A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott

apple, the other favourite wand-making woods. A rod made of yew, called a fe, was used to measure corpses for burial, and the pagan habit of placing a piece of yew foliage in a coffin persisted until the eighteenth century.

      Many yews of great age have survived in churchyards because of their sacred associations, both before and after Christianity. The habit of planting yew trees in churchyards is open to dispute; one theory is that they were planted to deter graziers from turning sheep into graveyards to eat the grass. However, this lacks credulity, as the parishioners wanted the grass in graveyards to be grazed and would peg cut brambles on the actual graves to keep the sheep off them. Another, which suggests that yews were planted to provide staves for the mighty bow of the Middle Ages, is also implausible; the yews would take far too long to grow to have been of any use, and in any case, most yew staves were imported from Italy. The last theory, and the one that I subscribe to, is that early Christian churches were built on sites of pagan worship and that the habit of planting yews near churches simply persisted. This is based on the instructions given by Pope Gregory in 597 to the Benedictine monk, Augustine, as he departed on his mission to convert the pagan Britons. Gregory insisted that Augustine should not destroy the heathen temples, but only remove the idolatrous images, wash the walls with holy water, erect consecrated altars and try to convert the sites to Christian churches.

      HOLLY

      Holly was revered for the same reason as miseltoe-bearingyew; it was an evergreen and the fact that a crop of bright berries appeared to coincide with the winter solstice could only suggest deeply mythical connections. Furthermore, to add to the mystique, holly most commonly grows in the understorey of oak woodlands, and where few plants can survive the overhang of a mature tree, holly can be found gleefully growing in scrubby clumps around the base of big oaks. Uniquely to Britain, there were once forests of pure holly in Scotland, as it had long been an essential element in pagan winter solstice festivals, which were the most prolonged and widespread celebrations honouring the unconquered Sun. The first recorded usage was by the Romans, who used it for decoration at Saturnalia. This festival was held in mid-December, and was a time of uninhibited celebrations. Houses and streets were decorated with holly, ivy and other evergreens, and ‘Strenae’ twigs of evergreens – laurel or holly – to which were fastened sweetmeats, were a popular gift. The Celts believed holly had the power to ward off evil spirits and to protect houses from lightning, a superstition that persisted for many centuries. Holly trees and hedges were planted around houses in some parts of the country for their evil-deterring properties, and door frames were sometimes made of holly as a protection against lightning.

      THE CELTS BELIEVED HOLLY HAD THE POWER TO WARD OFF EVIL SPIRITS AND TO PROTECT HOUSES FROM LIGHTNING, A SUPERSTITION THAT PERSISTED FOR MANY CENTURIES. HOLLY TREES AND HEDGES WERE PLANTED AROUND HOUSES IN SOME PARTS OF THE COUNTRY FOR THEIR EVIL-DETERRING PROPERTIES.

      The belief that plants with red berries – holly and rowan – were a defence against a malign presence was particularly strong in Scotland. The Gaelic name for holly, Chuillin, appears across the country from Cruach-doire-cuilean on Mull, where the Mc Leans of Duart adopted holly as their clan badge, to Loch a’ Chuillin in Ross-shire in the north; the town of Cullen in Banffshire may also have derived its name from a local holly wood. In old Scottish myths, the Cailleach, a hag representing winter, was said to be born each year at the beginning of November. She spent her time stalking the earth during the winter time, smiting the ground with her staff to harden it and kill off growth, and calling down the snow. On May-Eve, the turning point of the Celtic year from winter to summer, she threw her staff under a holly tree and turned into a stone. The holly tree was sacred to her, and keeping a holly bough, complete with leaves and berries, in the house was believed to placate her and protect the occupants from an unwelcome visit. After the Battle of Dunbar in 1650, when Cromwell defeated the Scottish army commanded by Lord Newark, 5,000 prisoners were force-marched under appalling conditions to Norfolk to drain the fens. The 1,400 Scotsmen who survived the starvation and ill-treatment on the journey south were said to have stuck twigs of holly around the hovels they lived in on the marshes, as protection against any evil fen spirits.

