A year among the trees

by Wilson Flagg

RELATIONS OF TREES TO POETRY AND FABLE.

From the earliest period of history, mankind have looked upon trees and woods with veneration, regarding them as special gifts of the gods to the human race. The ancient priests and philosophers used them as their places of retirement, both for the study of wisdom and the services of religion. Hence arose that early custom of planting trees in circles, forming a kind of amphitheatre, for religious assemblies. The teachers of philosophy used the same circular groves. These were held in the greatest reverence; and no man dared to commit the sacrilegious act of cutting down any part of them or defacing any of the trees. By means of these circular groves, wise and holy men obtained that seclusion and quiet which it was not easy to find in towns and cities. They were both schools and chapels, devoted to religion and philosophy. Hence the often-quoted remark of Pliny that “the groves were the first temples of the gods.”

It is not improbable that many of the ancient superstitions relating to trees and groves originated with wise men, who believed that such holy fears alone would restrain the people from devastating the whole earth by the destruction of trees. Science now supplies mankind with rational motives for their preservation, in place of the religious scruples of ancient communities. I am inclined to believe that many a rational principle has been advocated by wise men under the guise of theology. The druidical priesthood foresaw that the oak, from the superior value of its timber, could not be saved from the woodman’s axe except by certain ceremonies on their part that should render it sacred in the eyes of the people. To impress this idea of its sanctity upon their minds, they made use of its leaves and branches to consecrate all important private or public transactions.

In still more ancient times, the priests adopted the expedient of dedicating to some one of the gods, particularly to Jupiter, certain woods and groves, which were thenceforth held in veneration by all men, including even invading armies, whose chiefs, while respecting neither the lives nor the property of the enemy, held these consecrated groves sacred and inviolable. Hunting was forbidden within them by this superstition, and its injunctions were in all cases religiously observed. It is even asserted that the wild animals in these sacred groves had become so tame, from the permanent security they enjoyed, that they did not flee from the presence of man.

Many persons formerly believed that trees felt the stroke of the woodman’s axe, which disturbed the repose of some resident spirit. The ancient Greeks supposed certain trees to be inhabited by wood-nymphs, and that these deities uttered groans when the axe was laid upon the tree. These sounds gave origin to the sacred oracle of Dodona. There were two kinds of nymphs supposed to inhabit trees,—an inferior class that lived during the life of the tree, and died when it perished; and a superior class, like the dryads, who could pass at will from one tree to another. “One might fill a volume,” says Evelyn, “with the history of groves that were violated by wicked men who came to untimely ends; especially those upon which the mistletoe grew, than which nothing was reputed more sacred.”

The custom of planting a tree at the birth of a child has prevailed among certain nations from the earliest times, and is still observed in some parts of Europe. Connected with this custom was the idea that the fate of the child was mysteriously associated with that of the natal tree, which created the strongest motives, arising from parental affection, to preserve the tree, and on the part of the child to protect it when he attained his manhood. Nothing is more evident than the beneficial tendency of all these superstitions, at an early age of the world, when men were not wise enough to be governed by the principles of reason and science.

The ancients placed the Naiad and her fountain in the shady arbor of trees, whose foliage gathers the waters of heaven into her fount and preserves them from dissipation. From their dripping shades she distributed the waters which she garnered from the skies over the plain and the valley; and the husbandman, before he learned the marvels of science, worshipped the beneficent Naiad, who drew the waters of her fountain from heaven, and from her sanctuary in the forest showered them upon the arid glebe, and gave new verdure to the plain. After science had explained to us the law by which these supplies of moisture are preserved by the trees, the Naiad still remained a sacred theme of poetry. We would not remove the drapery of foliage that protects her fountain, nor drive her into exile by the destruction of the trees, through which she holds mysterious commerce with the skies, and preserves our fields from drought.

Evelyn says: “Innumerable are the testimonies I might produce concerning the inspiring and sacred influence of groves from the ancient poets and historians. Here the noblest raptures have been conceived; and in the walks and shades of trees poets have composed verses which have animated men to glorious and heroic actions. Here orators have made their panegyrics, historians their grave relations; and here profound philosophers have loved to pass their lives in repose and contemplation.”

As man is nomadic before he is agricultural, and a maker of tents and wigwams before he is a builder of houses and temples, in like manner he is an architect and an idolater before he becomes a student of wisdom. He is a sacrificer in temples and a priest at their altars before he is a teacher of philosophy and an interpreter of nature. After the perfection of mechanical science, a higher state of mental culture succeeds, causing us to see all nature invested with beauty, and fraught with imaginative charms, adding new wonders to our views of creation and new dignity to life. Man learns now to regard trees in other relations beside their capacity to supply his physical and mechanical wants. He looks upon them as the principal ornaments of the landscape, and as the conservatories in which nature preserves certain plants and small animals and birds that will thrive only under their protection, and those insect hosts that charm the student with their beauty and excite his wonder by their mysterious instincts. Science has built an altar under the trees, and delivers thence new oracles of wisdom, teaching men how they are mysteriously wedded to the clouds, and are the instruments of their beneficence to the earth.

It is difficult to estimate how great a part of all that is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our life is associated with trees. They are allied with the songs of morn, with the quiet of noonday, with social gatherings under the evening sky, and with the beauty and attractiveness of every season. Nowhere does nature look more lovely, or the sounds from birds and insects affect us more deeply, than under their benevolent shade. Never does the blue sky look more serene than when its dappled azure glimmers through their green trembling leaves. Their recesses, which in the early ages were the temples of religion and science, are still the favorite resorts of the studious, the scenes of sport for the active and adventurous, and the very sanctuary of peaceful seclusion for the contemplative and sorrowful.