Chapter Traveller to Trees noted for Specific Virtues and Uses of T by Brewer's Readers Handbook

i. (1706).

(41) Whitethorn, used for axle-trees, the handles of tools, and turnery.

The identical whitethorn planted by queen Mary of Scotland in the garden-court of the regent Murray, is still alive, and is about 5 feet in girth near the base. —Jones: Edinburgh Illustrated.

The Troglodytes adorned the graves of their parents with branches of whitethorn. It formed the nuptial chaplet of Athenian brides, and the fasces nuptiarum of the Roman maidens.

Every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.
   —Milton: L’Allegro (1638).

(42) Willow, used for clogs, ladders, trenchers, pill-boxes, milk-pails, butter-firkins, bonnets, cricket-bats, hop-poles, cradles, crates, baskets, etc. It makes excellent charcoal, and a willow board will sharpen knives and other tools like a hone.

Willows to panting shepherds shade dispense,
To bees their honey, and to corn defence.
   —Googe: Virgil’s Georgics, ii.

It is said that victims were enclosed in wicker-work made of willow wood, and consumed in fires by the druids. Martial tells us that the old Britons were very skilful in weaving willows into baskets and boats (Epigrams, xiv. 99). The shields which so long resisted the Roman legions were willow wood covered with leather.

(43) Wych Elm, once in repute for arrows and long-bows. It affords excellent wood for the wheeler and millwright. The young bark is used for securing thatch and bindings, and is made into rope.

The wych elm at Polloc, Renfrewshire, is 88 feet high, 12 feet in girth, and contains 669 feet of timber. One at Tutbury is 16 feet in girth.—Strutt: Sylva Britannica.

At Field, in Staffordshire, is a wych elm 120 feet high and 25 feet in girth about the middle.—Plot.

(44) Yew Tree. The wood is converted into bows, axle-trees, spoons, cups, cogs for mill-wheels, flood- gates for fish-ponds (because the wood does not soon decay), bedsteads (because bugs and fleas will not come near it). Gate-posts of yew are more durable than iron; the steps of ladders should be made of this wood; and no material is equal to it for market-stools. Cabinet-makers and inlayers prize it. In Aberystwith churchyard is a yew tree 24 feet in girth, and another in Selborn churchyard of the same circumference. One of the yews at Fountain Abbey, Yorkshire, is 26 feet in girth; one at Aldworth, in Berkshire, is 27 feet in girth; one in Totteridge churchyard 32 feet; and one in Fortingal churchyard, in Perthshire (according to Pennant), is 52 feet in circumference (4 feet from the ground).

The yew tree in East Lavant churchyard is 31 feet in girth, just below the spring of the branches. There are five huge branches each as big as a tree, with a girth varying from 6 to 14 feet. The tree covers an area of 51 feet in every direction, and above 150 feet in circuit. It is above 1000 years old.

The yew tree at Martley, Worcester, is 346 years old, being planted three days before the birth of queen Elizabeth. That in Harlington churchyard is above 850 years old. That at Ankerwyke, near Staines, is said to be the same under which king John signed Magna Charta, and to have been the trysting-tree of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyne. Three yew trees at Fountain Abbey, we are told, were full-grown trees in 1128, when the founders of the abbey held council there in the reign of William Rufus. The yew tree of Braburn, in Kent (according to De Candolle), is 3000 years old!! It may be so, if it is true that the yew trees of Kingley Bottom, near Chichester, were standing when the sea-kings landed on the Sussex coast, and those in Norbury Park are the very same which were standing in the time of the ancient druids.

Notabilia—