No.72

"Careless, unsocial plant! that loves to dwell 

'Midst skulls and coffins, epitaphs and worms: 

Where light-heel'd ghosts and visionary shades, 

Beneath the wan, cold Moon (as Fame reports) 

Embodied, thick, perform their mystic rounds 

No other merriment, dull tree! is thine."

- Robert Blair (commenting on the Yew tree)

This is a part of the churchyard of St.Mary's, Painswick showing some of the famous yew trees. According to the legend, there are 99 yews there and the Devil has decreed that, if ever a 100th was planted, he would destroy it. In the year 2000 one was added to mark the millennium and it has survived.

-o0o-