The tree was planted frequently by our forefathers in churchyards, because of its value in the manufacture of bows. It is exceedingly long lived, and often attains great magnitude of girth.
A ghastly superstition was attached to the Yew when thus growing in a churchyard, that it would prey upon [621] the dead bodies lying beneath its sombre shade. So Tennyson writes (In Memoriam):—
"Old Yew! which graspest at the stones
That name the underlying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapped about the bones."
The juice of the tree and of its leaves is a rapidly fatal poison, the symptoms corresponding in a very remarkable way with those which follow the bites of venomous snakes.
No known poison but the Yew produces the lazar-like ulcerations upon the body, on which Marlowe lays such stress—(Jew of Malta):—
"In few, the blood of Hydra—Herne's bane,
The juice of Hebron, and Cocytus' breath,
And all the poisons of the Stygian pool."
The witches in Macbeth include it in their accursed brew:—
"Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and Slips of Yew."
The Yew tree is called "Hebon" by Spencer, and "Jew of Malta" by other writers of Shakespeare's time. The leaves are bitter, nauseous, and acrid. The succulent covering of the fruit is soft and slimy, mawkishly sweet, and mucilaginous. The leaves have a dangerous effect on the circulation of the heart, and when taken with any freedom are as fatal as the Foxglove.
Before the new Shakespeare Society, 1882, it was contended and proved to the satisfaction of the Society, that "the cursed Hebena," the "leperous distilment poured into the chambers of mine ears," told of, so pathetically, by the sad ghost of Hamlet's father, was the [622] poison of the Yew, and identical with Marlow[e]'s juice of Hebron.