PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
35* 
‘the origin of the name. The connection of Yew with iva and 
Ivy is still shown in the French if the German eibe , and the 
Portuguese iva. Yew seems to be quite a modern form; in 
the old vocabularies the word is variously spelt iw, ewe, 1 
eugh-tre, 2 haw-tre, new-tre, ew, uhe, and iw. 
The connection of the Yew with churchyards and funerals is 
noticed by Shakespeare in Nos. i, 5, and 6, and its celebrated 
connection with English bow-making in No. 3, where “double- 
fatal ” may probably refer to its noxious qualities when living 
and its use for deadly weapons afterwards. These noxious 
qualities, joined to its dismal colour, and to its constant use in 
churchyards, caused it to enter into the supposed charms and 
incantations of the quacks of the Middle Ages. Yet Gerard 
entirely denies its noxious qualities : “ They say that the fruit 
thereof being eaten is not onely dangerous and deadly unto 
man, but if birds do eat thereof it causeth them to cast their 
feathers and many times to die—all which I dare boldly 
affirme is altogether untrue; for when I was yong and went to 
schoole, divers of my schoolfellowes, and likewise my selfe, 
did eat our fils of the berries of this tree, and have not only 
slept under the shadow thereof, but among the branches also, 
without any hurt at all, and that not at one time but many 
times.” Browne says the same in his “ Vulgar Errors: ” 
“ That Yew and the berries thereof are harmlesse, we know ” 
(book ii. c. 7). There is no doubt that the Yew berries are 
almost if not quite harmless, 3 and I find them forming an 
element in an Anglo-Saxon recipe, which may be worth quot¬ 
ing as an example of the medicines to which our forefathers 
submitted. It is given in a Leech Book of the tenth century 
or earlier, and is thus translated by Cockayne: “If a man is 
1 “ An Eu tre (Ewetre); taxus, taximus.”— Catholicon Anglicum . 
2 “The eugh obedient to the bender’s will.”— Spenser, F. Q., i. 9. 
“ So far as eughen bow a shaft may send.”— Ibid. , ii. 11-19. 
3 There are, however, well-recorded instances of death from Yew 
berries. The poisonous quality, such as it is, resides in the hard seed, 
and not in the red mucilaginous skin, which is the part eaten by children. 
{See Hebenon.) 
