be seen in some of our churchyards were planted for the purpose of furnishing palms for palm Sunday; which he thinks were simply branches of yew trees. And that they were really so used he holds to be extremely probable, from the fact of those in the churchyards of East Kent being to this day universally called palms.

Pegge, writing in that periodical for February 1870, looks upon the yew as being too funereal to be substituted for the joyful palm. Some of the yew trees in our churchyards he conjectures to be as old as the Norman Conquest, and to have been planted with others "for protecting the fabric of the Church from Storms;" but upon the operation of the statute of 35 Edward I., 1307, whereby leave was given to fell trees in churchyards for building and repairs, these would be the only trees left standing as unfit for the uses prescribed; and thereafter he thinks an evergreen would be thought an emblem of the resurrection, and even acquire some degree of regard and veneration.

These speculations are subsequently combated, and Pegge's objection to the funereal character of the yew is thus met: "When Sprigs of Yew Tree, as well as of other Evergreens, have been used in our funeral Ceremonies, it has not been like the Cypress of old, emblematical of the total extinction of the deceased, but, as is universally allowed, of his Resurrection; an idea, that, instead of being fraught with grief and despair, is, of all others, the most consolatory to the heart of Man; so that there seems no reason why this Tree being sometimes used at Funerals, should stamp such a lugubrous mark upon it, as to render it unsuitable to more joyful occasions. Ivy and Bay, that used to adorn the Brows of Poets and Conquerors, have not on that account been thought by the Christians of all Ages incompatible with funeral Solemnities."

Another writer dislikes all the reasons assigned for planting yew trees in churchyards, except their gloomy aspect, and their noxious quality; the first as intended to add solemnity to the consecrated ground; and the other to preserve it from the ravages of cattle. In support of the first he quotes Dryden, who calls the yew the mourner yew, and Virgil who designates it the baneful yew; and, more appropriately still, refers to the magic use which Shakespeare makes of it in Macbeth

"Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of Goats, and Slips of YEW
Silver'd in the Moon's Eclipse."

The great dramatist's opinion of its noxious properties, the writer adds, is evident from Hecate's answer to the aërial spirit—

"With new fall'n Dew,
From Church Yard Yew,
I will but 'noint,

And then I'll mount."

A fourth writer (January 1781), adverting to the use by the Greeks and Romans of branches of cypress and yew as signals to denote a house in mourning, maintains that death with them being a deity (the

daughter of sleep and night), and by them so represented, with the addition only of a long robe embroidered with stars, it may be fairly concluded that the custom of planting the yew in churchyards took its rise from pagan superstition, and that it is as old as the conquest of Britain by Julius Cæsar.

Gough instances branches of pine and cypress as signifying domestic death among the ancients, on the authority of Euripides (Hecuba. 191, 192) Suetonius (Aug. 101) and Virgil (Æn. xi. 31); and in a note he asks, “Will it be thought a far-fetcht conjecture that Yew Trees in Church Yards supply the place of Cyprus round Tombs, where Ovid (Trist. III. xiii. 21) says they were placed?"

Warner's reference to Brokenhurst church in Hampshire (1792) includes mention of two examples of enormous vegetation; a large oak, apparently coëval with the mound on which it grows, measuring five and twenty feet in girth; and a straight majestic yew tree. On the latter the axe had committed sad depredations, despoiling it of five or six huge branches, and thus detracting considerably from its ancient dignity. Nevertheless it is represented as a noble tree, measuring in girth fifteen feet, and in height upwards of sixty; and he believes it might lay claim to an antiquity nearly equal to that of its venerable neighbour. The new forest (he goes on to say), and Brockenhurst in particular (as we learn from its name), having been so famous for the production of yews, their present paucity might excite surprise, did we not recollect that the old English Yeomanry were supplied from them with those excellent bows which rendered them the best and most dreaded archers in Europe. This constant and universal demand for yew produced in time such a scarcity that recourse was had to foreign countries for a supply; and the importation of them was enjoined by express statutes, Edward IV. c 2. 1. and Richard III.

C 2.

