Before leaving the philological section, some English equivalents of the word must be noticed. “Early Modern English” forms include _yewe_, _yeugh_, _eugh_, _yowe_, etc. These come to us from the Middle English _ew_ or _u_, and these, again, represent the A.S. _īw_ and _eów_[944]. A seventh century manuscript has a still earlier form, _īuu_, and this is said to be the oldest spelling in any Teutonic language[945]. There are, says the _Century Dictionary_, Danish, Old High German, Spanish, Old Irish, Welsh, Gaelic, and Cornish equivalents, and of these, the Celtic forms are possibly original and not derivative[946]. Professor W. W. Skeat supports the Celtic origin of the word _yew_, which, by the way, is quite distinct from the word _ivy_, although the various forms of _yew_ and _ivy_ suggest one another[947]. Dr Schrader says that the Old High German word _iva_, in the sense of “yew,” disappears as we go further East, and, in Sclavonic dialects, signifies a willow. The same holds good of the word for “beech,” and Dr Schrader believes that the change is due to the thinning out of these trees Eastwards. In Lithuania, again, the meanings of “fir” and “yew” run into each other[948]. Professor V. Hehn called attention to the same series of facts, from which he drew similar conclusions.
The etymological road leading us no further, we take counsel of the forester and the arboriculturist. We wish to ascertain the greatest age which the yew is believed to reach.
The older authorities followed implicitly the dictum of the Swiss botanist Augustin De Candolle, who, basing his conclusions upon a study of the annual rings of the yew, and upon the sizes of yews of known age, formulated the rule: An increase in diameter of one line annually. If we allow an average yearly growth of one line in diameter, we shall probably over-estimate the rate of growth for very aged trees (“_il est probable qu’on est au-dessus de la vérité_”), so that while we may, in practice, reckon each line of the diameter as a year, we shall, in reality, make the trees younger than they actually are[949]. De Candolle, in another place, admitted that for the first 150 years the annual growth somewhat exceeded a line in diameter, though for older trees it was less than this amount[950]. Abridging this rather involved statement, let us put the rule thus: Up to the age of 150 years the yews increase annually a line or a little more in diameter, and a little less than a line afterwards.