ASH TREE. 



23 



is apt to turn bitter at the fail of the leaf, and the reason 

 is supposed to be, that the cattle then pick up decayed 

 leaves, particularly those of the Ash ; but it is the same 

 in large low pastures where there are no trees, as in up- 

 land enclosures which abound in them.'" 



In some respects the Ash is certainly a mischievous 

 neighbour: the numerous shoots from the root spread 

 so widely abroad near the surface of the earth, that they 

 will not permit any thing else to grow near it ; it also 

 impoverishes the land, and the drip of its branches is in- 

 jurious to grass and corn. It will however grow in the 

 most barren soil, and the most exposed situations, and 

 ^vill bear the beating of the bleak sea-winds, so that it 

 is a good tree to plant near the coast, where few trees 

 flourish. 



In the early ages, when the island was overrun with 

 wood, our ancestors very naturally valued trees rather for 

 their fruit than for their timber, and when an oak or a 

 beech sold for ten shillings, the Ash, because it furnished 

 no food, was valued but at fourpence. 



" The Edda of Woden, however, holds the Ash in 

 high veneration, and describes man as being formed from 

 it. Hesiod, in like manner, deduces his brazen race of 

 men from the Ash*."' 



Evelyn mentions, as some remains of the superstitious 

 veneration paid to this tree, that the country people, in 

 some parts of England, split young Ashes, and pass dis- 

 eased children through the chasm, as a means of curing 

 them. They have another custom equally strange; — 

 that of boring a hole in an Ash-tree, and imprisoning in 

 it a shrewmouse : a few strokes given with a branch of 



* Martyn's Miller. 



