e
venerated, to judge by what Lucan relates of the sacred grove at
Marseilles. The Irish Druids attributed special virtues to the hazel,
rowan, and yew, the wood of which was used in magical ceremonies
described in Irish texts.[671] Fires of rowan were lit by the Druids of
rival armies, and incantations said over them in order to discomfit the
opposing host,[672] and the wood of all these trees is still believed to
be efficacious against fairies and witches.

The Irish _bile_ was a sacred tree, of great age, growing over a holy
well or fort. Five of them are described in the _Dindsenchas_, and one
was an oak, which not only yielded acorns, but nuts and apples.[673] The
mythic trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the reason in
both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated apple took the
place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words signifying "nut" or
"acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth of trees on which all
these fruits grew might then easily arise. Another Irish _bile_ was a
yew described in a poem as "a firm strong god," while such phrases in
this poem as "word-pure man," "judgment of origin," "spell of
knowledge," may have some reference to the custom of writing divinations
in ogham on rods of yew. The other _bile_ were ash-trees, and from one
of them the _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree," were named--perhaps a
totem-clan.[674] The lives of kings and chiefs appear to have been
connected with these trees, probably as representatives of the spirit of
vegetation embodied in the tree, and under their shadow they were
inaugurated. But as a substitute for the king was slain, so doubtless
these pre-eminent sacred trees were too sacred, too much charged with
supernatural force, to be cut down and burned, and the yearly ritual
would be performed with another tree. But in time of feud one tribe
gloried in destroying the _bile_ of another; and even in the tenth
century, when the _bile maighe Adair_ was destroyed by Maelocohlen the
act was regarded with horror. "But, O reader, this deed did not pass
unpunished."[675] Of another _bile_, that of Borrisokane, it was said
that any house in which a fragment of it was burned would itself be
destroyed by fire.[676]

Tribal and personal names point to belief in descent from tree gods or
spirits and perhaps to totemism. The Eburones were the yew-tree tribe
(_eburos_); the Bituriges perhaps had the mistletoe for their symbol,
and their surname Vivisci im