
Beneath the Yew Tree’s Shade - diodorus
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/10/31/beneath-the-yew-trees-shade/
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jack6e
This is a decent introduction into this fascinating cultural history, but
there is much more to the myth of the yew tree and sadly we seem to have lost
almost all understanding of it. Medieval stories in both England and France
relate certain trees with the fairy world, the yew tree being one of them. One
lovely story that combines these myths is _Sir Orfeo_ [1], which is a
delightful poem in Middle English and also has a translation into modern
English by a young Tolkien [2]. It is a re-telling of the classical Orpheus
myth, with Eurydice being taken by faeries instead of bitten by a snake.
Relevant to this article, she is taken while sleeping under the shade of a
tree at noon, and the fairy world to which she is taken is actually a Hades-
like place where the dead live. The name/description of the tree in Middle
English, though not exactly "yew" in the available manuscripts, has raised
speculation that the tree is meant to be a yew tree in the source story or
earlier translations.

The fact that multiple cultures across such a breadth of time have continued
and created mythical connections between the yew tree and death is intriguing.
Maybe it speaks to some natural or innate quality of the tree, or just the
amazing staying power and transferability of certain myths. Regardless, I
think the mythologizing of the physical world in these ways renders some
beautiful and engaging stories that we lose through our modern disdain for
myth and our retreat from prolonged physical interaction with the natural
world.

[1]
[https://auchinleck.nls.uk/mss/orfeo.html](https://auchinleck.nls.uk/mss/orfeo.html)
[2] [https://allpoetry.com/Sir-Orfeo](https://allpoetry.com/Sir-Orfeo)

~~~
ggg9990
Perhaps the chemotherapeutic properties of yew bark were known in some way to
the ancients.

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MrJagil
An interesting use of a yew tree:
[http://www.themeaningoftrees.com/node/352](http://www.themeaningoftrees.com/node/352)

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Dowwie
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