24 Yew-Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



uncommon to speak of the 'vine of the grape 

 wine,' meaning the wine of the grape vine. An 

 old quotation given in Notes and Qiieries? attached 

 to a commission, shows this spelling : * I find the 

 following, dated March 10, 1662: " Nottingham. 

 An Inventory of the Goods and Chattells of S r Jno 

 Byron the elder, Knight, taken at Mansfyld. 



' Item four Spanish viewe bowes w th a quiver and 

 arrowes at . . . . . xl s " 



Another writer speaks of vew being common in 

 the Craven district. This again is evidently de- 

 pendent on y being mistaken for v. 



An improvement suggests itself to some one. 

 Vew is a prospect, which is not spelt without an i. 

 Hence 'the yews' in Worsborough Dale become 

 ' the views ' ! Halliwell in his Diet of archaic and 

 proof words gives yet another form, vewe, which 

 he says is a Cheshire word. 2 



Still another writer says there is a farm in South 

 Shropshire named Yeo, which is always pronounced 

 View by the people of the neighbourhood. 



Epithets. From the earliest times the epithets 

 and adjectives used in connection with the yew 

 nearly all link it with sorrow or death ; and most 

 of those of modern date are similar in character, or 

 else mere translations. Thus we find such terms as 

 these constantly employed : melancholy, funereal, 

 mourner, black, dark, sable, stubborn, sullen, tough, 



1 ist Ser. vi. 10. 2 G. F. R. B., 1884, 6th Ser. vol. ix. 



