YEW-TREES IN CHURCHYARDS.
(Vol. viii., p. 346.)
This has long been to me a vexed question, and I fear that none of your correspondents have given a satisfactory answer.
I have seen in London sprigs of yew and palm willow offered for sale before Palm Sunday. At this period they may, I think, be always found in Covent Garden Market. I saw them last year also in the greengrocers' shops at Brighton. To me these are evident traces of an old custom of using the yew as well as the willow. The origin is to be found in the Jewish custom of carrying "branches of palm-trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows from the brook" (Leviticus xxiii. 39, 40.).
Wordsworth alludes to this in his sonnet on seeing a procession at Chamouny:
"The Hebrews thus carrying in joyful state
Thick boughs of palm and willows from the brook,
March'd round the altar—to commemorate
How, when their course they from the desert took,
Guided by signs which ne'er the sky forsook,
They lodged in leafy tents and cabins low,
Green boughs were borne."
In A Voyage from Leith to Lapland, 1851, vol. i. p. 132., there is an account of the funeral of the poet Oehlenschläger. The author states,—
"The entire avenue was strewn, according to the old Scandinavian custom, with evergreen boughs of fir, and bunches of fir and box, mingled in some instances with artificial flowers. It is customary at all funerals to strew evergreens before the door of the house where the body lies, but it is only for some very distinguished person indeed they are strewn all the way to the burial place."
Forby, in his East Anglican Vocabulary, says it is a superstitious notion that—
"If you bring yew into the house at Christmas amongst the evergreens used to dress it, you will have a death in the family before the end of the year."
I believe the yew will be found generally on the south side of the church, but always near the principal entrance, easy of access for the procession on Palm Sunday, and perhaps for funerals, and that it was used as a substitute for the palm, and coupled with "the willow from the brook," hence called the palm willow.
A Holt White.
P. S.—I cannot agree with your correspondent J. G. Cumming, that the yew is one of "our few evergreens." I doubt our having in England any native evergreen but the holly.
The etymology of the name of the yew-tree clearly shows that it was not planted in churchyards as an emblem of evil, but one of immortality. The name of the tree in Celtic is jubar, pronounced yewar, i. e. "the evergreen head." The town of
Newry in Ireland took its name from two yew-trees which St. Patrick planted: A-Niubaride, pronounced A-Newery, i. e. "the yew-trees," which stood until Cromwell's time, when some soldiers ruthlessly cut them down.
In the Note by Mr. J. G. Cumming, a derivation is evidently required for the English word yeoman, which he suggests is taken from "yokeman." Yeoman is from eō, pronounced yo, i. e. free, worthy, respectable, as opposed to the terms villein, serf, &c.; so that yeoman means a freeman, a respectable person.
Fras. Crossley.