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Post-Modern Drunk: Four Things About Yew
- There are over half a dozen different types of yews. Most North America Yew trees are extremely slow growing, and have the tendency to rot on the inside, frustrating efforts to make an accurate ring count to determine the age of a tree. Determining the age of a tree by ring count always reminds me of that great Far Side comic, where a lumberjack has just chopped down a tree, and is teling the person next to them, "See here, this is where the tree again managed to survive a brutal winter..."
- Yew Trees live a very long time. There are estimates that yews can live as long as 10,000 years, but the oldest confirmed yew tree, the Fortingall Yew Tree in Scotland, is only estimated to be around 2,000 years...maybe a little more. According to legend, Pontius Pilate was born under that tree and played there as a child, but that's probably a load of crap, since he was probably from Italy--the claim is that his father was an ambassador to the Caledonians, back before the Romans decided to say "fuck it" to Scotland and build Hadrian's Wall.
- Yew is the City of Justice in the Ultima games, which, if you knew that, probably explains why you have problems getting women to touch you in your red flag areas.
- The yew tree was a popular wood used for the construction of longbows. Longbows are most famous for their use at Agincourt. Henry V gets a lot of glory for all that "We happy few, we band of brothers" stuff, on St. Crispin's Day, but the real glory comes from the longbow men, who basically raked the field with a rain of death long before hand to hand combat could be joined. Most accounts of the battle seem to treat it as if it was the first time the French had ever seen the longbow, but in truth they'd encountered it (and been slaughtered by it) years before at the Battle of Crecy. Regardless, it's main influence these days is in the two fingered V salute that is the English equivalent of the middle finger. The story goes that the French commanders said they would take the two fingers of any longbowman they captured so they could never attack the French again. After the French were slaughtered, the French survivors were they shown those fingers by the gloating English bowmen as an act of defiance. There are indications that this is not true, but isn't it pretty to think so?
