YULE FIRES 341 



beneficient gifts of summer. The rays were 

 twigs, the glowing clouds foliage, and the sun, 

 moon and stars golden fruit that hung from these 

 celestial branches. Out of this as the race grew 

 came also many another romantic symbolism of 

 cherished belief. Among the glowing sunset 

 clouds was hung the golden fleece of the Cholchis. 

 The golden apples of the Hesperides grew there. 

 The very lightning flash was but a celestial mis- 

 tletoe growing mysteriously upon the limbs of 

 this flame tree as it grows on the oaks in the 

 forests beneath which they hunted. Secure in 

 our better beliefs, we call their worship supersti- 

 tion, but it is well that they had it. It was the 

 groping expression of imagination without which 

 we are no better than the beasts and would never 

 find the really spiritual for which we still seek. 

 The most perfect descendant of this sun tree 

 was the world-ash of the Scandinavian myth- 

 ology, the "Yggsdrasil" of the Edda, in which 

 it is described, with the many mystic rites which 

 grew up about its worship. Hence in Western 

 Europe the proper Yule log was the trunk of an 

 ash tree bound with as many green hazel withes 

 as possible, the hazel being also a sacred tree with 

 these people. As late as thirty years ago, and I 



