and in those of the remoter East. In the symbolism of these
nations the sacred tree sometimes figures as a type of the universe, and
represents the whole system of created things, but more frequently as a
tree of life, by whose fruit the votaries of the gods (and in some cases
the gods themselves) are nourished with divine strength, and are
prepared for the joys of immortality. The most ancient types of this
mystical tree of life are the date palm, the fig, and the pine or
cedar."

By way of illustration, it may be noted that the ancient Egyptians had
their legend of the "Tree of Life". It is mentioned in their sacred
books that Osiris ordered the names of souls to be written on this tree
of life, the fruit of which made those who ate it become as gods.[15]
Among the most ancient traditions of the Hindoos is that of the tree of
life--called Soma in Sanskrit--the juice of which imparted immortality;
this marvellous tree being guarded by spirits. Coming down to later
times, Virgil speaks of a sacred tree in a manner which Grimm[16]
considers highly suggestive of the Yggdrasil:

"Jove's own tree,
High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend,
So low his roots to hell's dominions tend."

As already mentioned, numerous legendary stories have become interwoven
with the myth of the Yggdrasil, the following sacred one combining the
idea of tree-descent. According to a _trouvere_ of the thirteenth
century,[17] "The tree of life was, a thousand years after the sin of
the first man, transplanted from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of
Abraham, and an angel came from heaven to tell the patriarch that upon
this tree should hang the freedom of mankind. But first from the same
tree of life Jesus should be born, and in the following wise. First was
to be born a knight, Fanouel, who, through the scent merely of the
flower of that living tree, should be engendered in the womb of a
virgin; and this knight again, without knowing woman, should give birth
to St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. Both these wonders fell out
as they were foretold. A virgin bore Fanouel by smelling the tree; and
Fanouel having once come unawares to that tree of life, and cut a fruit
from it, wiped his knife against his thigh, in which he inflicted a
slight wound, and thus let in some of the juice. Presently his thigh
began to swell, and eventually St. Anne was born therefrom."

But turning to survivals of this form of animism among unculture