2084

PART III.

ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM.

Cray's lines are well known: —

“ Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree’s 6hade,

Where heaves the turf in many a tnould’ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell securely laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” Elegy in a Country Churchyard.

Swift makes Baucis and Philemon he turned to yews : —

** Description would but lire my Muse:

In short they both were turned to yews.

Old Goodman Dobson of the GreenRemembers he the trees has seen.

On Sundays, after evening prayer,

He gathers all the parish there;

Points out the place of either yewHere Baucis, there Philemon grew.

Till once the parson of our town,

To mend his barn, cut Baucis down ;

At which’t is hard to be believedHow much the other tree was grieved,

Grew scrubbed,died a top, was,stunted;

So the next parson stubb'd and burnt it.”

Numerous other passages might be quoted, but we shall confine our-selves to two, one of which is from Sir Walter Scott, and the other fromWordsworth : —

“ But here ’twixt rock and river grewA dismal grove of sable yew,

With whose sad tints were mingled seenThe blighted iir’s sepulchral green :

Seem’d that the trees their shadows castTlie earth that nourish’d them to blast,

For never knew that swarthy groveThe verdant hue that fairies love ;

Nor wilding green, nor woodland flower,

Arose within its baleful bower :

The dark and sable earth receivesIts only carpet from the leaves,

That, from the withering branches cast,

Bestrew’d the ground with every blast.” Rokcby, canto, ii.

** There is a yew tree, pride of Lorton vale.

Which to this day stands single in the midstOf its own darkness, as it stood of yore,

Not loth to furnish weapons in the handsOf Umfraville or Percy, ere they march’dTo Scotland’s heaths, or those that cross’d the sea,

And drew their sounding bows at Agincourt;

Perhaps at earlier Cressy, or Poicticrs.

Of vast circumference and gloom profound,

This solitary tree! A living thing,

Produced too slowly ever to decay ;

Of form and aspect too magnificentTo be destroy’d. But worthier still of noteAre those fraternal four of Borrowdale,

Join’d in one solemn and capacious groveHuge trunks ! and each particular trunk a growthOf intertwisted fibres serpentine,

Upcoiling, and immediately convolved :

Nor uninform’d by phantasy, and looksThat threaten the profane; a pillar’d shade,

Upon whose grassless floor of red brown hue,

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tingedPerennially; — beneath whose sable roofOf boughs, as if for festal purpose, deck’dWith unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes

May meet at noontide,.

there to celebrate,

As in a natural temple, scatter’d o’erWith aitars undisturb’d of mossy stone,

United worship.”

There does not appear to be any mythological legend connected with theyew. In Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary, it is said that Smilax was meta-morphosed into a yew ; but Ovid simply says that she, and her lover Crocus,were changed into two flowers : —

“ Et Crocon in parvos versum cum Smilace flores^rajtcrco ; dulcique animos novitate tenebo.” Met., lib. iv. fab. 10.

Probably the mistake arose from Dioscoridcs, and some of the otherancient botanists, having called the yew Smilax. Cambdcn relates a legend