The Yew Tree: Durability, Divination and Death
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Many of our native trees have a special association with Anglo-Saxon paganism. In this week’s post, Dr. Orton investigates the yew tree. Part of our Trees and Anglo-Saxon Paganism series, in which we explore the links between our native British trees and Anglo-Saxon paganism!*
This series is more academically dense than some of our other posts. For a quicker, more accessible read, take a look at our posts about our baby tawny owls, polecats or animals that live in our woods at night!
Yew (Taxus baccata) is our longest-living native tree! They usually live for 600-800 years, but can easily live for over a thousand. Many of Britain’s oldest yew trees are found in church yards, possibly because the Druids (the priestly class of Celtic Britain) had often planted them on sacred sites which were then taken over by the Church. We know that it was a Church policy to do this at some points in history from a letter from Pope Gregory the Great giving instructions to St. Augustine of Canterbury in Britain.
Yew is an evergreen tree with peeling red-brown bark and green needle-like leaves that grow in two rows along a central twig, each with a raised central vein. The needles are dark green above and green-grey below.
It is dioecious (male and female flowers grow on separate trees) and you will see the flowers in March and April. Unlike other conifers, English yew has seeds in its red arils (similar to berries) not in cones.
Yew Trees are Important!
Yew is great for wildlife! Its fruit provides food for wild animals, especially squirrels and dormice and thrushes like the blackbird, mistle thrush, song thrush and fieldfare. Caterpillars of the satin beauty moth especially love yew leaves.
Yew is a popular tree in Britain’s hedges and its dense, year-round cover offers shelter for wildlife. Broadleaf woodland with yew understoreys are particularly good for goldcrests and firecrests.
Yew is poisonous to humans, but we have long valued it for its durability. That’s why yew was traditionally a popular choice for making longbows. The Clacton Spear, discovered in Essex, is 420,000 years old and is the world’s oldest surviving weapon—a spear point made of yew.
Humans have also found an innovative way to use yew to treat cancer!
Anglo-Saxons, Norse, Celts, and Romans
In terms of its Anglo-Saxon pagan associations, we don’t have a lot of written evidence. Runologist Ralph W. V. Elliott argues that this runic usage of yew is evidence of its magical associations that predate the conversion of the English to Christianity. Elliot argues that we can learn a lot about this by thinking about the probable Celtic influence on these beliefs, either by way of continental contacts between Celtic and Germanic tribes; or, more likely, by way of the influence of British druidism upon Anglo-Saxon runic lore.
It’s often assumed that Celtic religion did not have a lot of influence on Anglo-Saxon paganism, partly because the Celts were marginalised and displaced from England by the Romans. Scholars like Elliott challenge this view.** Elliott thinks that “Anglo-Saxon runic usage shows Celtic influence, for instance, in runic cryptography” and points to the use of wands of yew for divination and the sacredness of Yew trees in Celtic culture. He says,
“It may well be that the Celtic practice of using yew wood inscribed with ogham [medieval Irish alphabet] for magic or divinatory purposes was copied by the pagan Anglo-Saxon invaders, who would naturally use runes. Unless one subscribes to the view that ogham script derives from runes, there are no chronological objections to this view, if we accept Professor Jackson’s suggestion that the ogham alphabet was invented in Romano-Celtic Britain in the late fourth century. Surviving ogham inscriptions in this country are most numerous in the west and southwest, areas which the Anglo-Saxon expansion embraced from the middle of the sixth century onwards. The Anglo-Saxons who settled in these regions were still pagans, all the more ready, no doubt, to adopt some of the magico-ritualistic practices which they observed among the native population, among whom Christianity does not seem to have long survived the departure of the Romans…”
The Romans themselves associated yews with death and the underworld. Virgil’s Georgics points out that yew is toxic to bees, and notes its use in bow-making and its resilience against cold winds. Pliny’s Natural History mentions the yew’s toxic qualities.
The yew certainly was important to the Anglo-Saxons. Many Anglo-Saxon place names attest the importance of yew; for instance, Iwade in Kent, Ifield and Iridge in Sussex, Ewhurst in Surrey, Ewshott in Hampshire, Uley in Gloucestershire and Yewdale in Cumbria. Elliott also notes that the Anglo-Saxons also recorded the venerable age of yews and some Anglo-Saxon charters used ancient yew trees as boundary markers in land grants.
The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem, an eighth or ninth century verse written in Old English, (when most people had been converted to Christianity) has a verse dedicated to the yew, represented by the Eoh Rune: “The yew is a tree with rough bark, hard and fast in the earth, supported by its roots, a guardian of flame and a joy upon an estate.”
We can also speculate about the place of yews in Anglo-Saxon paganism by comparison with Norse mythology, which was a huge influence on the Anglo-Saxons. Grímnismál in the Poetic Edda, says that the god Ullr lives in a yew dale (“Ýdalir”): ““Ydalir call they/the place where Ull/A hall for himself hath set; And Alfheim the gods/to Freyr once gave/As a tooth-gift in ancient times.”
This makes sense as yew was used for making bows and Ullr is the god of bows and hunting—as well as being the god of snow and skiing. Today, the town of Breckenridge, Colorado, holds Ullr Fest, an annual winter festival to honour Ullr and pray for snow!
Our Yew Trees
We’ve planted forty yew trees so far in the native British woodland we’ve planted and we also added yew trees to our historic Victorian spinney about ten years ago. The yews in our spinney have grown quicky, and provide much-needed cover for wildlife in winter.
Regardless of their association with death, yews are certainly an asset to our woodland wildlife!
In our next post, read about the rowan tree in Anglo-Saxon paganism! You can also read our posts on ash, oak, rowan and birch trees!
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If you’d like to learn more about the history of medieval England, take a look at our intellectual and cultural history course, The Medieval Period—or our interdisciplinary course, Culture and Conservation, in which you can explore the links between culture and wildlife all over the world. Alternatively, if you’re interested in religion and folklore, take a look at our Anthropology or Religious Studies courses.
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Dr. Orton also explores seasonal links with Anglo-Saxon paganism in her post about the pagan festival of yule.
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Do More
For those who would like to take action to preserve our wild spaces, there’s plenty you can do. Find out how we started our wildflower meadow, how we created a wildlife pond and how we are planting a native woodland from scratch! Even if you don’t have a big garden, there are plenty of things you can do to help biodiversity in your area. Why not put up a solitary bee nesting box or insect home, create a woodpile as a habitat for small creatures or leave small areas of your garden to go wild?
You can also support the Woodland Trust’s work to stop ash dieback.
Think about your own area and how you can protect vulnerable but important parts of your own environment. You might even want to start your own project investigating the cultural importance of wildlife in your area. Dr. Orton works with independent scholars undertaking their own research for an independent project, people writing a book or simply those who have a personal interest. Click the link to find out what it’s like to work with her and contact us to get started!
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* The first post in this series serves as a caveat for the historical claims in the following posts, as well as the use of certain terminology (“Anglo-Saxon” and “native”).
** Regarding the influence of the Celts on the Anglo-Saxons, Elliott says, “The extent of Celtic, including Irish, influence upon the earlier generations of Anglo-Saxons has too long been underestimated, perhaps owing to the paucity of direct Celtic adoptions into the Old English vocabulary. Recent scholarship has thrown some healthy doubts upon this view, and we are now able to detect such influence in several directions, thereby helping to strengthen the suggestion I have made. Professor Jackson writes that ‘there is some reason to think that very early in the invasion period there were intermarriages between the Saxon royal houses and the Britons.’”
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