Yew at length became so scarce, writes Grose, that to prevent its immoderate consumption, bowyers were directed to make four bows of witch-hazel, ash or elm, to one of yew; and no one under seventeen, unless possessed of moveables worth forty marks, or the son of parents having an estate of ten pounds per annum, might shoot in a yew bow.

The planting of the yew, Warner inclined to think, might be nothing more than a remnant of the superstitious worship paid by northern nations, in their pagan state, to trees in general, and to oaks and yews in particular; a deeply rooted habit which for a long time infected the Christian converts of the North of Europe: or it might have been placed in churchyards as an emblem of the eternal youth and vigour the soul enjoys when its "earthly tabernacle ” is moulded into dust. Its frequency in scenes of mortal decay, however, finally made it a necessary adjunct in the poetical sketches of the churchyard. The yew became the funereal tree, and poets paid to it the same honours as the cypress enjoyed from the bards of antiquity. Parnell, for instance, gives us―

"The Yew

Bathing a charnel house with Dew;

and Blair apostrophises it

Trusty Yew!

Chearless unsocial Plant, that loves to dwell
'Midst sculls and coffins, epitaphs and worms."

Nor could Gray complete his picture without introducing "the Yew Tree's shade."

The yew was a funereal tree (says Ossian), the companion of the grave, among the Celtic tribes. "Here," says the bard, speaking of two departed lovers, "rests their dust, Cuthullin! These lonely Yews sprang from their tomb, and shade them from the storm!"

White's History of Selborne, referring to the confusion of antiquaries as to the period at which this tree first obtained a place in churchyards, points to the statute 35 Edward I. entitled Ne Rector arbores in Cemeterio prosternat; and the contention is that, since we seldom see any other very large or ancient tree in a churchyard but yew, this statute must have principally related to this species of tree, and consequently that their planting in churchyards dates back far beyond the year 1307, in which it was passed.

In the parish of Burton (Preston Patrick) in Westmorland, according to Nicholson and Burn, mention is made of a yew tree in the chapel yard, represented to have been very old and decayed in 1692, as still in existence at the time of writing, and attesting the longevity of that species of wood. "These Yew Trees in Church and Chapel Yards," it is added, " seem to have been intended originally for the use of Archery. But this is only matter of conjecture, Antiquity having furnished no account (so far as we have been able to find) of the design of this kind of Plantation."

In a book of churchwardens' accounts, formerly in the possession of a Mr Littleton, of Bridgnorth, Salop, was an account of a yew tree being ordered to be planted in the churchyard for reverence sake.

Those who favour the opinion that yews were planted in churchyards for making bows, and so were there fenced from cattle, should consider that all plantations are fenced from cattle. And it is striking that at most two yew trees are to be found in each churchyard.

In Sir Thomas Browne's Urneburiall, the funeral pyre of the ancients is said to have consisted of "sweet fuell, Cypresse, Firre, Larix, YEWE, and Trees perpetually verdant;" and we have the remark: "Whether the planting of Yewe in Church Yards holds its original from antient funerall rites, or as an embleme of Resurrection from its perpetual verdure, may also admit conjecture."

The Magna Britannia of Lysons notices several yew trees of enormous growth in Berks and Bucks, particularly one at Wyrardisbury in the latter county, which, at six feet from the ground, measures thirty feet, five inches in girth. One yew of vast bulk at Ifley in Oxfordshire is supposed to be coeval with the church, which is known to have been erected in the twelfth century. Others of great age survive in various parts of England.

Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland supplies numerous examples. In the churchyard of Fortingal, in Perth (1792), a yew tree having a circumference of fifty-two feet is specified as one of the

curiosities of the place. The old burial-ground of Dunscore, in Dumfriesshire, had one, consumed at the heart, that held three men standing in it together. In Lord Hopetoun's garden at Ormiston Hall in East Lothian, a yew tree covered about the twentieth part of an English acre; the diameter of the ground covered by its branches being fifty-three feet, and its trunk measuring eleven in circumference. The best information assigned to it an antiquity of two hundred years; but between three and four hundred is regarded as more probable.

The circumference of the circle extended by the lower branches of one in the garden of Broish, in the parish of Kippen (Perth and Stirling), is given as a hundred and forty feet, and its age is conjectured to be between two and three hundred years.

