Mythology
Yews have been
associated with sacred centres for thousands of years. The Fortingall yew
(Perthshire), at over 5,000 years old and possibly the oldest living tree in the
world, sits on the northern side of Carn nam Marbh (Mound of the Dead), an
ancient Bronze Age tumulus. The builders of Stonehenge, Avebury, Calanais and
Newgrange, all planted yews on the north side of their burial mounds. After 3500
BC, yews were instead grown on the east-west axis of the tumuli, a fact that
remained true for Celtic sites, and only later, when the Anglo-Saxons arrived in
Britain, did the planting of yews at sacred sites change to a southern aspect .
It is an astonishing fact that the yew tree at Discoed in Wales was possibly
already about five hundred years old when the first bluestones from the Prescelli
mountains passed it on their way to be made into Stonehenge - and that same tree
is still alive! Represented by the thirteenth rune, eiwaz, which is generally
understood to represent death and rebirth, this yew rune is in the shape of a
zigzag, which most likely symbolises the spiral (although explanation of this
will have to follow elsewhere, being tied to other relevance). Another
later rune for Yew, yr, represents the roots of the Tree of Life. An early
ninth-century yew wand from Holland, with Anglo-Saxon runes carved in it as
invocation to calm the waves of the sea is one among many objects found made of
yew wood. Another is one of one-eyed Odin. It dates from the eleventh century BC
and was found in Britain, implying an older and not exclusively Norse origin to
his mythology. Indeed, Yggdrasil, the world tree, is a yew rather than the ash
usually assumed. The old Norse barraskr ('needle-ash'), is described as
evergreen (in an old Old Norse song it is described as wintergreenest tree).
As well as the principle wood for carving ogham runes, the signs of the tree
alphabet, druids used yew staffs with notches or oghams to record the phases of
the moon or the traditional laws (Fife 1994). An old Irish word for salmon (see
Coll/hazel) is eo, the same as the word for yew. The Eburones, Esuvii and
Eburomagus are all celtic tribes named after the yew and one swiss settlement
was called Eburodun. Ireland really means 'Yew Island', (the Greeks and Romans
calling it Ierne and Iubernia respectively), and Iona is similarly
another island whose root is yew (hI, ee, y, all being forms of the same word). In
ancient poems, yew berries are
described as either nuts (the hard green fruits), acorns (the arils sit in
small cups) or apples (red fruits were often called apples in the past). The
word tann is common to the root of Beltane (Bel's fire) and tann
(sacred tree), which originally referred to yew, the red tree. Glastonbury
- or
glas tann bury - translates as (ever)'green sacred tree'. Excavations around the
well at Glastonbury revealed the stump of a yew tree at a depth of twelve foot.
While apples likely played a part at Avalon, so too did yew!
From Danu (Aine, Anu) came the fir sidhe, or Tuatha de Danaan, three of whom were
yew trees. Herself a daughter of the Dagda, Danu had a sacred hill, Cnoc Aine,
in Munster dedicated to her, containing the genealogy of the kings of Ireland.
Her brothers were named 'green foliage' and 'fork in a yew tree' (Fer hI meaning
'man of yew'). Danu herself therefore is assoiated with the yew and later
peoples respected this family of yew children as the first race of the yew
island, with the Eoganacht ruling Munster from the seventh to the tenth century
AD.
The graves of Deidre and Naoise were separated by King Conchobar using yew stakes, but they grew into trees weaving their branches together, uniting the lovers in death. Tristan and Iseult were similarly separately buried, but the yew treew on their graves eventually intertwine above the chapel separating them. Countless customs and stories from the Christian era refer to the yew as the graveyard tree of tir nan og (land of youth) and in Wales it is referrred to as 'the gentle guardian of the dead'.