Aufidius.	Let me twine Mine arms about that body, where against My grained Ash an hundred times hath broke, And starr'd the moon with splinters.
Coriolanus, act iv, sc. 5 (112).

Warwickshire is more celebrated for its Oaks and Elms than for its Ash trees. Yet considering how common a tree the Ash is, and in what high estimation it was held by our ancestors, it is strange that it is only mentioned in this one passage. Spenser spoke of it as "the Ash for nothing ill;" it was "the husbandman's tree," from which he got the wood for his agricultural implements; and there was connected with it a great amount of mystic folk-lore, which was carried to its extreme limit in the Yggdrasil, or legendary Ash of Scandinavia, which was almost looked upon as the parent of Creation: a full account of this may be found in Mallet's "Northern Antiquities" and other works on Scandinavia. It is an English native tree,[24:3] and it adds much to the beauty of any English landscape in which it is allowed to grow. It gives its name to many places, especially in the South, as Ashdown, Ashstead, Ashford, &c.; but to see it in its full beauty it must be seen in our northern counties, though the finest in England is said to be at Woburn.

Old Ballad.

In the dales of Yorkshire it is especially beautiful, and any one who sees the fine old trees in Wharfdale and Wensleydale will confess that, though it may not have the rich luxuriance of the Oaks and Elms of the southern and midland counties, yet it has a grace and beauty that are all its own, so that we scarcely wonder that Gilpin called it "the Venus of the woods."

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