The yew tree is a mysterious and magical tree… and deadly too. I was driving in to town a couple of years ago, past the little meadow by the entrance to the village and noticed one of the cows in the field was lying down… in a not very natural way. On the way home I stopped and looked at the supine beast and it was dead. I didn’t know what to do; the meadow belongs to a charity and is held in trust for the village to enjoy. I asked at the paper-shop if anyone knew which local farmer put his cows in the meadow; even though the then paper-shop lady knew most of what was happening in the village she had no idea. I rang someone on the village society, who didn’t know either; in the end I rang the police… I think I brightened up a dull day for the police woman who answered the phone… she sounded quite excited… I almost thought she was going to ask me if I’d seen anything suspicious and if I knew whether the cow had any enemies… sadly the killer was the yew tree in the corner of the meadow… it had been fenced off but the cow had managed to reach it.
Yew trees can be remarkably long-lived; there is a tree in Scotland, in Glen Lyon called the Fortingall yew which is estimated to be anything up to 9,000 years old (nine thousand!) but some scientists think this is an optimistic estimate. However, a tree in Wales has recently been identified as being not 2,000 but 5,000 years old. Yews were considered sacred by ancient people, maybe because of their longevity, and are often found near ancient religious sites such as burial mounds or henges; were they planted there at the time of construction, or were they already there which was why the site was chosen… archaeology could probably answer that question!
The reason yews are so often found in old churchyards is because often old churches were built on sites which had been sacred before the arrival of Christianity. The same thing happened to holy wells, and springs; places which had been venerated for millennia were ‘adopted’ by the church.
Yews are toxic, every bit of them as the poor cow found to her cost; however they are also extremely useful trees – their wood has been used since ancient times to make long bows, the oldest known example is in the National Museum of Scotland and is between 5-6,000 years old. Yew longbows were used in English armies throughout the centuries, and in fact so many yew trees were cut down to make weapons that the wood had to be imported. Yews also have medicinal qualities which have been used for centuries, and these days the derivatives are commonly used in the treatment of cancer.
I got to thinking about yew trees when I read this article:
If you are really interested in yew trees, find out more about them here:
Lois Elsden 
I wuv yew to, wois. Hee,hee, hee!
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Wuv yew tew!!
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