Mr. Loudon tells us that there is an old oak in Binfield Wood, Windsor Forest, which is called Pope's Oak, and which bears the inscription "HERE POPE SANG:"[014] but according to general tradition it was a beech tree, under which Pope wrote his "Windsor Forest." It is said that as that tree was decayed, Lady Gower had the inscription alluded to carved upon another tree near it. Perhaps the substituted tree was an oak.
I may here mention that in the Vale of Avoca there is a tree celebrated as that under which Thomas Moore wrote the verses entitled "The meeting of the Waters."
The allusion to Pope's Oak reminds me that Chaucer is said to have planted three oak trees in Donnington Park near Newbury. Not one of them is now, I believe, in existence. There is an oak tree in Windsor Forest above 1000 years old. In the hollow of this tree twenty people might be accommodated with standing room. It is called King's Oak: it was William the Conqueror's favorite tree. Herne's Oak in Windsor Park, is said by some to be still standing, but it is described as a mere anatomy.
----An old oak whose boughs are mossed with age,
And high top bald with dry antiquity.
As You Like it.
"It stretches out its bare and sapless branches," says Mr. Jesse, "like the skeleton arms of some enormous giant, and is almost fearful in its decay." Herne's Oak, as every one knows, is immortalised by Shakespeare, who has spread its fame over many lands.
There is an old tale goes that Herne the hunter,
Sometime a keeper here in Windsor Forest,
Doth all the winter time, at still midnight,
Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns,
And there he blasts the trees, and takes the cattle;
And makes milch cows yield blood, and shakes a chain
In a most hideous and dreadful manner.
You have heard of such a spirit; and well you know,
The superstitious, idle-headed eld
Received, and did deliver to our age,
This tale of Herne the Hunter for a truth.
Merry Wives of Windsor.
"Herne, the hunter" is said to have hung himself upon one of the branches of this tree, and even,
----Yet there want not many that do fear,
In deep of night to walk by this Herne's Oak.