Woodland Gleanings Part 12

The longevity of the Oak is supposed to extend beyond that of any other tree. It is through age that the Oak acquires its greatest beauty, which often continues increasing, even into decay, if any proportion exists between the stem and the branches. When the branches rot away, and the trunk is left alone, the tree is in its decrepitude, the last stage of life, and all the beauty is gone.

Spenser has given us a good picture of an Oak just verging towards its last stage of decay:

--A huge Oak, dry and dead, Still clad with reliques of its trophies old, Lifting to heaven its aged, h.o.a.ry head, Whose foot on earth hath got but feeble hold, And, half disbowelled, stands above the ground With wreathed roots, and naked arms, And trunk all rotten and unsound.

He also compares a gray-headed old man to an aged Oak-tree, covered with frost:

There they do find that goodly aged sire, With snowy locks adown his shoulders shed; As h.o.a.ry frost with spangles doth attire The mossy branches of an Oak half dead.

Montgomery, too, does not forget to observe the longevity of the st.u.r.dy Oak:

As some triumphal Oak, whose boughs have spread Their changing foliage through a thousand years, Bows to the rushing wind its glorious head.

As we before noted, the beauty of almost every species of tree increases after its prime; but unless it hath the good fortune to stand in some place of difficult access, or under the protection of some patron whose mansion it adorns, we rarely see it in that grandeur and dignity which it would acquire by age. Some of the n.o.blest Oaks in England were, at least formerly, found in Suss.e.x. They required sometimes a score of oxen to draw them, and were carried on a sort of wain, which in that deep country is expressly called a _tugg_. It was not uncommon for it to spend two or three years in performing its journey to the Royal dock-yard at Chatham. One tugg carried the load only a little way, and left it for another tugg to take up. If the rains set in, it stirred no more that year; and frequently no part of the next summer was dry enough for the tugg to proceed: so that the timber was generally pretty well seasoned before it arrived at its destination.

In this fallen state alone, it is true, the tree becomes the basis of England's glory, though we regret its fall. Therefore, we must not repine, but address the children of the wood as the gallant Oak, on his removal from the forest, is said to have addressed the scion by his side:

Where thy great grandsire spread his awful shade, A holy Druid mystic circles made; Myself a sapling when thy grandsire bore Intrepid Edward to the Gallic sh.o.r.e.

Me, now my country calls: adieu, my son!

And, as the circling years in order run, May'st thou renew the forest's boast and pride, Victorious in some future contest ride.

We are sure that all who can appreciate beautiful poetry will be gratified by the following pathetic lamentation of the elegant Vanier:--

--No greater beauty can adorn The hamlet, than a grove of ancient Oak.

Ah! how unlike their sires of elder times The sons of Gallia now! They, in each tree Dreading some unknown power, dared not to lift An axe. Though scant of soil, they rather sought For distant herbage, than molest their groves.

Now all is spoil and violence. Where now Exists an Oak, whose venerable stem Has seen three centuries? unless some steep, To human footstep inaccessible, Defend a favour'd plant. Now, if some sire Leave to his heir a forest scene, that heir, With graceless hands, hews down each awful trunk, Worthy of Druid reverence. There he rears A paltry copse, destined, each twentieth year, To blaze inglorious on the hearth. Hence woods, Which shelter'd once the stag and grisly boar, Scarce to the timorous hare sure refuge lend.

Farewell each rural virtue, with the love Of rural scenes! Sage Contemplation wings Her flight; no more from burning suns she seeks A cool retreat. No more the poet sings, Amid re-echoing groves, his moral lay.

As it is thus a general complaint that n.o.ble trees are rarely to be found, we must seek them where we can, and consider them, when found, as matters of curiosity, and pay them a due respect. And yet, we should suppose, they are not so frequently found here in a state of nature as in more uncultivated countries. In the forests of America, and other scenes, they have filled the plains from the beginning of time; and where they grow so close, and cover the ground with so impervious a shade that even a weed can scarce rise beneath them, the single tree is lost. Unless it stand on the outskirt of the wood, it is circ.u.mscribed, and has not room to expand its vast limbs as nature directs. When we wish, therefore, to find the most sublime sylvan character, the Oak, the elm, or the ash, in perfection, we must not look for it in close, thick woods, but standing single, independent of all connections, as we sometimes find it in our own forests, though oftener in better protected places, shooting its head wildly into the clouds, spreading its arms towards every wind of heaven:

--The Oak Thrives by the rude concussion of the storm.

