold ; 
Ivy stond without the dore; she ys full sore a cold." 
Stow, in his "Survey of London," in 1598, says that, in his time, "every man's 
house, the parish churches, the corners of the streets, conduits, market-crosses. 
&c, were decorated with holme, ivy, and the bayes, at Christmas." Formerly, 
in England, when it was customary to enclose and subdivide gardens by hedges, 
the holly was employed by all who could afford to procure the plants, and wait 
for them to grow. Evelyn had a magnificent hedge of this kind, at his gardens 
at Say's Court, which he thus rapturously describes : " Is there under heaven 
a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind than an impregnable hedge, of 
about four hundred feet in length, nine feet high, and five in diameter, which I 
can show in my now ruined gardens, at Say's Court, at any time of the year, 
glittering with its armed and varnished leaves, the taller standards, at orderly 
distances, blushing with their natural coral?" Other holly hedges, famous in 
