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Venerable Yews
Curiously enough
Encounters with venerable yews
Llandybie churchyard, St Tybïe’s, is home to one of the finest-looking yews you’ll come across, and as far as can be gauged, it has lived there for at least 1,000 years. Yews are usually older than they look, so it could well be longer. Undoubtedly the oldest living thing in Llandybie, but not, of course, in Carmarthenshire.
Free-standing yews are not usually noteworthy for their symmetry, as this one is, but they are remarkable for a whole host of other aspects, many of them sinister.
The first thing to note about yews is that they are poisonous. Very poisonous – and in all aspects: leaves, bark, wood, buds and especially the dark brown seeds contained in what appear to be red berries on the females but which are, in fact, arils. Arils classify as neither fruit nor berries, though their fleshy and somewhat slimy pulp is sweet-tasting and the only non-toxic component. A classic honey-trap, you’d think, but many animal species, especially certain birds and grey squirrels, gorge them.
Song thrushes are particularly addicted – as is the whole thrush family from mistle to blackbird, redwing and fieldfare. Mistle thrushes will aggressively guard a yew’s aril crop in late summer where they hold what appear to be very noisy cocktail parties as, screeching, they knock back quantities of intoxicating arils, quarrelling and falling about as they indulge.
Most birds regurgitate or pass the deadly yew seeds in a glutinous mess, but the greenfinch has some special immunity to the cyanogenic glycocides in the seed’s woody outer casing which with its strong bill it penetrates unharmed to extract the kernel. Hawfinches, nuthatches and great-spotted woodpeckers are also known to be tolerant of the hazard, as are certain small rodents.
The danger of animals browsing yew foliage is well known from earliest times. Horses, sheep, pigs, cattle are all susceptible, even dogs and chickens. Deadliest of all are dried clippings or fallen branches. But then cats, rabbits, goats and especially deer seem to have an immunity – and you’re quite right – cats, like dogs, are rare browsers.
Soluble TaxineB found in yew leaves is rapidly absorbed into the blood-stream of grazing animals and humans - acting upon the gut, liver and nervous system before finally arresting the cardiac muscles. Death is painful, horrid and usually within hours. It is not cheering to know that in cases of human poisoning victims are reported in death to have worn a particularly cheerful facial expression.
But it’s not all bad news, at least to me and the many others who have survived cancer. Non-soluble taxanes in yew leaves are a constituent in chemotherapy.
Ancient medical remedies from classical times contain references to yew, though with, truth to tell, often dismal results. Yew does not feature in the prescriptions of the Physicians of Myddfai, but it is observed that some animals will resort to it in instinctive self-medication, perhaps against digestive tract parasites. Cats and dogs maybe, but certainly hares, rabbits, goats and deer.
Famously, yew wood was the material used in the making of bows. Those Welsh archers who fought against conquest and Edward 1 in the late 13th century, however, were armed mainly with bows of (wych)elm - as suitable yew was not abundant in Wales.
Highly valued in Hywel Dda’s Laws (9-13th century), in terms of compensation for loss or damage, sacred yews were priced beyond most lifetimes’ earnings at £1.5.0d. Those in churchyards £1; but in woodlands 30d (2/6d). A finished yew bow was valued at 1/6d.
Many crack archer units of the later middle ages were southern Welshmen, specially skilled with the longbow, which some say they invented. It was, for three hundred years, the most lethal of war weapons. Steel-tipped arrows were capable of zapping mounted knights, piercing their armour at two hundred and fifty yards. Giraldus Cambrensis noted that Welsh arrows penetrated the 4”-thick oak doors of Abergavenny Castle, under siege. Thousand-arrow showers, descending like hail and thunder, were as deadly as modern artillery or heavy machinegun-fire.
Staves 6’ long were cut from straight-grain wood where heartwood and sapwood meet. As the bow was bent, heartwood compressed on the inner-side, sapwood stretched on the outer. Its pent-up power was tremendous. Some men could pull 175lbs.
It seems that Welsh native staves were not as efficacious as those imported from south-eastern Europe, Spain and the Baltic. It is a myth to suggest that churchyard yews were cultivated for bow-making as they were sacrosanct, mystic - funereal monuments to death and Resurrection.
A yew reaching old age becomes hollow - and might seem to be near death - but it can start, miraculously, to grow anew from within. A Resurrection. This was a significance.
The sanctity of yews, mind, is not confined to those in the asylum of churchyards. Yews mark holy wells and parish boundaries. West of Pentre Gwenlais, near Carmel woods, a venerable specimen stands sentinel over a clear spring, source of the river Gwenlais. Evidence of an ancient chapel there marks the coming together of paganism and Christianity. Ribbons seen hanging from its branches around 1990 indicate ‘tree-dressing’ ritual in recent times.
Wonderful yews are to be viewed in churchyards throughout the county: Llangathen, Llandefeisant, Ystradffin and Cilycwm are places to take your camera and measuring tape. And don’t forget the unique arbour at Aberglasney. If a bole measures 16’ at chest level (5’), then 500 years is a minimum age. If 20’ then that is even more venerable: 700 – 1,000 years. But, please realise these are rough approximations. Local conditions determine growth.
The oldest yew I ever encountered was at Llyshendy on the Ffairfach to Bethlehem road, once a medieval almshouse. As a boy I spent many hours visiting Mr Gunston who tutored me as a field naturalist. He showed me where owl pellets over hundreds of generations had accumulated in its vast hollow trunk. I’d guess two thousand years old.
In the 1960’s, a subsequent owner felled it as it obscured his view to the entrance gate.
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