He seems indignant, and to feel The impression of the blast with proud disdain; But, deeply earth'd, the unconscious monarch owes His firm stability to what he scorns: More fix'd below, the more disturb'd above.

Again, we are told that the foliage of the Oak is

Tenacious of the stem, and firm against the wind.

The shade of the Oak-tree has been a favourite theme with British poets.

Thomson, speaking of Hagley Park, the seat of his friend Littleton, calls it the British Tempe, and describes him as courting the muse beneath the shade of solemn Oaks:

--There, along the dale With woods o'erhung, and s.h.a.gged with mossy rocks, Whence on each hand the gushing waters play, And down the rough cascade white dashing fall, Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees, You silent steal; or sit beneath the shade Of solemn Oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts, Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand, And pensive listens to the various voice Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds, The hollow whispering breeze, the plaint of rills, That, purling down amid the twisted roots Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake On the soothed ear.

Wordsworth also mentions the fine broad shade of the spreading Oak:

Beneath that large old Oak, which near their door Stood, and, from its enormous breadth of shade, Chosen for the shearer's covert from the sun, Thence, in our rustic dialect, was called The clipping tree: a name which yet it bears.

The Oaks of Chaucer are particularly celebrated, as the trees under which

--The laughing sage Caroll'd his moral song.

They grew in the park at Donnington Castle, near Newbury, where Chaucer spent his latter life in studious retirement. The largest of these trees was the King's Oak, and carried an erect stem of fifty feet before it broke into branches, and was cut into a beam five feet square. The next in size was called the Queen's Oak, and survived the calamities of the civil wars in King Charles's time, though Donnington Castle and the country around it were so often the scenes of action and desolation. Its branches were very curious: they pushed out from the stem in several uncommon directions, imitating the horns of a ram, rather than the branches of an Oak. When it was felled, it yielded a beam forty feet long, without knot or blemish, perfectly straight, four feet square at the b.u.t.t end, and near a yard at the top. The third of these Oaks was called Chaucer's, of which we have no particulars; in general only we are told, that it was a n.o.ble tree, though inferior to either of the others. Not one of them, we should suppose, from this account, to be a tree of picturesque beauty. A straight stem, of forty or fifty feet, let its head be what it will, can hardly produce a picturesque form.

Close by the gate of the water-walk at Magdalen College, Oxford, grew an Oak, which, perhaps, stood there a sapling when Alfred the Great founded the University. This period only includes a s.p.a.ce of nine hundred years, which is no great age for an Oak. It is a difficult matter indeed, to ascertain the age of a tree. The age of a castle, or abbey, is an object of history: even a common house is recorded by the family that built it.

All these objects arrive at maturity in their youth, if we may so speak; but the tree, gradually completing its growth, is not worth recording in the early part of its existence. It is then only a common tree; and afterwards, when it becomes remarkable for its age, all memory of its youth is lost. This tree, however, can almost produce historical evidence for the age a.s.signed to it. About five hundred years after the time of Alfred, William of Wainfleet, Dr. Stukely tells us, expressly ordered his college to be founded near the Great Oak; and an Oak could not, we think, be less than five hundred years of age to merit that t.i.tle, together with the honour of fixing the site of a college. When the magnificence of Cardinal Wolsey erected that handsome tower which is so ornamental to the whole building, this tree might probably be in the meridian of its glory, or rather, perhaps, it had attained a green old age. But it must have been manifestly in its decline at that memorable period when the tyranny of James gave the Fellows of Magdalen so n.o.ble an opportunity of withstanding bigotry and superst.i.tion. It was afterwards much injured in Charles II.'s time, when the present walks were laid out. The roots were disturbed, and from that period it rapidly declined, and became reduced by degrees to little more than a mere trunk. The faithful records of history have handed down its ancient dimensions. Through a s.p.a.ce of sixteen yards on every side from its trunk, it once flung its boughs; and then its magnificent pavilion could have sheltered with ease three thousand men; though, in its decayed state, it could for many years do little more than shelter some luckless individual, whom the drenching shower had overtaken in his evening walk.

