ty* 



CHAP. CXII. TAXAX3E/E. TA XUS. 



on Christianity on its first introduction. It would indeed be surprising, if 

 one so innocent and so congenial to their best feelings were not allowed, as 

 a tribute to departed worth or friendship, under that new and purer system, 

 which confirmed to them the cheering prospect of a reunion after death with 

 those who had shared their pleasures and affections here. History and tra- 

 dition concur in telling us that this was the case, and that the yew was 

 also closely connected, in the superstitions of our simple forefathers, with 

 ghosts and fairies. 



" In the works of a very ancient Welsh bard, we are told of two churches 

 renowned for their prodigious yew trees : 



' Bangor Esgor, a Bangeibyr Henllan 

 Yssid er clodvan er clyd Ywyz;' 



which Dr. Owen Pugh thus translates : ' The Minster of Esgor, and that 

 of Henllan, of celebrity for sheltering yews.' Henllan signifies an old grove; 

 thus proving that its church stood where druid worship had been performed. 

 Can we, then, longer doubt the real origin of planting yew trees in our church- 

 yards ? If it be said that this usual, though not natural, situation of the yew 

 tree proves the venerable specimens which we find in churchyards not to be 

 older than the introduction of Christianity, it may be replied, that our earliest 

 Christian churches were generally erected on the site of a heathen temple, 

 and that at least one motive for placing churches in such situations would be 

 their proximity to trees already sacred, venerable for size, and indispensable 

 in their religious rites. That these rites were performed, and altars erected, 

 in groves, from the remotest antiquity, we know from the Pentateuch. The 

 devotions and sacrifices of Baal among the Moabites, and the idolatrous rites 

 of the Canaanites and other tribes of Gentiles, were performed in groves and 

 high places. The druids chose for their places of worship the tops of wooded 

 hills, where, as they allowed no covered temples, they cleared out an open 

 space, and there erected their circles of stone. Many of the remote Welsh 

 churches are on little eminences among wooded hills. Mr. Rootsey of 

 Bristol has suggested that our words kirk and church might probably have 

 originated in the word cerrig, a stone or circle of stones ; the first churches 

 having been placed within these circular stone enclosures. Hence also, 

 perhaps, caer, a camp, which word is used in some parts of Wales for the 

 wall round a churchyard. Dr. Stukeley believes that round churches are 

 the most ancient in England. A circle was a sacred symbol among the 

 Eastern nations of antiquity; and it would be interesting to know whether 

 the raised platform within a circle of stones, which is sometimes found round 

 our old yews, as in Darley and Llanfoist churchyards, be not a remnant of 

 this superstition. Many of the first Christian churches were built and inter- 

 twined with green boughs on the sites of druidical groves. When Augustine 

 was sent by Gregory the Great to preach Christianity in Britain, he was par- 

 ticularly enjoined not to destroy the heathen temples, but only to remove the 

 images, to wash the walls with holy water, to erect altars, &c., and so convert 

 them into Christian churches. These were the designata loca Gentilium, in which 

 our converted ancestors performed their first Christian worship. Llan, so 

 general a name for towns and villages in Wales, is a corruption of the British 

 llwyn, a grove ; and, strictly, means an enclosure, rather than a church, the 

 places so designated being, probably, the earliest-inhabited spots, and also 

 those where religious rites would be celebrated. ( See p. 17 1 7.) Eglwys means 

 a Christian church (ecclesia); and, probably, those were so called which 

 were first erected after the introduction of Christianity, and not on the site of 

 a heathen temple." (Mag. Nat. Hist., 2d series, vol. i. p. 87.) 



The Rev. W. T. Bree, in the Magazine of Natural History, vol. vi. p. 48., 

 also suggests the probability of churches having been built in yew groves, or 

 near large old yew trees, as greater than that of the yew trees having been 

 planted in the churchyards after the churches were built. A consecrated 

 yew (according to a table quoted in Martyn's Miller, and taken from the 

 ancient laws of Wales,) was worth a pound, while a wood yew tree was worth 



