Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 47

Uniquely to Britain, we have amongst our ancient woodlands, in churchyards, on village greens and parish boundaries, a number of trees of immense antiquity. When we think about preserving our ancient woodland heritage and debate the importance of doing so, it is vital to remember that since time immemorial trees and shrubs have all had religious and cultural meaning and usage.

The Celts were extraordinary people; tribal, quarrelsome and addicted to mead, but also highly organised agriculturalists, industrious miners, and successful traders in iron ore, gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, grain, skins, slaves and hunting dogs to the Continent. They were deeply religious nature worshippers, whose lives were ruled by superstition and the seasons, and it was they who bequeathed us a heritage of folklore, much of it centred round their veneration of trees.

All species were believed to have magical powers and to be inhabited by a deity or spirit, especially oak, ash, yew, crab apple and thorn, and of these the oak trees were considered the most sacred. No one has stood before the critical gaze of an ancient oak with its gnarled trunk and great twisted limbs and not felt a sense of awe. The sight of one of these majestic trees rearing up out of a glade in the underwood, or a grove of them standing alone on the edge of a heath, bare, gaunt and terrible through the winter then bursting into life again in the spring, symbolised all early man’s polytheist beliefs in life, death and rebirth.