black-letter volume dated 1483, states that yew is carried about on Palm Sunday, “for encheson (= cause)[995] that we have none olyve that berith greene leef algate (= always)[996].” Irish peasants were wont to carry sprays of yew in their caps during Passion Week, and to place small portions beside the crucifix at the head of the bed[997]. On St Martin’s Hill, near Marlborough, as previously noted (p. 194 _supra_), there is an ancient earthwork, to which, so recently as 1858, a band of villagers went in procession on Palm Sunday, carrying boughs of hazel, not of yew[998]. Although the yew was absent, the ceremony supplies an interesting link, and the connection of a Christian festival with prehistoric remains seems to indicate an early origin of the custom. Again, a well-known ecclesiastical ceremony consisted in the solemn blessing by the priest, on Palm Sunday, of branches of yew and box, which were then burnt to ashes, and these were preserved for use on the Ash Wednesday of the following year[999]. When visiting Wookey, in Somerset, during the summer of 1906, I was told that the old churchyard cross, recently restored, was known as “Yew Cross,” because it was formerly decorated with yew on Palm Sunday. It is an astonishing fact, moreover, that in the North-West Himalayas the yew is not only an object of veneration, but its twigs are carried in processions and incense is made of its timber[1000]. The enthusiastic antiquary might rashly adduce this as a proof of the Asiatic origin of the “Aryans,” let us rather suppose, without prejudicing that vexed question, that it is another instance of similarity of custom developing independently among diverse races. Plainly, then, we have obtained at least a partial answer to our question. Further usages, of a somewhat kindred nature, suggest reasons for the presence of the tree in the churchyard. Yew branches were carried by mourners at funerals; sprigs of yew were scattered on the coffin; corpses were even rubbed with an infusion of the leaves, with a view to preservation[1001]. Dryden speaks of the “mourner yew”; in _Twelfth Night_ the clown sings of “My shroud of white, stuck all with yew[1002]”; allusions are also found in the works of Dekker (1603), Thomas Stanley (1651), and other seventeenth century writers. The association of the yew with funerals survived until our day[1003]. Sir Thomas Browne, discussing, with sonorous eloquence, the burials of the ancient Greeks and Romans, tells us that “the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant,” and continues, later, “whether the planting of yew in churchyards hold not its original from ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit conjecture[1004].”