Originally published in Pearson's Weekly (C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.) vol.1 #40 (25 Apr 1891).
The palm, the oak, and the ash are the three trees which, since time immemorial, have been held sacred. The first among them, which figures on the oldest monuments and pictures of the Egyptians and Assyrians, is the date-palm, which was the symbol of the world and of creation, and the fruit of which filled the faithful with divine strength, and prepared them for the pleasures of immortality. "Honour," said Mohammed, "thy paternal aunt, the date-palm, for in paradise it was created out of the same dust of the ground."
Another Mohammedan tradition of a latter period says that when Adam left Paradise, he was allowed to take with him three things—a myrtle, because it was the most lovely and the most scented flower of the earth; a wheat-ear, because it had the most nourishment; and a date, because it is the most glorious fruit of the earth. This date from Paradise was, in some marvellous way, brought to Hejaz; from it have come all the date-palms in the world and Allah destined it to be the food of all the true believers, who shall conquer every country where the date-palm grows.
The Jews and Arabs, again, looked upon the same tree as a mystical allegory of human beings, for, like them, it dies when its head (the summit) is cut off, and when a limb (branch) is once cut off, does not grow again. Those who know can understand the mysterious language of the branches on the days when there is no wind, when whispers of present and future events are communicated by the tree. Abraham of old, so the Rabbis say, understood the language of the palm.
The oak was considered a "holy" tree by our own ancestors, and, above all, by the nations of the North of Europe. When Winifred of Devonshire (680-754 A.D.) went forth on his wanderings through Germany to preach the gospel, one of his first actions was to cut down the giant oak in Saxony, which was dedicated to Thor and worshipped by the people from far and near. But when he had nearly felled the oak, and while the people were reviling and threatening the saint, a supernatural storm swept over it, seized the summit, broke every branch, and dashed it with a tremendous crash to the ground. The heathen acknowledged the marvel, and many of them were converted there and then. The saint built a chapel of the wood of this very oak, and dedicated it to St. Peter.
But the sacred oaks do not seem to have always done their duty. Thus, for instance, a famous oak in Ireland was dedicated to the Irish Saint Columban, one of the peculiarities of the tree being that whoever carried a piece of its wood in his mouth would never be hanged. After a time, however, the holy oak of Kenmare was destroyed in a storm. Nobody dared gather the wood, except a gardener, who tanned some shoe leather with the bark; but when he wore the shoes made of this leather for the first time he became a leper, and was never cured.
In the Abbey of Vetrou, in Brittany, stood an old oak-tree, which had grown out of the staff of St. Martin, the first abbot of the monastery, and in the shade of which the princes used to pray whenever they went into the abbey. Nobody ventured to pluck a leaf from this tree, and not even the birds dared to peck at it. Not so the Norman pirates, two of them climbed the tree of St. Martin to cut wood for their bows. Both fell to the ground and broke their necks.
The Celts, and Germans, and Scandinavians, again: worshipped the mountain ash, and it 1s especially in the religious myths of the latter that this tree plays a prominent part. To them it was the holiest among trees, the "world-tree," which, eternally young, represented heaven, earth, and hell.