Beneath The Yew Tree’s Shade | Thomas Laqueur | Paris Review | 31st October 2015
The association between yew trees and death goes back at least to the time of the ancient Greeks — as do some great yew trees, which can live for thousands of years. “The yew tree was sacred to Hecate, the Greek goddess associated with witchcraft, death, and necromancy. It was said to purify the dead as they entered Hades”. The yew was a symbol of sadness for British painers and poets until it was displaced by the more picturesque weeping willow, an eighteenth-century import from China