TALES OF SACRED TREES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8354, 6 September 1890, Page 2 (Supplement)

TALES OF SACRED TREES.

Thk palm, the oak, and the ash are, according to a timely and interesting articlo in the June number of the Deutsche Rundschau, the three trees which, since times immemorial, were held to bo sacred trees. The first among them, which figures on the oldest monuments and pictures of the Egyptians and Assyrians, is the date palm (l'lue nix daetilifera), which was tho symbol of tho world and of creation, and the fruit of which tilled the faithful with divine strength, and prepared thom for the pleasures of immortality. " Honour," said Mahommod, "thy paternal aunt, the date palm, for in Paradise it was created out of the same dust of the ground." Another Mahommedan tradition of a later period .says that when Adam left Paradise he was allowed to take with him three things : a myrtle, because it was the most lovely and the most scented flower of the earth; a wheat-ear, because it had most nourishment; and a date, because it is the most, glorious fruit of tho earth. This date from Paradise was in some marvellous way brought to the Hejaz ; from it havo come all the date palms in the world, and Allah destined it to be the food of all the true believers, who shall conquer every country where the date palm grows. The Jews and tho Arabs again looked upon the same tree as a mystical allegory of human beings, for, like them, it dies when its head (the summit) is cut oil", and when a limb (branch) is onco cut off it does not grow again. Those who know can understand the mysterious language of the branches on days when there is no wind, when whispers of present and future events are communicated by the tree. Abraham of old, so Rabbis say, understood the language of the palm. The oak was always considered a holy tree" by our own ancestors, and, above all, by the nations of the north of Europe. When Winifred of Devonshire (6SO-754 A.D.) went forth on his wanderings through Germany to preach the Gospel, one of his first actions was to cut, down the Kim'* l oak in Saxony which was dedicated to Thor and worshipped by the people from far and near, lint when he had nearly felled the oak, and whilo the people wore cursing and threatening the saint, a supernatural storm swept over it, seizod the summit, broke every branch, and dashed it " qiuisi su/wrni mot solatia, with a tremendous crash to tho ground. The heathens acknowledged tho marvel, and many of them were converted there and then. But the saint built a chapel of the wood of this very oak, and dedicated it to St. Peter. Hut the sacred oaks did not seem to have always done their duty. Thus, for instance, a famous oak in Ireland was dedicated to the Irish Saint Columban, one of tho peculiarities of the tree being that whoever carried a piece of its wood in his mouth would never bo hanged. After a time, however, tho holy oak of Kenmare was destroyed in a storm. Nobody dared gather the wood, except a gardener, who tanned some shoo leather with tho bark ; but when ho wore the shoes made of this leather for the first time ho became a leper, and was never cured. In the abbey of Vetrow, in Brittany, stood an oak tree which had grown out of tho staff of St. Martin, the first abbot of its monastery, and in the s' ado of which tho princes of Brittany prayed whenever they went into the abbey. Nobody dared to pick oven a leaf from this tree, and not even tho birds dared to peck at it. Nob so tho Norman pirates, two of whom climbed tho tree of St. Martin to cut wood for their bows. Both of them fell down and broke their necks. The Celts and Germans and Scandinavians, again, worshipped the mountain ash (Fruxinus), and it is especially in the religions myths of the latter that the " Askr Yggdrasil" plays a prominent part. To them it was the holiest among trees, the world tree," which, eternally young and dewy, represented heaven, o.rth, and hell. According to the Edda, the ash yggdrasil was an evergreen tree. A specimen of it (says Adam of Bremen) grew at Upsala, in front of the great temple, and another in Dithmarschen, carefully guarded by a railing, for it was, in a mystical way, connected with the fate of tho country. When Dithmarschen lost its liberty the tree withered, but a magpie, one of the best prophesying birds of the north, came and built its nest on the withered tree, and hatched five little ones, all perfectly white, us a sign that at some future timo the country would regain its former liberty.