SHAMBLE OAK.
Tommy Toby was very urgent to visit some of the old historic oaks of Sherwood, especially such as are associated with quaint stories and tragic histories.
Procuring a guide, the Class went first to see Shamble Oak. Think of it: in the main circuit it is thirty-four feet! It is called Shamble Oak because a butcher once used its hollow trunk to conceal stolen sheep. He was hung on an oak.
The guide next took the boys to a dreamy old place called Welbeck Park, to see the Greendale Oak, supposed to be seven hundred years old, and which has a circumference of more than thirty-five feet!
“It looks as though it had the rheumatism,” said Tommy. “With all of its crutches and canes it will not live many years longer. Do you think it will?”
“I think it likely to outlive all of us,” said the guide. “More than one hundred and fifty years ago an arch was cut in this tree, and a lord rode through it on his wedding day. It was very, very old then; but the lord is gone, and the oak lives.”
GREENDALE OAK.