“This forest is described by Cæsar as requiring sixty days to traverse it; and the remains of it are supposed by some to constitute the forest on the mountains of the Hartz; and by others to be the Black Forest of the Tyrol.
The beautiful fiction of the Hamadryads is frequently referred to by the Greek poets. The Hamadryads were nymphs, each of whom was
‘Doomed to a life coeval with her oak.’
Callimachus, in the Hymn to Delos, represents Melia as “sighing deeply for her parent oak;” and adds—
‘Joy fills her breast when showers refresh the spray:
Sadly she grieves when autumn’s leaves decay.’
“In Appollonius Rhodius, Book II., we find one of the Hamadryads imploring a woodman to spare the oak to which her existence is attached:
“Loud through the air resounds the woodman’s stroke,
When lo! a voice breaks from the groaning oak.
‘Spare, spare my life! a trembling virgin spare!
Oh, listen to the Hamadryad’s prayer!
No longer let that fearful axe resound;
Preserve the tree to which my life is bound!
See from the bark my blood in torrents flows,
I faint, I sink, I perish from your blows.’”
“The oak, evidently, was an object of worship among the Celts and ancient Britons. The Celts worshipped their God Teut under the form of this tree; and the Britons regarded it as a symbol of their God Tarnawa, the god of thunder.”
Just here we are reminded by Loudon and others of the Yule log and Yule festival, a most ancient British institution, now known to our dwellers in towns only by historical report. Professor Burnet tells us the word yule comes from Hu, the Bacchus of the Druids; others derive it from Baal, Bal, or Yiaoul, the Celtic god of fire, and who was sometimes identified with the sun and worshipped under the form of an oak. Baal was considered the same as the Roman Saturn, and his festival (that of Yule) was kept at Christmas, which was the time of the Saturnalia. The Druids professed to maintain perpetual fire; and once every year all the fires belonging to the people were extinguished, and relighted from the sacred fire of the Druids. This was the origin of the Yule log, with which, even so lately as the commencement of the last century, the Christmas fire in some parts of the country was always kindled; a fresh log being thrown on and lighted, but taken off before it was consumed, and reserved to kindle the Christmas fire of the following year. The Yule log was always of oak; and as the ancient Britons considered that it was essential for their hearth fires to be renewed every year from the sacred fire of the Druids, so their descendants thought that some misfortune would befall them if any accident happened to the Yule log. (See Irving’s “Bracebridge Hall.”)
The worship of the Druids was generally performed under an oak; and a heap of stones was erected on which the sacred fire was kindled, which was called a cairn, as Professor Burnet says, from Kern an acorn.