Well I thought there was something special about the yew tree. I am not a tree hugger but i do feel moved in someway and inspired by a yew. Like this one in our church yard it seems to hold something in its many members - perhaps a collective memory of the sadness it has seen in the churchyard over the years. When wood cutters came to tidy up the church yard trees they refused to cut the yew because it was, appartently, sacred.
The yew features in twelth night as symbol of mortality and sadness:
Come away come away death and in sad cypress let me be laid. Fly away,fly away breath; I am slain by a fair cruel maid. My shroud of white stuck all with yew. O prepare it; my part of death no one so true did share it. Not a flower not a flower sweet on my black coffin let there be strown; not a friend not a friend greet my poor corpse where my bones shall be thrown; a thousand thousand sighs to save. Lay me O where sad true lover never find my grave to weep there. (Act 2 scene 4)
"The yew is an ancient tree that can live for 4000 years- linked to eternal life- also has unusual trunk - many trunks can grow from the main one". (source: Wendy Malseed)
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