CHURCHYARD YEWS 255 
concomitances of death chambers and burial cere- 
monies. 
Lay a garland on my hearse, 
Of the dismal Yew, ” 
is the refrain of Aspasia’s song in The Maid’s 
Tragedy (Beaumont and Fletcher). And if we 
were to touch upon a more unpleasant topic of 
their fame, it would be to say that the prosperity 
of their growth and that of the community around 
were considered to be vastly benefited by their 
presence in churchyards. It was asserted that they 
attracted and. absorbed the deadly exhalations and 
gases of the graveyard, those luminous phenomena 
that so often terrified old women and children—and 
doubtless, for the matter of that, many a member 
of the other sex on a night return journey from the 
village alehouse—when they assumed the shape of 
Jack-o’-lantern and Will-of-the-wisp, and haunted 
the surroundings. 
To descend to a more prosaic interpretation of 
their occupation of these sites. There is a story 
told of a gunner on board a ship, who was summoned 
into the presence of his superior officer to give ex- 
planation of his failure to fire a salute. His apology 
was to the effect that there were countless reasons, 
but the first was all-sufficient ; he had no gunpowder. 
There may be countless reasons for planting Yews 
in churchyards, but one should suffice for most, and 
it is this, that a poisonous tree which is in requirement 
for national purposes is best planted out of reach 
of any opportunity to destroy animal life, which is 
also necessary for national purposes. . 
But all these conjectured problems we must here 
leave to the further consideration of those actuated 
by a desire to ransack the inner workings of the 
minds of planting men, who lived before the age of 
gunpowder and put them there. 
