CONIFERZ. 283 
May meet at noontide, 
There to celebrate, 
As in a natural temple scatter’d o’er 
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, 
United worship.” 
There does not appear to be any mythological legend connected with the yew. It 
is said in Lempriére’s “ Dictionary” that Smilax was metamorphosed into a yew; 
but Ovid simply says that she and her lover Crocus were changed into two flowers. 
Loudon suggests that probably the mistake arose from Dioscorides and some other of 
the ancient botanists having called the yew Smilax. Camden relates a legend of a 
priest in Yorkshire who, having murdered a virgin 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 virgin. 
Hence the name of the village which was then called Houton was changed into 
Halifax, which signifies holy hair, and the wealth brought by the pilgrims enabled 
the inhabitants to build on its site the now famous town of that name. The yew is 
the badge of the Highland clan Fraser. 
The yew trees of Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire, are well known, This abbey 
was founded in 1132, by Thurston, Archbishop of York, for certain monks who 
adopted the severe discipline of St. Bernard. In the Royal Society is preserved a 
history of the foundation of this abbey as given by a monk of the period. He 
describes the locality as a spot of ground that had never been inhabited unless by 
wild beasts; being overgrown with wood and brambles, lying between two steep hills 
and rocks covered with wood on all sides, more proper for a retreat for wild beasts 
than the human species. There stood a large elm tree in the midst of the vale, on 
the lower branches of which the monks put some thatch and straw ; and under that 
they lay, ate, and prayed, the bishop for a time supplying them with bread, and the 
rivulet with drink. But it is supposed that they soon changed the shelter of their 
elm for that of seven yew trees, growing on the declivity of the hill on the south side 
of the abbey, all standing in 1658, excepting the largest, which was blown down about 
the middle of the fifteenth century. These yews were then of extraordinary size, the 
trunk of one of them twenty-six feet six inches in circumference at three feet from 
the ground, and they stood so near each other as to form a cover almost equal to a 
thatched roof. Under these trees the monks resided till they had built their 
monastery. 
The name of Fountains Abbey is derived by some from Fountaines, in Burgundy, 
the birthplace of St. Bernard ; and by others from the word shell, which (signifying 
a fountain) was written in Latin by the monks fontibus; and thence corrupted into 
the present name. In 1837 one of these trees existed, and was sketched by an artist; 
it must then have been upwards of 800 years old. 
The Fortingal Yew, in a churchyard amongst the Grampians, is of unknown age, 
and has long been a mere shell, forming an arch through which the funeral processions 
of the Highlanders were accustomed to pass. This tree has been considerably 
destroyed by the depredations of visitors, but is now secured by an iron railing. It 
is probable that it was a flourishing tree at the beginning of the Christian era, and 
may yet survive for centuries to come. 
A large yew hedge existed in the Botanic Gardens at Oxford, which was rooted up 
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