BEECH.—Vieing with the Ash in stateliness and grandeur of outline, the Beech (Fagus) is worthily given by Rapin the second place among trees.
“Mixt with huge Oaks, as next in rank and state,
Their kindred Beech and Cerris claim a seat.”
According to Lucian, the oracles of Jupiter at Dodona were delivered not only through the medium of the sacred Oaks in the prophetic grove surrounding the temple, but also by Beeches which grew there. A large part, if not the whole, of the Greek ship Argo was built of Fagus, or Beech timber, and as certain beams in the vessel gave oracles to the Argonauts, and warned them against the approach of calamities, it is probable that some, at least, of these prophetic beams were hewn from the Dodonæan Beeches. It was from the top of two Beech-trees that Minerva and Apollo, in the form of vultures, selected to watch the fight between the Greeks and the Trojans.——The connection of the tree with the god Bacchus appears to have been confined to its employment in the manufacture of bowls for wine in the happy time when “No wars did men molest, and only Beechen bowls were in request.” Cowley alludes to this in the words—
“He sings the Bacchus, patron of the Vine,
The Beechen bowl foams with a flood of wine.”
Virgil notices the use of its smooth and green bark for receiving inscriptions from the “sylvan pen of lovers;” and Ovid, in his epistle from Œnone to Paris, refers to the same custom, gracefully noting that the name of the fair one would grow and spread with the growth of the tree:—
“The Beeches, faithful guardians of your flame,
Bear on their wounded trunks Œnone’s name,
And as their trunks, so still the letters grow;