What the ash was to the Scots of old, the yew (Taxus baccata) was to the English; for while the ash furnished staves for the national weapon, the pike, which the Scots learnt to handle from their Flemish allies, the most powerful longbows were fashioned of yew, and it was as archers that the English excelled all other infantry until gunpowder came into general use. Even long after the smoke and stench of "villainous saltpetre" had altered the conditions of battle, much attention was given to archery in the English army. Despite the many Acts of Parliament enjoining the planting of yews, the supply had run short before Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, so that in 1571 it was enacted that bow-staves should be imported from the Continent (13 Eliz., c. xiv.).

Apart from military association, the yew is a tree of gloom, taking the place in British churchyards which the cypress, "like Death's lean lifted forefinger," occupies in Eastern cemeteries. Tennyson was least likely of poets to miss the significance of this tree's melancholy; at first he could recognise in it nothing else but that and its changelessness:

Old yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the underlying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.
Oh not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale!
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom.

Shakespeare received a similar impression:

But straight they told me they would bind me here
Unto the body of a dismal yew.

Sir Walter Scott applied the self-same epithet:

But here 'twixt rock and river grew
A dismal grove of sable yew.

Seem'd that the trees their shadows cast
The earth that nourished them to blast;
For never knew that swarthy grove
The verdant hue that fairies love;
Nor wilding green, nor woodland flower,
Arose within its baleful bower.
The dark and sable earth receives
Its only carpet from the leaves.

Anyone who has stood on a summer noon within one or other of the two remarkable yew woods on Lord Radnor's property near Salisbury cannot fail to recognise the truth of this picture in every detail. The sense of gloom and envious shade in those "swarthy groves" must oppress him who enters it. They are known respectively as "the Great Yews" and "the Little Yews," the former being of the greater extent—about 80 acres—but the largest trees are growing in the Little Yews. Although these two woods are almost certainly of natural origin, traces of replanting may be recognised here and there by the regular lines in which some of the great trees are disposed, telling of a time when the timber was in request for bow-making.

Tennyson came to realise that the yew really responds in its own fashion to the summons of spring as briskly as any rose or lily, and that a sparrow cannot alight upon it in April without disturbing a puff of pollen:

Old warder of these buried bones,
And answering now my random stroke
With fruitful cloud and living smoke,
Dark yew, that graspest at the stones
And dippest toward the dreamless head,
To thee, too, comes the golden hour
When flower is feeling after flower.

Surely there is nothing more delightful in English verse than the delicate phrase in which Tennyson touches upon some of the less obvious workings of nature.

Evelyn observes regretfully in the seventeenth century: "Since the use of bows is laid aside amongst us, the propagation of the eugh is likewise quite forborn; but the neglect of it is to be deplored." Howbeit, on the whole, one cannot regret that this sombre tree is less often planted than it was when the Kings of England were striving desperately to retain their rich lands in France. The yew requires two or three centuries to acquire dignity. Such venerable ruins as the great yew in the churchyard of Leeds, in Kent, measuring 32 feet in girth at 3½ feet from the ground, command admiration akin to awe from creatures whose span is but three-score years and ten. So do the yews on Merrow Down, near Guildford, reputed to have marked the Pilgrims' Way to Canterbury; and the yews of Borrodale and Inch Lonaig, on Loch Lomond, we cherish as traces of the primÆval forest. But for decorative work, for sheltering hedges in garden and pleasure ground, let us take some more lightsome evergreen from the wealth of choice that the enterprise of collectors has furnished us withal. The Lawson cypress, the giant thuja, the so-called Albert spruce, and many others, are of far nobler growth than the yew and equally patient of the shears, if clipped they have to be. True, they are foreigners, but so are the Spanish and horse-chestnuts, the silver fir, the sycamore, the English elm, and many other growths which have become integral parts of our home landscape; assuredly our forbears would not have hesitated to plant better things than yews if they had been given the chance. That they did plant what they had may be seen from the note made by Giraldus Cambrensis when he visited Ireland in the year 1184:

"Here the yew with its bitter sap is far more abundant than in all the other countries where we have been, but chiefly in old graveyards; and of these trees you may see plenty planted of old in these sacred places by the hands of holy men who did what they could to honour and adorn them."

Given elbow room, the yew takes liberal advantage of it, and is apt to spread to a breadth equal to or greater than its height. A singular departure from this habit was made by a seedling found in 1767 on the hills near Florence Court, in County Fermanagh, which grew in a strictly fastigiate or columnar form, and became the progenitor (by cuttings) of what is now known in all temperate parts of the globe as the Irish yew.

Geologically the yew is of immense antiquity in this island; indeed, it grew in what is now the island of Britain before that was severed from the Continent, as is proved by its remains in the forest bed underlying the glacial drift on the coast of Norfolk, where its fruits, identical with those of the present time, have been recognised lying among the bones of elephant, rhinoceros, and four species of bear. A closely kindred form of yew, with somewhat smaller seeds, has been found in the German coal-fields, showing that the type has existed from an incalculably distant period, before the formation of the chalk. Botanically, therefore, the yew must be regarded as contemporary with such archaic types of vegetation as the Gingko, the Umbrella pine (Sciadopytis), the Cycads, and the Horsetails.

