The yew, like the oak, was sacred to the Druids. Branches of it were anciently carried by the mourners at funeral processions, and were thrown into the grave before the coffin was lowered. The awe in which it was originally held is traceable in the traditions yet extant of its dangerous and even deadly properties. The beautiful crimson drupes scattered amongst its dark-green linear leaves were reputed poisonous if eaten. In clipping the tree, the greatest care was necessary that the operator might not inhale its dangerous fumes; while to sleep under the shade of its widespread branches, ragged and dusky as a raven's wing, was to risk sickness and even death.
The mountain-ash or rowan-tree has for ages been endowed with mystical properties in Scotland. The custom of carrying sprigs of it in the pocket still obtains in the Isle of Man, where it is extensively grown and cherished for warding off demons, witchcraft, and the evil-eye. There, on St John's Eve, crosses are made of it and hung upon the cattle, and placed over the doors, and in the eaves of barns and houses, to avert the evil influences supposed to be preternaturally active on that night. Not such the reputation of the _Lunaria_, described by Chaucer, Spenser, and Drayton as one of the most powerful of vegetable charms, and an ingredient in the most subtle spells of night-hags and enchanters. This, the homely 'Honesty' of the cottage garden, the satin flower that our grandmothers cherished, is a plant than which none more apparently harmless is to be found in the floral calendars of herbmen and gardeners. But in days when plants were supposed to bear witness in many instances to their own attributes, when certain features were sought for and believed in, as affording a key to the sympathies and properties of herbs, its round flat silvery frond shewed it to be under the dominion of the moon, and endowed with magic influences.
After all, a child's hand might have clasped the plants that were under the ban of our ancestors. Amongst the most potent of these herbal talismans were the trefoil and the wood-sorrel, the triple leaves of which symbolised the Trinity, and were on that account noisome to witches. Hence arose the custom in Ireland for the lord of the soil as well as the peasant to wear the shamrock as a preservative from evil influences, a custom annually returned to, without distinction of creed or rank, by all true Irishmen on the anniversary of St Patrick's Day--a saint it will be remembered so pure that all venomous things fled before him. In that country, as in this, there still lingers in shady, rustic places an aged moribund belief in the occult power of plants in the hands of weird women who know how to use them.