The song in Twelfth Night mentions the custom of sticking yew in the shroud

"Come away, come away, Death,
And in sad Cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, Breath:
I am slain by a fair cruel Maid.
My Shroud of White, stuck all with Yew,
O prepare it ;

My part of Death no one so true

Did share it.

Not a Flower, not a Flower sweet,

On my black Coffin let there be strown," &c.

And here let the reader be reminded that, in whatever country Shakespeare lays the scene of his drama, he follows the costume of his own.

The Maid's Tragedy by Beaumont and Fletcher (1619) contains another

"Lay a Garland on my hearse,

Of the dismal YEW;
Maidens, Willow branches bear:
Say, I died true:

My love was false, but I was firm
From my hour of birth:
Upon my buried Body lie
Lightly, gentle Earth!"

In Poole's English Parnassus (1657) the yew has the epithets of "warlick, dismal, fatal, mortal, venemous, unhappy, verdant, deadly, dreadful," annexed to it, all from old English poets; and Chaucer, in his Assemblie of Foules, calls it "the shooter Ewe."

Loves Festivall at Lusts Funerall, at the end of A Boulster Lecture (1640), makes this reference—

"The Screch Owle frights us not, nor th' towling Bell
Summons our vading-startling Ghosts to hell.

Tombs, forlorne Charnels, unfrequented Caves,

The fatall EWE, sad sociate to Graves,

Present no figures to our dying Eyes,

'Cause Vertue was our Gole, her praise our prize."

Herrick too has

"An look, what Smallage, Night-shade, Cypresse, Yew,
Unto the Shades have been, or now are due,

Here I devote;'

and

"Both you two have

Relation to the Grave,

And where

The Fun'ral Trump sounds, You are there."

In the Art of Longevity, by Edmund Gayton (1659), St Paul's Churchyard is said to have been turned into a herb market

"The Ewe, sad Box, and Cypress (solemn Trees)

Once Church-yard guests (till burial rites did cease)

Give place to Sallads."

At a village in Suffolk it was customary to cut sprigs and boughs of yew trees to strew on the graves at rustic funerals; and in Coles' Introduction to the Knowledge of Plants (1656) is an account of the leaves of yew trees poisoning a clergyman's cows that ate them. Their owner, seeing some boys breaking boughs from the yew tree in the churchyard, thought himself much injured, and, to prevent the like trespasses, he sent a man to cut down the tree and bring it into his back yard. The cows, feeding upon the leaves, died in a few hours afterwards; and Coles remarks that the clergyman had a just reward. In Collinson's Somersetshire, speaking of two very large yew trees in the churchyard of Ashill (Hundred of Abdick and Bulston), the author observes that "our Forefathers were particularly careful in preserving this funereal Tree, whose branches it was usual for Mourners to carry in solemn procession to the Grave, and afterwards" (as already noticed) "to deposit therein under the Bodies of their departed friends. The Branches thus cut off from their native stock, which was to shoot forth again at the returning Spring, were beautifully emblematical of the Resurrection of the Body, as by reason of their perpetual verdure, they were of the Immortality of the Soul."

Bourne cites Gregory (1649) as observing that the Jews of old were wont, on their return from the grave, to pluck up the grass twice or thrice, and throw it behind them, with the words of the Psalmist : "They shall flourish out of the city like grass upon the earth;" signifying thereby that the body, though dead, should spring up again after the manner of grass. Levi's description of the Rites and Ceremonies of the Jews of the present day confirms Bourne's citation.

Of the practice of the primitive Church, derived from ancient times, of carrying out the dead with psalmody, proofs abound; and in several places in England it is not yet extinct.

Socrates affirms "that when the Body of Babylas the Martyr was removed by the order of Julian the Apostate, the Christians, with their Women and Children, rejoiced and sung Psalms all the way as they bore the Corpse from Dauphne to Antioch. Thus was Paula buried at Bethlehem, and thus did St. Anthony bury Paul the Hermite."

In the Burnynge of Paules Church in London (1561), published two years after that event, we read: "In burials we do not assemble a number of priestes to swepe Purgatorye, or bye forgivenes of Synnes, of them whiche have no authoritye to sell, but accordinge to Saint Jerom's example we followe. At the death of Fabiola, sais he, the