The Serpent's Tale (History)

[Hatty]

The grael site shows that in British lore references to dragons are relatively late, post-Norman at least, which would support the green man book argument. I shall order it and check.

[aurelius]

Out Of Their Skin

The Dusuns of Borneo are just one people from island Sundaland who Frazer and his apostle Oppenheimer cite as holding on to a ‘cast skin’ motif in connection with the tribe's religious mythology. In their version, humans did not have immortality initially but missed out when it was offered to creation. The Dusuns did not hear their god address them but the snakes did, ensuring they would only henceforth die through human agency. This story is repeated with minor variations elsewhere in the region and eastwards into Melanesia. In Samoa, immortality for humankind is ruled out by a divine committee. In fact, in contrast to Southeast Asia where mortality is due to human incompetence, in all of the Pacific myths the option is never given: the gods make an executive decision against. Samoa is the most eastern outpost of the ‘never cast skin’ motif and also the only one where a snake/serpent does not figure.

The alternative scenario is that humankind was originally granted everlasting life, but voluntarily relinquished the privilege, as is believed by the Vanuatuans and others. The recurring vector here is a woman, rather than a reptile: for example, the story of a child who didn't recognise his mother after she shed her skin so she put her old one back on and thenceforth we were all doomed to be mortal. Frazer believed the loss of granted immortality is the older tradition.

Oppenheimer goes to great lengths to describe cast skin stories and considers them as primal as the Tree Of Life and Moon immortality motifs. As the overall mythology spread in all directions new variations appeared (e.g. in African cultures it is an incompetent or perverted messenger that does for humans), and some of the core elements lost their power the further away they spread. The Genesis story is a case in point. Much travelled, the Tree Of Life became a low-key ‘given’, the Moon redundant and the serpent's mortality ambiguous.

To those who may argue the 'biblical' elements were seeded by Christianity - an ethno and Eurocentric view - Oppenheimer argues that because the most undeveloped forms of the three motifs are found among tribes, like the native Australians, who had led isolated land-locked lives before encountering the missionaries, it helps to prove their forms are older than Christianity.

[aurelius]

The Tree Of Life: 7, The Yew

There is one problem with the previous examples as a ‘tree of life’: In the Eddas, Yggdrasil is described as “a winter-green needle-ash”. Unfortunately many have interpreted this to mean it was an ash tree, which is, of course, becomes bare in winter. Granted, deciduousness is not fatal to the concept of immortality; but evergreen-ness does gild the lily.

The yew, Taxus baccata, has a wide distribution from Ireland to southern Turkey, as far north as Norway and Sweden, also the Caucasus to northern Iran, from Nepal to Japan and throughout much of South East Asia and Indonesia. It also grows in the temperate United States and Canada.
http://www.conifers.org/ta/i/02.jpg

Fraxinus excelsior cannot compete with this range, though another Fraxinus species, chinensis is widespread across er... China. Taxus baccata is therefore the only species of our World Tree contenders that could exist in the wild in Europe and putative Eden locations either east of Lake Van or the engulfed Sundaland.

Yew is tall, (though not the tallest type of tree) and capable of developing considerable girth – maybe 20’ before hollowing out and then on to 52’ in the case of the expanded and celebrated Fortingall Yew. It can grow as an understory to taller trees. Because the branches tend to spread wide from the trunk a yew can offer considerable shelter and adjacent yews may easily become intertwined. A more peculiar habit of the yew’s growth is that

[Hatty]

[aurelius]

[aurelius]

I haven't read all of his book, but Ronald Hutton provides an excellent scrutiny of the historicity or lack of hard evidence for the original druids in Blood And Mistletoe: The History Of Druids In Britain. Should have some appeal to AEists.

[Hatty]

Thanks, Auro. Hutton is a leading authority on paganism in Britain and worth checking out.

Incidentally, mistletoe is generally supposed to be a fertility symbol even though it is the exact opposite!

[aurelius]

[Hatty]

The yew is said to be native to the UK but not to Ireland. Might be said of Druids too. There's no controversy over Caesar's and other accounts of Druids in England and Wales, what seems odd is the link between yews and Druids in Irish lore.

Ireland has no Roman heritage nor a Roman Christian past. Nor, as far as anyone knows, any Druids, no Romans being on hand to to record them. In places that do have a Druid connection, the 'sacred groves' are generally thought to be oak trees.

[aurelius]

[Hatty]

[Mick Harper]

Language is important in academic papers when careful ignoral is suspected. I read this as "I have no specific evidence as to the age of yews in Ireland but I don't want to say anything that smacks of it either being a specially early adopter (i.e. 12,000 years ago, straight after the Ice Age) or artificially introduced (1000 - 5,000 years ago). Nothing to see here."

As of course may well be the case.

[Ishmael]

[aurelius]

The Vanishing Yew

Remarkably, pollen counts from peat bogs suggest the great forests which returned to Europe after the glaciers retreated consisted of nearly 80% Yew trees. The waxy, spindle-leaves of conifers in general and yew in particular are well adapted to reduce water loss in cold, dry environments.
https://catuvellauni.wordpress.com/the-yew-tree/

This is a remarkable thought today, with pure yew woodlands being so scarce. It took taken a specific act of conservation led by the ecologist Sir Arthur Tansley to set up the first Nature Conservancy reserve in England at Kingley Vale. Another remnant is the population in Cranborne Chase, a former hunting domain of kings and nobles - the key to its survival.

http://www.ancient-yew.org/mi.php/the-ancient-yews-of-cranborne-chase/66

The tree is certainly able to grow in many soil types, including chalky ones, and ranges of temperature. They don’t like waterlogged environments, though it is claimed that their tough wood is one of the most resistant to rot.



The yew Taxus baccata, is native to all of Europe except Madeira, but the paucity of yew woodland is not limited to Great Britain. The demands on yew for bows between the thirteenth and the late sixteenth centuries was huge, so much so that once the English stands were badly depleted the Crown turned to Spain – and found that Spanish yew wood was superior, fine grained and less knotty (Yew, A History – Fred Hageneder). Other areas exploited in turn included around the Hanse towns, the Alpine borders, Poland and the Rhine. By 1568 there was not a single yew left in Bavaria.

[Mick Harper]