Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/299

Rh beneath his axe, Boniface was well aware that he could not triumph over the popular superstition.

S. Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, who visited Britain to expose the Pelagian heresy, was himself guilty before his ordination of paying superstitious reverence to a pear tree. He had been a hunter, and it was customary for those who returned from the chase to suspend in the tree the heads and antlers of the game killed, as an act of homage to the spirit that inhabited it. The Bishop Amator remonstrated, but in vain. Then one day, when Germanus was out hunting, Amator cut the tree down.

That some lingering notion of veneration due to trees hung on, and was regarded as savouring of something not orthodox, is perhaps shown by the following incident, which is perfectly true. It was told me by the person concerned. A new parson had been appointed to a remote parish in one of the north-western dales of Yorkshire under the Fells. Not being a native of Yorkshire, but a southerner, he was eyed with suspicion, and his movements were watched. Now in the parsonage garden was a large tree, and about the roots was a bed of violets. The suspicious villagers observed the pastor as he walked round the tree and every now and then bowed to pick a violet. This proceeding took place daily. Why he bowed they could not understand, unless it were in homage to the tree, and they actually drew up a memorial to the Archbishop of York complaining of their parson as guilty of idolatrous tree-worship.

The bush hung out of a wine-shop signified that