kespeare," p. 244.

[563] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 255-266.

The custom of sticking yew in the shroud is alluded to in the following
song in "Twelfth Night" (ii. 4):

"My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O, prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it."

Through being reckoned poisonous, it is introduced in "Macbeth" (iv. 1)
in connection with the witches:

"Gall of goat, and slips of yew,
Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse."

"How much the splitting or tearing off of the slip had to do with magic
we learn from a piece of Slavonic folk-lore. It is unlucky to use for a
beam a branch or a tree broken by the wind. The devil, or storm-spirit,
claims it as his own, and, were it used, the evil spirit would haunt the
house. It is a broken branch the witches choose; a sliver'd slip the
woodman will have none of."[564]

[564] "Notes and Queries," 5th series, vol. xii. p. 468.

Its epithet, "double-fatal" ("Richard II.," iii. 2), no doubt refers to
the poisonous quality of the leaves, and on account of its wood being
employed for instruments of death. Sir Stephen Scroop, when telling
Richard of Bolingbroke's revolt, declares that

"Thy very beadsmen learn to bend their bows
Of double-fatal yew against thy state."

It has been suggested that the poison intended by the Ghost in "Hamlet"
(i. 5), when he speaks of the "juice of cursed hebenon," is that of the
yew, and is the same as Marlowe's "juice of hebon" ("Jew of Malta," iii.
4). The yew is called hebon by Spenser and by other writers of
Shakespeare's age; and, in its various forms of eben, eiben, hiben,
etc., this tree is so named in no less than five different European
languages. From medical authorities, both of ancient and modern times,
it would seem that the juice of the yew is a rapidly fatal poison; next,
that the symptoms attendant upon yew-poisoning correspond, in a very
remarkable manner, with those which follow the bites of poisonous
snakes; and, lastly, that no other poison but the yew produces the
"lazar-like" ulcerations on the body upon which Shakespeare, in this
passage, lays so much stress.[565]

[565] Extract of a paper read by Rev. W. A. Harrison, New
Shakespeare Society, 12th May. 1882.

Among the other explanations of this passage is the well-known one which
identifies "hebenon" with henbane. Mr. Beisly suggests that nightshade
may be me