The well-known chorus of “Hey derry down,” according to this gentleman, was a druidic chant, signifying, literally, “In a circle the oaks move round.”
Criminals were tried under an oak tree; the judge being placed under the tree, with the jury beside him, and the culprit placed in a circle made by the chief Druid’s wand. The Saxons also held their national meetings under an oak, and the celebrated conference between the Saxons and the Britons, after the invasion of the former, was held under the oaks of Dartmoor.
The wood of the oak was appropriated to the most memorable uses: King Arthur’s round table was made of it, as was the cradle of Edward III., who was born at Carnarvon Castle; this sacred wood being chosen in the hope of conciliating the feelings of the Welsh, who still retained the prejudices of their ancestors, the ancient Britons.
It was considered unlucky to cut down any celebrated tree; and Evelyn gravely relates a story of two men who cut down the Vicar’s Oak, in Surrey; one losing his eye and the other breaking his leg soon after. (See Loudon’s Arb. et Frut. Brit.)
The reverence with which the oak was regarded was by no means confined to the Celts. St. Boniface during his wanderings in Central Germany waged a sharp war against the heathen superstitions connected with trees and wells. There was a Thor’s Oak (the oak was in an especial manner dedicated to Thor) of enormous size in the country of the Hessians, greatly reverenced by the people, which, following the advice of some of the Christian converts, St. Boniface determined to cut down. Accordingly he began to hew at the gigantic trunk, whilst the heathen folk stood round about, prodigal of their curses, but not daring to interfere. The tree had not been half cut through, when, says Willibrord, the biographer of Boniface, who was himself present, a supernatural wind shook the great crown of its branches, and it fell with a mighty crash divided into four equal parts. The heathens, he continues, recognised the miracle, and most of them were converted on the spot. With the wood of the fallen tree St. Boniface built an oratory, which he dedicated in honour of St. Peter.[27]
The destruction of this oak has been considered a wise step, as it was evidently a matter of tremendous difficulty, in spite of innumerable decrees and canons condemnatory of heathen ceremonies in connection with trees, to get rid of the idolatry while the object of it remained.
Sometimes the tree was, as it is called, re-appropriated by the saint of the district; then the evils resulting seemed as bad as ever. There was St. Colman’s oak, for instance, any fragment of which, kept in the mouth, was believed would effectually ward off death by hanging. There was also St. Columba’s oak at Kenmare which, when blown down in a storm, no one dared to touch, or to apply the wood of it to ordinary purposes, except a certain tanner, who used the bark for curing leather. With the leather he made himself a pair of shoes; but the first time he put them on he was struck with leprosy, and remained a leper all his life.
It has for ages, in England, been thought that the oak was specially and mysteriously protected. Aubrey in his history of Surrey says:—“A strange noise proceeds from a falling oak, so loud as to be heard at half-a-mile distant, as if it were the genius of the oak lamenting. It has not been unusually observed that to cut oak-wood is unfortunate. There was at Norwood one oak that had mistletoe, a timber tree, which was felled about 1657. Some persons cut this mistletoe for some apothecaries in London, and sold them a quantity for ten shillings each time, and left only one branch remaining for more to sprout out. One fell lame shortly after; soon after each of the others lost an eye; and he that felled the tree, though warned of these misfortunes of the other men, would, notwithstanding, adventure to do it, and shortly after broke his leg; as if the Hamadryades had resolved to take an ample revenge for the injury done to their venerable oak. I cannot here omit taking notice of the great misfortunes in the family of the Earl of Winchelsea, who, at Eastwell in Kent, felled down a most curious grove of oaks, near his own noble seat, and gave the first blow with his own hands. Shortly after his countess died in her bed suddenly; and his eldest son, the Lord Maidstone, was killed at sea by a cannon bullet.”
Grimm points out many superstitions connected with the oak in Germany. It is believed in India that holes in trees are doors through which the special spirits of those trees pass, and this is found in Germany in the idea that the holes in the oaks are pathways for elves; and that certain troubles, especially of hand or foot, may be cured by contact with these holes. Near Gundalskol stood an oak popularly regarded as the habitation of a “Bjarmand,” but he was driven away by the church bells. It is said that a farmer was engaged to an elf-girl, but instead of a bride he embraced an oak sapling. In a churchyard at Heddinge, Seeland, are the remains of an oak wood declared to be the soldiers of the Erl-King, assuming the forms of armed men at night. In Westphalia, it is the custom to announce formally to the nearest oak any death that has occurred in a family. The process of healing rupture, once common in England, with the ash, is performed in Germany with the oak.
“The Christmas-tree has become a prevailing fashion in England at this season, and is by most persons supposed to be derived from Germany; such however is not the fact; the Christmas-tree is from Egypt, and its origin dates from a period long antecedent to the Christian era. The palm-tree is known to put forth a shoot every month, and a spray of this tree, with twelve shoots on it, was used in Egypt at the time of the winter solstice, as a symbol of the year completed. Egyptian associations of a very early date still mingle with the tradition and custom of the Christmas-tree; there are as many pyramids as trees used in Germany, in the celebration of Christmas, by those whose means do not admit of their purchasing trees and their concomitant tapers. These pyramids consist of slight erections of slips of wood, arranged like a pyramidal epergne, covered with green paper, and decorated with festoons of paper-chain work, which flutters in the wind and constitutes a make-believe foliage. This latter, however, is an innovation of modern days.”[28]