The Ash, while one of the most useful and valuable of British trees, demands particular attention from the fact that it has always held a foremost position amongst the sacred trees of ancient nations. In the Scandinavian mythology it was the mundane tree--the symbolical tree of universal life. "Best and greatest of trees," it was called, "with a triple root reaching to the mythic regions of the first giants and the Æsir, and penetrating to the nebulous Niflheim, its majestic stem overtopping the heavens, its branches filling the world; it is sprinkled with the purest water, whence comes the dew that falls on the dales, its life-giving energy is diffused throughout all nature." It has been said that if the oak be regarded as the king of trees and the Hercules of the forest, the ash may fairly claim supremacy as their queen, and Gilpin terms it the "Venus of the Woods." "At its foot is the Undar fountain where sit the three Norns or Fates--time past, time present, and time to come; these give Runic characters and laws to men, and fix their destinies. Here is the most holy of all places, where the gods assemble daily in council, with All-Father at their head. "These three Norns have a certain analogy to the three mythic Persian destinies seated by the fountain of perennial life; and the tree itself is evidently a symbol of that inscrutable power which is the life of all things; thus representing, under an arborescent form, the most ancient theory of nature, analogous to that personified in the Indian _Parvati_, the goddess of life and reproduction; also in the Egyptian _Isis_; and in the figure so frequently met with in the museums of Italy, called 'Diana of the Ephesians,' a variety of the Indian _Maya_. "In the Chinese sacred books, 'the _Taou_ (the divine reason or wisdom, but here put for the _Deity_) preserves the heavens and supports the earth: he is so high as not to be reached, so deep as not to be followed, so immense as to contain the whole universe, and yet he penetrates into the minutest things.' The sacred ash of the Scandinavians corresponds as a symbol with the Chinese _Taou_."[19] Hesiod and Homer both mention the ash; the latter mentioning the ashen spear of Achilles, and telling us that it was by an ashen spear that he was slain. In the heathen mythology, Cupid is said to have made his arrows first of ash wood, though they were afterwards formed of cypress. So much mystery has always been associated with the ash tree, that in all ages and in all countries innumerable superstitions have grown up in connection with it, and, from their modern propagation in an age of education, will evidently die hard. In many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, at the birth of a child, the nurse puts one end of a green stick of this tree into the fire, and while it is burning gathers in a spoon the sap or juice which oozes out at the other end, and administers it as the first spoonful of food to the newly-born babe.