SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
*33 
And the poet mentions it also as an ingredient in the 
magic potion : 
Gall of goat and slips of yew. 
Macbeth , IV. i. 27 
There is no doubt, too, that slips of yew were used 
with flowers in funeral ceremonies, as the poet himself 
witnesses: 
My shroud of white stuck all with yew. 
Twelfth Night, II. iv. 56. 
No one seems to have suggested that the yew- 
trees were utilized for church decoration. To make 
the carpet of yew-sprigs, which custom ordered, 
much would be required, and the trees would be 
close at hand ; they were, however, no doubt used 
for all or most of the other purposes : bows were 
occasionally made from them, and their gloomy 
appearance may have lent solemnity to the yard, 
but their symbolical character and utility in shelter¬ 
ing the edifice seem more questionable. Be it as it 
may, there is little doubt they came down to us from 
Roman mythology as plants sacred to the gods of the 
lower regions, for which purpose they were used 
both by Gauls and Celts. 
The cypress, a yet more mournful shrub, is alluded 
to twice as a shady grove : 
And: 
Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress-trees. 
2 Henry VI., III. ii. 322. 
I am attended at the cypress grove. 
Coriolanus, I. x. 30. 
And again as a wood much valued as a preservative 
medium : 
I have stuff’d . . . 
In cypress chests my arras counterpoints. 
Taming of the Shrew, II. i. 351. 