Of the age of individual trees exaggerated estimates have been formed and statements devoid of evidence made. Thus a fine yew at Yew Park, Clontarf, near Dublin, is confidently shown to visitors as that under which Brian Boruimh, King of Ireland, died on Good Friday, A.D. 1014. Very likely he breathed his last under a yew tree growing on that spot; but it is incredible that this should be the identical tree, for although it has a wide spread of branches, the trunk only measures 12 feet in girth. Compare this with the recorded increase of a yew at Ankerwyke, near Staines, which in 1822 girthed 27 feet 8 inches, and in 1877 had increased to 30 feet 5 inches, and it is clear that the Clontarf tradition cannot be seriously entertained.

It would grievously wound the feelings of a townman of Chichester to express any lack of confidence in the tradition which affirms that the yews in Kinglye Bottom, near that town, were growing there when the Norsemen landed among them a thousand years ago; but listen to Dr. Lowe's chilly analysis of the grounds for that belief. "Had it been said that yews were there, the statement would have been accurate; but that 'the yews,' meaning those still existing, were then in being, is too large a demand on our credulity, as there is no tree at that place which exceeds 15.4 feet in girth, or possibly about five hundred years in age."[23] In like manner the belief that Montrose rested under the fine yew at Abercairney, in Perthshire, must be dismissed, for it only girths 10 feet 7 inches, indicating an age of about 200 years; whereas to have afforded effective shelter in the year 1640 it ought by this time to be at least 370 years old.

The usual indication of age by annual rings of growth cannot be trusted in the case of the yew, owing to a peculiarity in its habit of growth. Injury to a main branch often causes all that part of the stem with which it is connected to die under the bark right down to the ground, the injury being repaired by a rush of young shoots from the living bark; and these, if they get head room, grow vigorously and ultimately become welded together. This process vitiates the record of annual rings, and although it is a means of rejuvenescence which no doubt prolongs the life of the tree, it would not be safe to assume that there is any yew in the British Isles more than five hundred years old. Dr. John Lowe was at great pains to collect evidence on this matter, and failed to obtain documentary proof of any yew exceeding 250 years of age.

The practice of planting yews in churchyards helps to account for the extravagant statements about the age of certain trees. Generation after generation has become familiar with seeing a yew beside the parish church; the date of the building of the church being accurately known, it comes to be assumed that church and tree are coeval. Dr. Lowe gives a case in point of two churches in contiguous parishes in Kent, each of which has a large yew in the churchyard reckoned to be the same age as the church. One of these yews measures 16 feet in girth, the other 17 feet; but as one of the churches dates back to the eleventh century, and the other only to the fourteenth, the tradition about the trees would have one yew to be three hundred years older than the other, although only differing in girth by one foot.[24]

The poisonous properties of the yew are pretty generally known; in fact, Pliny says that the adjective toxicus, poisonous, was once written taxicus from taxus, the yew. But in the English EncyclopÆdia is the mischievous statement—"It is now well known that the fruit of the yew may be eaten with impunity." It is quite true that the pulp surrounding the seed, with its sweet but sickly taste, does not possess the poisonous properties of the foliage and young bark; but the seed itself is deadly, numerous fatal cases having been recorded as the result of swallowing it. On the whole, therefore, it is best to give children nice chocolates on condition that they leave the pretty yew berries alone.

A yew bearing yellow berries originated at Glasnevin about 100 years ago and has been pretty extensively propagated in Ireland, but I have never happened to see it in fruit, though I have a clear recollection of the weird yew avenue at Glasnevin.

The Irish or Florence Court yew, described above, found high favour with garden designers seventy or eighty years ago, owing to its fastigiate habit; but, at best, it is a funereal object, and a more cheerful effect may be obtained by planting Incense Cedar (Libocedrus decurrens), Lawson Cypress or Pencil Cedar (Juniperus virginiana).

Dr. Prior, in his excellent work on the Popular Names of British Plants (1879), argued confidently that the names "yew" and "ivy" were but different forms of the same word; but the late Professor Skeat declined to admit that there was any connection between them. It is an elusive element in English place-names; Yeovil in Somerset being assigned to a totally different origin. Yeoford, in Devon, has been variously written Uford and Yewford, and may possibly be named from a yew tree, and so may Uffculme in the same county. The Gaelic iubhar (pronounced "yure") is more easily recognised in the suffix -ure or -nure to many Irish and Scottish place-names. For instance, Gortinure, near Londonderry, is written Gort-an-iubhair in the Annals of the Four Masters; Glenure in Argyll and Palnure in Galloway are respectively the glen and stream (pol) of the yews. The word is more closely disguised in Newry, County Down; but that name is explained in the aforesaid Annals as derived from a yew planted by St. Patrick himself, whence the monastery founded there was called Iubhar-cinn-trachta, the yew near high tide-mark. The name was shortened into an-Iubharach, whence the transition was easy to Newry. In Galloway, Palnure is the stream of the yews, and in Ayrshire Dunure is the fort of the yew-tree.