Poetical allusions Dray ton 1 6 1 



being * strewde with blasted Rosemary, withered 

 hyacinths, fatall cipresse and ewe/ 



Camden relates a legend of a priest in York- 

 shire who, having murdered a maiden who refused 

 to listen to his addresses, cut off her head and hid 

 it in a yew-tree. The tree from thenceforth became 

 holy, and people made pilgrimages to visit it, 

 plucking and bearing away branches of it, believing 

 that the small veins and filaments resembling hairs, 

 which they found between the bark and wood of 

 the tree, were the hairs of the maiden. Hence the 

 name of the village, which was then called Houton 

 (a despicable village) occasioned the building of 

 the now famous town of Halifax, which imports 

 'Holy Hair ^ 



Michael Drayton (i563-i63i), 2 in Nymphidia, 

 shows how the Fairy made her charm to bewilder 

 Puck :- 



' Then sprinkles she the juice of rue 

 That groweth underneath the yew 

 With nine drops of the midnight dew, 

 From lunary distilling.' 



In the Battle of Agincourt (p. n) he tells of 

 the wonderful powers of the English bowman : 



* And boy, quoth he, I have heard thy grandsire say, 

 That once he did an English archer see, 

 Who shooting at a French twelve score away, 

 Quite through the body stuck him to a tree.' 



1 Sytva, p. 381. 2 Nymphidia^ or the Court of Fairy, p. 465. 



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