Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics Embracing the Myths,...

There exist in different parts of England several ancient trees, notably Oaks, which are traditionally said to have been called Gospel trees in consequence of its having been the practice in times long past to read under a tree which grew upon a boundary-line a portion of the Gospel on the annual perambulation of the bounds of the parish on Ascension Day. In Herrick’s poem of the ‘Hesperides’ occur these lines in allusion to this practice:—

Many of these old trees were doubtless Druidical, and under their “leafy tabernacles” the pioneers of Christianity had probably preached and expounded the Scriptures to a pagan race. The heathen practice of worshipping the gods in woods and trees continued for many centuries, till the introduction of Christianity; and the first missionaries sought to adopt every means to elevate the Christian worship to higher authority than that of paganism by acting on the senses of the heathen. St. Augustine, Evelyn tells us, held a kind of council under an Oak in the West of England, concerning the right celebration of Easter and the state of the Anglican church; “where also it is reported he did a great miracle.” On Lord Bolton’s estate in the New Forest stands a noble group of twelve Oaks known as the Twelve Apostles: there is another group of Oaks extant known as the Four Evangelists. Beneath the venerable Yews at Fountain Abbey, Yorkshire, the founders of the Abbey held their council in 1132.

Venerable and noble trees have in all ages and in all countries been ever regarded with special reverence. From the very earliest times such trees have been consecrated to holy uses. Thus, the Gomerites, or descendants of Noah, were, if tradition be true, accustomed to offer prayers and oblations beneath trees; and, following the example of his ancestors, the Patriarch Abraham pitched his tents beneath the Terebinth Oaks of Mamre, erected an altar to the Lord, and performed there sacred and priestly rites. Beneath an Oak, too, the Patriarch entertained the Deity Himself. This tree of Abraham remained till the reign of Constantine the Great, who founded a venerable chapel under it, and there Christians, Jews, and Arabs held solemn anniversary meetings, believing that from the days of Noah the spot shaded by the tree had been a consecrated place.

Dean Stanley tells us that “on the heights of Ephraim, on the central thoroughfare of Palestine, near the Sanctuary of Bethel, stood two famous trees, both in after times called by the same name. One was the Oak-tree or Terebinth of Deborah, under which was buried, with many tears, the nurse of Jacob (Gen. xxxv. 8). The other was a solitary Palm, known in after times as the Palm-tree of Deborah. Under this Palm, as Saul afterwards under the Pomegranate-tree of Migron, as St. Louis under the Oak-tree of Vincennes, dwelt that mother in Israel, Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, to whom the sons of Israel came to receive her wise answers.”

Since the time when Solomon cut the Cedars of Lebanon for the purpose of employing them in the erection of the Temple of the Lord, this renowned forest has been greatly shorn of its glories; but a grove of nearly four hundred trees still exists. Twelve of the most valuable of these trees bear the titles of “The Friends of Solomon,” or “The Twelve Apostles.” Every year the Maronites, Greeks, and Armenians go up to the Cedars, at the Feast of the Transfiguration, and celebrate mass on a homely stone altar erected at their feet.

In Evelyn’s time there existed, near the tomb of Cyrus, an extraordinary Cypress, which was said to exude drops of blood every Friday. This tree, according to Pietro della Valla, was adorned with many lamps, and fitted for an oratory, and was for ages resorted to by pious pilgrims.

Thevenot and other Eastern travellers mention a tree which for centuries had been regarded with peculiar reverence. “At Matharee,” says Thevenot, “is a large garden surrounded by walls, in which are various trees, and among others, a large Sycamore, or Pharaoh’s Fig, very old, which bears fruit every year. They say that the Virgin passing that way with her son Jesus, and being pursued by a number of people, the Fig-tree opened to receive her; she entered, and it closed her in, until the people had passed by, when it re-opened, and that it remained open ever after to the year 1656, when the part of the trunk that had separated itself was broken away.”

Near Kennety Church, in the King’s County, Ireland, is an Ash, the trunk of which is nearly 22 feet round, and 17 feet high, before the branches break out, which are of enormous bulk. When a funeral of the lower class passes by, they lay the body down a few minutes, say a prayer, and then throw a stone to increase the heap which has been accumulating round the roots.

The Breton nobles were long accustomed to offer up a prayer beneath the branches of a venerable Yew which grew in the cloister of Vreton, in Brittany. The tree was regarded with much veneration, as it was said to have originally sprung from the staff of St. Martin.

In England, the Glastonbury Thorn was long the object of pious reverence. This tree was supposed to have sprung from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, to whom the original conversion of this country is attributed in monkish legends. The story runs that when Joseph of Arimathea came to convert the heathen nations he selected Glastonbury as the site for the first Christian Church, and whilst preaching there on Christmas-day, he struck his staff into the ground, which immediately burst into bud and bloom; eventually it grew into a Thorn-bush, which regularly blossomed every Christmas-day, and became known throughout Christendom as the Glastonbury Thorn.

Like the Thorn of Glastonbury, an Oak, in the New Forest, called the Cadenham Oak, produced its buds always on Christmas Day; and was, consequently, regarded by the country people as a tree of peculiar sanctity. Another miraculous tree is referred to in Collinson’s ‘History of Somerset.’ The author, speaking of the Glastonbury Thorn, says that there grew also in the Abbey churchyard, on the north side of St. Joseph’s Chapel, a miraculous Walnut-tree, which never budded forth before the Feast of St. Barnabas (that is, the 11th of June), and on that very day shot forth leaves, and flourished like its usual species. It is strange to say how much this tree was sought after by the credulous; and though not an uncommon Walnut, Queen Anne, King James, and many of the nobility of the realm, even when the times of monkish superstition had ceased, gave large sums of money for small cuttings from the original.