34 
THE FOREST TREES OF BRITAIN. 
" The Mountain Ash is placed by most 
modern botanists in the same genus with the 
Apple and Pear, the fruit of which it resem- 
bles in conformation.* Others assign it a 
place with the Medlar, (3Iespilus,) or make 
it and the group with which it is connected a 
distinct genus (Sorbus). The name " aucu- 
paria "' (from aticeps, a fowler) indicates the 
use to which its berries are applied by bird- 
catchers in France and Germany, who bait 
their traps with them as a certain lure for 
thrushes and fieldfares. Its popular names 
are very numerous : Mountain Ash, the com- 
monest, is far from correct, as it belongs to 
an entirely different tribe from the Ash, which 
tree it resembles only in its leaves ; Rowan, 
Roan, its common name in Scotland, and 
various other forms of the same word, occur 
in old authors. It is also called Quick-Beam, 
Wild or Fowler's Service-tree : " Service " 
appears to be a corruption of Sorbus, the 
ancient Latin name of an allied species, Pyrus 
Sorbus. Witchen, Wicken, Wiggen, &c, 
evidently bear allusion to the power it was 
once supposed to possess of counteracting 
witchcraft. 
" Lightfoot and Gilpin are both of opinion 
that the Mountain Ash was held in high 
estimation by the Druids. The former says, 
' It may to this day be observed to grow more 
frequently than any other tree in the neigh- 
bourhood of those druidical circles of stones 
so often seen in the north of Britain ; and the 
superstitious still continue to retain a great 
veneration for it, which was undoubtedly 
handed down to them from early antiquity. 
They believe that any small part of this tree, 
carried about them, will prove a sovereign 
charm against all the dire effects of enchant- 
ment and witchcraft. Their cattle also, as 
well as themselves, are supposed to be pre- 
served by it from evil; for the dairy-maid 
will not forget to drive them from the sheal- 
ings, or summer pastures, with a rod of the 
Rowan-tree, which she carefully lays up over 
the door of the sheal-boothby or summer- 
house, and drives them home again with the 
same. In Strathspey, they make, on the 1st 
of May, a hoop with the wood of this tree, 
and in the evening and morning cause the 
sheep and lambs to pass through it.' 
"'In ancient days,' says Gilpin, 'when 
superstition held that place in society which 
dissipation and impiety now hold, the Moun- 
tain Ash was considered as an object of great 
veneration. Often, at this day, a stump of it 
is found in some old burying-place, or near 
the circle of a Druid temple, whose rites it 
* The Siberian Crab (Pyrus baccata) produces fruit 
which may lie considered as a connecting link between 
the berry of the Mountain Ash and the Apple of 
Pyrws Malus, the common Apple-tree. 
formerly invested with its sacred shade.' The 
custom of planting it in burying-grounds 
appears to have been retained after the in- 
troduction of Christianity; for Evelyn men- 
tions, that, ' in Wales, where this tree is 
reputed so sacred, there is not a churchyard 
without one of them planted in it, so, on a 
certain day in the year, everybody religiously 
wears a cross made of the wood.' In the Isle 
of Man, also, it is up to the present day 
invested by the superstitious with a sacred 
character. On Good Friday, when no iron 
of any kind must be put into the fire, and 
even the tongs are laid aside, lest any person 
should unfortunately forget the custom, and 
stir the fire with them, a stick of the Rowan- 
tree is used by way of substitute.* 
" The belief in the efficacy of the Mountain 
Ash, as a preservative against witchcraft, has 
led some commentators on Shakspeare to sub- 
stitute, for the puzzling expression in ' Mac- 
beth,' ' Aroint thee, witch !' the words, ' A 
Roan-tree witch !' The passage being thus 
uttered, the mention of a tree so fatal to the 
power of the witch might naturally excite her 
acrimony against the person who applied the 
test. The authoress of 'Sylvan Sketches' 
quotes a stanza from a very ancient song, 
which runs as follows : — 
Their spells were vain; the boys returned 
To the queen in sorrowful mood, 
Crying, that ' witches have no power 
Where there is Roaa-tree wood.' 
" In remote districts of England the super- 
stition has not even yet died away. Waterton, 
in his 'Essays on Natural History,' relates an 
anecdote which fell under his personal obser- 
vation, of a countryman in Yorkshire, who 
' cut a bundle of Wiggin, and nailed the 
branches all up and down the cow-house,' in 
order to counteract the effect produced on 
his cow by the ' overlooking ' of a supposed 
witch. 
" It is not a little singular, that, in like 
manner as we saw similar superstitious 
practices holding in Ireland and the East with 
regard to the Hawthorn and a tree closely 
resembling it, so we find in India a tree 
bearing a strong resemblance to the Mountain 
Ash, to which the same superstition attaches. 
" Bishop Heber, in the 18th chapter of 
his ' Indial Journal,' gives the following ac- 
count of this tree, and the superstition con- 
nected with it : — ' As I returned home, I 
passed a fine tree of the Mimosa, with leaves, 
at a little distance, so much resembling those 
of the Mountain Ash, that I was for a moment 
deceived, and asked if it did not bring fruit ? 
They answered no ; but it was a very noble 
* Train's " Historical Account of the Isle of Man, 
1846." 
