308 



THE YEW. 



Sir Walter Scott is of a diflFerent opinion :— 



" But here, 'twixt rock and river, grew 

 A dismal grove of sable hue, 

 With whose sad tints were mingled seen 

 The blighted Fir's sepulchral green ; 

 Seemed that the trees their shadows cast 

 The earth that nourished them to blast. 

 For never knew that swarthy grove 

 The verdant hue that fairies love ; 

 Nor wilding green, nor woodland flower. 

 Arose within its baleful bower ; 

 The dank and sable earth receives 

 Its only carpet from the leaves, 

 That, from the withering branches cast, 

 Bestrew'd the ground with every blast." 



The wood of the Yew, London says, is hard, 

 compact, of a fine and close grain, flexible, elastic, 

 splitting readily, and incorruptible. It is of a fine 

 orange red, or deep brown ; and the sap wood, 

 which does not extend to a very great depth, is 

 white, and also very hard. The fineness of its 

 grain is owing to the thinness of its annual layers, 

 two hundred and eighty of these being sometimes 

 found in a piece not more than twenty inches in 

 diameter. " The Yew was formerly what the Oak 

 is now, the basis of our strength. Of it the old 

 English yeoman made his long-bow, which, he 

 vaunted, nobody but an Englishman could bend. 

 In shooting he did not, as in other nations, keep 

 his left hand steady, and draw his bow with his 

 right ; but keeping his right at rest upon the 

 nerve, he pressed the whole weight of his body 

 into the horns of his bow. Hence probably arose 

 the English phrase of bending a bow, and the 

 French of drawing one. Nor is the Yew cele- 

 brated only for its toughness and elasticity, but 

 also for its durable nature. Where your paling 