      As with several other native trees believed to have protective properties, there were taboos against cutting down a whole tree. Hollies were frequently left uncut in hedges when these were trimmed, and in 1861 the 8th Duke of Argyll even had a prospective road at Inveraray rerouted, to avoid disturbing a particularly venerable old tree. Taking boughs for decoration, however, and coppicing trees to provide winter fodder, was considered acceptable. Holly leaves proved to be particularly nutritious as winter feed for livestock, and some farmers even installed grinders to make the pricklier leaves more palatable. Folklore suggested that the wood had a mystical control over animals, especially horses, and coachmen traditionally had whips made from coppiced holly, which accounted for hundreds of thousands of holly stems during the great era of carriage driving in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

      ASH

      Our two native ash trees, the common ash and mountain ash, or rowan, were both held in very high regard by Iron Age man. A mature common ash tree, with its upward-reaching widely spaced branches, is a magnificent specimen. They are one of the easiest trees to recognise; it is the only one that has black buds in the spring, followed by purple florets resembling little cauliflowers. The leaves are very distinctive, having from nine to eighteen long-toothed leaflets lying opposite each other on each stem, and in the autumn the tree produces bunches of winged seeds known as Ash Keys. It grows in most soils and conditions, particularly in limestone areas, and evolved a reliable and productive seed-manufacturing system, bearing both male and female flowers on a single tree, often developing hermaphrodite flowers. When mature, the tree can reach a height of forty metres, which is reflected in its Latin name of Excelsior, with the bark as deeply fissured as an oak and developing an incredibly large and deep root system.

      EARLY PEOPLE ACROSS NORTHERN EUROPE BELIEVED THAT THE ROOTS OF AN ASH TREE REACHED DEEP INTO THE UNDERWORLD AND THAT ITS UPWARD-SWEEPING BRANCHES WERE STRETCHING TO THE GODS … THE ASH WAS GENERALLY CONSIDERED A SPLENDID TREE WHICH MUST HAVE ANY NUMBER OF MAGICAL PROPERTIES.

      Early people across northern Europe believed that the roots of an ash tree reached deep into the underworld and that its upward-sweeping branches were stretching to the gods. It all becomes very convoluted in Norse mythology, which has a squirrel running up and down the tree carrying messages from a serpent gnawing at the roots to an eagle in the canopy; a deer feeding on ash leaves, from whose antlers flowed the great rivers of the world; and a magical goat dispensing mead from its udders to the warriors in Odin’s Great Hall. All in all, the ash was generally considered a splendid tree which must have any number of magical properties, not least of which was that the wood burnt with equal intensity when either green or dry, and an old saying is, ‘Burn ash wood green, ‘tis fit for a queen.’

      In British folklore ash trees were also credited with a range of protective and healing properties, most frequently related to child health. Newborn babies were often given a teaspoon of ash sap, and sick children, especially those suffering from a rupture, broken limbs or rickets, would be passed naked through a cleft in an ash tree or ash sapling. The cleft was often specifically made for the purpose and bound together again after the ceremony; as the ash healed the child’s health would improve. A decoction of the leaves, bark and fruits were believed to cure arthritis, rheumatism, warts and snake bites, alleviate fluid retention, improve general health and promote longevity.

      Any tree with autumn berries was attributed with magical properties, and the bitter scarlet berries of the mountain ash or rowan trees were believed to be the ambrosia of the gods. Furthermore, the berries have a tiny five-pointed star opposite its stalk in the shape of the pentagram, an ancient symbol of protection. Belief in the rowan trees’ ability to ward off evil was pretty well universal across Britain. A rowan tree growing near a dwelling was believed to protect the occupants from witches, and where I farm in the Borders there are any number of ruined bothies used by