In the summer of the year 1788, this magnificent ruin fell to the ground, alarming the College with its rushing sound. It then appeared how precariously it had stood for many years. Its grand tap-root was decayed, and it had hold of the earth only by two or three roots, of which none was more than a couple of inches in diameter. From a part of its ruin a chair has been made for the President of the College, which will long continue its memory.

Near Worksop grew an Oak, which, in respect both to its own dignity and the dignity of its situation, deserves honourable mention. In point of grandeur, few trees equalled it. It overspread a s.p.a.ce of ninety feet from the extremities of its opposite boughs. These dimensions will produce an area capable, on mathematical calculation, of covering a squadron of two hundred and thirty-five horse. The dignity of its station was equal to the dignity of the tree itself. It stood on a point where Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire unite, and spread its shade over a portion of each. From the honourable station of thus fixing the boundaries of three large counties, it was equally respected through the domains of them all, and was known far and wide by the honourable distinction of the Shire-Oak, by which appellation it was marked among cities, towns, and rivers, in all the larger maps of England.

Gilpin gives us a singular account of an Oak-tree that formerly stood in the New Forest, Hampshire, against which, according to tradition, the arrow of Sir Walter Tyrrell glanced which killed William Rufus.

According to Leland, and Camden from him, this tree stood at a place called Througham, where a chapel was erected to the king's memory. But there is now not any place of that name in the New Forest, nor the remains or remembrance of any chapel. It is, however, conjectured that Througham might be what is at present called Fritham, where the tradition of the country seems to have fixed the spot with more credibility than the tree. It is probable that the chapel was only some little temporary oratory, which, having never been endowed, might very soon fall into decay: but the tree, we may suppose, would be noticed at the time by everybody who lived near it, and by strangers who came to see it; and it is as likely that it never could be forgotten afterwards.

Those who regard a tree as an insufficient record of an event so many centuries back, may be reminded that seven hundred years (and it is little more than that since the death of Rufus) is no extraordinary period in the existence of an Oak. About one hundred years ago, however, this tree had become so decayed and mutilated, that it is probable the spot would have been completely forgotten if some other memorial had not been raised. Before the stump, therefore, was eradicated, Lord Delaware, who occupied one of the neighbouring lodges, caused a triangular stone to be erected, on the three sides of which the following inscriptions are engraved:--

I.

Here stood the Oak-tree, on which an arrow, shot by Sir Walter Tyrrel at a stag, glanced, and struck King William II., surnamed Rufus, in the breast, of which stroke he instantly died, on the 2d of August, 1100.

II.

King William II., being thus slain, was laid on a cart belonging to one Purkess, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and buried in the Cathedral Church of that city.

III.

That the spot where an event so memorable happened, might not hereafter be unknown, this stone was set up by John Lord Delaware, who has seen the tree growing in this place.

Lord Delaware here a.s.serts plainly that he had seen the Oak-tree; and as he resided much near the place, there is reason to believe that he had other grounds for the a.s.sertion besides the mere tradition of the country. That matter, however, rests on his authority.

Gilpin likewise gives us the following account of the Cadenham Oak, in the New Forest, which was remarkable for putting forth its buds in the depth of winter. Cadenham is a village about three miles from Lyndhurst, on the road to Salisbury:--

"Having often heard of this Oak, I took a ride to see it on December 29, 1781. It was pointed out to me among several other Oaks, surrounded by a little forest stream, winding round a knoll on which they stood. It is a tall straight plant, of no great age, and apparently vigorous, except that its top has been injured, from which several branches issue in the form of pollard shoots. It was entirely bare of leaves, as far as I could discern, when I saw it, and undistinguishable from the other Oaks in its neighbourhood, except that its bark seemed rather smoother, occasioned, I apprehended, only by frequent climbing.

"Having had the account of its early budding confirmed on the spot, I engaged one Michael Lawrence, who kept the White Hart, a small alehouse in the neighbourhood, to send me some of the leaves to Vicar's Hill, as soon as they should appear. The man, who had not the least doubt about the matter, kept his word, and sent me several twigs on the morning of January 5, 1782, a few hours after they had been gathered. The leaves were fairly expanded, and about an inch in length. From some of the buds two leaves had unsheathed themselves, but in general only one.

