14 SEPTEMBER 1951, Page 13

COUNTRY LIFE

RECENTLY the, subject was raised over the microphone as to why yew trees were planted in churchyards. The answers given by the experts were so unsatisfactory that it is worth trying to clear the matter up. It is, of course, a pure fallacy that the motive was wood for the archers, a myth that seems to have been derived from churchwardens' accounts entering up the revenue from the sales of yew-wood for bows. But the planting of yews in churchyards and sacred enclosures preceded by many centuries the use of the wood in archery. The Celtic archers of Wales, renowned for their sharp-shooting in their desperate encounters with the Norman baronage, used elm, not yew, for their bows.,