A Holt White.
P. S.—I cannot agree with your correspondent J. G. Cumming, that the yew is one of "our few evergreens." I doubt our having in England any native evergreen but the holly.
The etymology of the name of the yew-tree clearly shows that it was not planted in churchyards as an emblem of evil, but one of immortality. The name of the tree in Celtic is jubar, pronounced yewar, i. e. "the evergreen head." The town of
Newry in Ireland took its name from two yew-trees which St. Patrick planted: A-Niubaride, pronounced A-Newery, i. e. "the yew-trees," which stood until Cromwell's time, when some soldiers ruthlessly cut them down.
In the Note by Mr. J. G. Cumming, a derivation is evidently required for the English word yeoman, which he suggests is taken from "yokeman." Yeoman is from eō, pronounced yo, i. e. free, worthy, respectable, as opposed to the terms villein, serf, &c.; so that yeoman means a freeman, a respectable person.
Fras. Crossley.
OSBORN FAMILY.
(Vol. viii., p. 270.)
Mr. H. T. Griffith asks where may any pedigree of the Osborne family, previous to Edward Osborne, the ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds, be seen. In reply, I am in possession of large collections relating to the Norman Osbornes, from whom I have reasons to believe him to have been descended. Those Osbornes can be proved to have been settled in certain of the midland counties of England from the time of the attainder and downfall of the son of William Fitzosborne, Earl of Hereford and premier peer, down to a comparatively late period. A branch of them was possessed of the manor of Kelmarsh in Northamptonshire; and their pedigree, beginning in 1461, may be seen in Whalley's Northamptonshire: but this is necessarily very imperfect, on account of the author's want of access to documents which have subsequently been opened to the public.