"Through what power in nature this strange premature vegetation is occasioned, I believe no naturalist can explain. I sent some of the leaves to one of the ablest botanists we have, Mr. Lightfoot, author of the _Flora Scotica_, and was in hopes of hearing something satisfactory on the subject. But he is one of those philosophers who are not ashamed of ignorance where attempts at knowledge are mere conjecture. He a.s.sured me he neither could account for it in any way, nor did he know of any other instance of premature vegetation, except the Glas...o...b..ry thorn.

The philosophers of the forest, in the meantime, account for the thing at once, through the influence of old Christmas day, universally believing that the Oak buds on that day, and that only. The same opinion is held with regard to the Glas...o...b..ry thorn, by the common people of the west of England. But, without doubt, the vegetation there is gradual, and forwarded or r.e.t.a.r.ded by the mildness or severity of the weather. One of its progeny, which grew in the gardens of the d.u.c.h.ess Dowager of Portland, at Bulstrode, had its flower-buds perfectly formed so early as December 21, 1781, which is fifteen days earlier than it ought to flower, according to the vulgar prejudice.

"This early spring, however, of the Cadenham Oak, is of very short duration. The buds, after unfolding themselves, make no farther progress, but immediately shrink from the season and die. The tree continues torpid, like other deciduous trees, during the remainder of the winter, and vegetates again in the spring, at the usual season. I have seen it in full leaf in the middle of summer, when it appeared, both in its form and foliage, exactly like other Oaks.

"I have been informed that another tree, with the same property of early vegetation, has lately been found near the spot where Rufus's monument stands. If this be the case, it seems in some degree to authenticate the account which Camden gives us of the scene of that prince's death; for he speaks of the premature vegetation of that very tree on which the arrow of Tyrrel glanced, and the tree I now speak of, if it really exist, though I have no sufficient authority for it, might have been a descendant of the old Oak, and hence inherited its virtues.

"It is very probable, however, there may be other Oaks in the forest which may likewise have the property of early vegetation. I have heard it often suspected, that people gather buds from other trees and carry them, on old Christmas day, to the Oak at Cadenham, from whence they pretend to pluck them; for that tree is in such repute, and resorted to annually by so many visitants, that I think it could not easily supply all its votaries without some foreign contributions. Some have accounted for this phenomenon by supposing that leaves have been preserved over the year by being steeped in vinegar. But I am well satisfied this is not the case. Mr. Lightfoot, to whom I sent the leaves, had no such suspicion."

In the _Salisbury Journal_, January 10, 1781, the following paragraph appeared:--

"In consequence of a report that has prevailed in this country for upwards of two centuries, and which by many has been almost considered as a matter of faith, that the Oak at Cadenham, in the New Forest, shoots forth leaves on every old Christmas day, and that no leaf is ever to be seen on it, either before or after that day, during the winter; a lady, who is now on a visit in this city, and who is attentively curious in every thing relative to art or nature, made a journey to Cadenham on Monday, the 3d instant, purposely to inquire, on the spot, about the production of this famous tree. On her arrival near it, the usual guide was ready to attend her; but on his being desired to climb the Oak, and to search whether there were any leaves then on it, he said it would be to no purpose, but that if she would come on the Wednesday following (Christmas day), she might certainly see thousands. However, he was prevailed on to ascend, and on the first branch which he gathered appeared several fair new leaves, fresh sprouted from the buds, and nearly an inch and a half in length. It may be imagined that the guide was more amazed at this premature production than the lady; for so strong was his belief in the truth of the whole tradition, that he would have pledged his life that not a leaf was to have been discovered on any part of the tree before the usual hour.

"But though the superst.i.tious part of this ancient legend is hence confuted, yet it must be allowed there is something very uncommon and curious in an Oak constantly shooting forth leaves at this unseasonable time of the year, and that the cause of it well deserves the philosophical attention of the botanist. In some years there is no doubt that this Oak may show its first leaves on the Christmas morning, as probably as on a few days before; and this perhaps was the case in the last year, when a gentleman of this neighbourhood, a nice and critical observer, strictly examined the branches, not only on the Christmas morn, but also on the day prior to it. On the first day not a leaf was to be found, but on the following every branch had its complement, though they were then but just shooting from the buds, none of them being more than a quarter of an inch long. The latter part of the story may easily be credited--that no leaves are to be seen on it after Christmas day--as large parties yearly a.s.semble about the Oak on that morning, and regularly strip every appearance of a leaf from it."