TREE-WORSHIP 33 



hard by the King Stone, about which it is told 

 that when the flowery branch was cut on Mid- 

 summer Eve, the tree bled, the stone ' moved 

 its head '." In a later chapter we shall have 

 something to say about the churchyard yew ; 

 and if we could trace back to their origin the 

 predecessors of the crosses in our market- 

 places, in what strange worlds of thought 

 should we be ? Just as, though we have no 

 volcanoes and no glaciers in our islands to- 

 day, there are still abundant evidences of their 

 existence and activity in the far-off ages of the 

 past, so there are abundant evidences around 

 us also of old-time beliefs such as are now held 

 only by the most backward races. Our own 

 time is prosaic only to the prosaic ; but however 

 alive we may be to the romance of the present, 

 life will be all the richer if we realise that all 

 around us, in our own land, are relics of the 

 romance of the past. 



If, according to the old belief, trees be 

 animate, they can, of course, suffer pain. And, 

 to this day, old peasants in Austria beg the 

 pardon of a tree when they fell it. '' Some of 

 the Philippine Islanders," says Mr. Frazer, 

 ''believe that the souls of their ancestors are in 



