THE CROUCH OAK. 



earlier, the sacred haunts of native Celtic 

 deities, became in the end those " Gospel 

 Oaks," under which, at the annual beating 

 of the bounds, the priest stopped with his 

 acolytes to read a few verses of St. Luke 

 or St. Matthew. Sometimes, indeed, hardly 

 more than the memory of some particular 

 episode in the history of the sacred tree 

 now survives, as at Addlestone, near 

 Chertsey, where there is also a crouch 

 oak, chiefly famous at present from a local 

 tradition that Wickliffe once preached under 

 its canopy of branches. But the older 

 holy and even phallic virtue of this sacred 

 trunk is proved by the fact that decoctions 

 of its bark taken internally, after a well- 

 known and almost world-wide fashion, are 

 still considered by the girls of the village 

 to operate as a love-charm. 



The history of these ancient trees, so 

 far as we can reconstruct it from the piece- 

 meal evidence, is picturesque and singular. 

 Originally, I believe, they were planted as 

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