by Peter Bayliss

An examination of the traditions and folklore concerned with the oak tree.

Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks
John Keats

The priests at the sacred grove of Diana at Nemi in Italy held the title of oak-king. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by killing the priest in single combat. And having killed him, the new king then retained office till he himself was slain in turn by another candidate.

So begins Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890), the classic study in magic and religion which has at its heart the veneration of the oak tree in ancient times. Oak cults were widespread throughout Europe with the tree particularly associated with Zeus, Jupiter, Hercules and Thor, ancient sky and fertility gods of rain and thunder.

One of the oldest and most famous sanctuaries in Greece was that of Dodona, where Zeus was revered in the oracular oak. The voice of the god was interpreted by priestess listening to the rustling of the oak leaves. Sacred fires were traditionally kindled and fuelled with oak-wood. The perpetual fire at Vesta in Rome was fed with oak by the Vestal Virgins.

Frazer described a festival which was held to celebrate the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera, the oak god and oak goddess. From an ancient forest an oak tree was felled, and a bridal image carved from it and set on a bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. The cart was drawn to the bank of a nearby river and then back to town, accompanied by much pipe-playing and dancing in a carnival-like atmosphere.

THE DRUIDS AND MISTLETOE

Many classical references were gathered together by John Evelyn in his book Silva, or a discourse of Forest Trees (1662). He quoted Quintillian to the effect that the Celtic statue of Jupiter was no better than a prodigious tall oak, ‘whence’ he says, tis said the Chaldean theologues derived their superstition towards it, and the Persians we read used that tree in all their mysterious rites . . . ‘ He also goes on to mention that Pliny (the Roman historian) tells us ‘of some oaks growing in his time in the Hycernian Forest, which were thought coevous with the world itself; their roots had even raised mountains.’

It was Pliny who described how altars near Heraclea in Pontus had been erected to the honour of Jupiter, and that over them stood two oaks said to have been set by the hand of Hercules himself.

Frazer’s book title, The Golden Bough, can refer to the self-luminous quality of sacredness which the oak bough possessed as representative of the Tree of Life. But in Druidic terms it meant the mistletoe, that it, its yellowish colour on the branch. He says’ . . .the Druids esteemed nothing more sacred that the mistletoe and the oak on which it grew; they chose groves of oaks for the scene of their solemn service, and they performed none of their rites without oak leaves.’ He makes the point that ‘the very name of Druids is believed by good authorities to mean no more than "oak men".’

ELIZABETHAN WORLD-ORDER

The worship of trees is perhaps not very surprising if one remembers that at the dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primaeval forests. In this country, the wealds of Kent, Surrey and Sussex are remnants of the great forest of Anderida, which once clothed the whole of the south-eastern part of Britain. Westward it seems to have stretched till it joined another forest that extended from Hampshire to Devon.

In the reign of Henry II (1154 - 89) the citizens of London still hunted the wild boar in the woods of Hampstead. Even under the later Plantagenets there were 68 royal forests. These were predominantly oak.

The special status of the oak is to some extent due to its inherent strength, endurance and extreme longevity (which must have made it seem almost everlasting). These were qualities that the gods were supposed to possess and which, through Divine Right, were also the inherited properties of institutional monarchy.

And this association suggests why, according to the ‘chain of being’ in the Elizabethan world-order, the oak was regarded as the King of the trees. Says Peacham in 1634 (quoted in E.M W. Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture). ‘The lion we say is king of beasts, the eagle chief of birds, the whale and whirlpool among fishes, Jupiter’s oak the forest’s king’.

THE MAJOR OAK

Of course, any long-lived immovable object was always made use of in the drawing up of boundaries. Hence oaks were often called boundary trees.

Once such tree was The Watch Oak at Milverton, Leamington, in Warwichshire. The tree no longer exists, but in the accompanying notes to his sketch of 1870, R. Aspa writes: ‘This old veteran of the Forest of Arden . . . has been referred to in old charters and deeds, and from this circumstance would seem to have been a boundary tree; its peculiar name is indicative of guardianship or preparation against surprise. It is suggested that it was the limit of the patrol, or an outpost of the Castle of Warwick . . . or it may have been a position of offence or defence during the attack on the Castle in the civil wars (August 1642).’

The Shireoaks gave their name to a village at the point where Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire meet. And the Crossed Oak in Sherwood Forest was a boundary mark of the lands of Rufford Abbey.

Of course, mention of Sherwood Forest immediately makes one think of Robin Hood and the Major Oak. This gigantic tree, 1000 years old, is still growing in Birkland Wood near Edwinstowe. It is said to have been the meeting place of Robin and his men, and that the entire band used to hide inside the hollow trunk. It seems to have derived its name from a naturalist and antiquarian called Major Haymana Rooke FSA.

Rooke produced a book, in 1790 called Remarkable Oaks in the Park of Welbeck in the county of Nottingham. Featured were the Duke’s Walking Stick with a tall straight trunk and a clump of foliage at the top, the Seven Sisters with seven parallel trunks springing from one base, the Porters, a pair of trees formerly said to have flanked an entrance lodge, and the incredible Greendale Oak.

Perhaps as much as 1500 years old, the massive Greendale Oak had a coach road cut through its trunk in 1724. The aperture itself was said to have been 10’3" tall and 6’3" wide. And a piece of furniture called the Greendale Cabinet was made from the wood that was removed.

HEREN’S OAK

Also connected with Robin Hood is an oak called the Centre Tree, halfway between Thoresby and Welbeck estates. It is reputed to have been the marker from which the outlaw’s network of secret routes ran throughout the forest.

And yet another famous tree in Sherwood, though unconnected with Robin Hood, is the Parliament Oak. During the 13th century, both King John and Edward I are said to have held emergency meetings of their advisors under its boughs.

In Windsor Great Park is Herne’s Oak. It was Herne who originally saved the king from wounded stag, and was rewarded by being made the royal chief huntsman. But jealous underlings contrived to have him dismissed, whereupon in despair he hanged himself from an oak.

The ghost of Herne the Hunter is said to haunt the park. He is a bearded, mighty figure wearing chains, and with a massive pair of antlers on his head. He rides a black horse, carries a hunting horn and is accompanied by a pack of fierce hounds. He can be identified with the Celtic god of the Underworld, a horned deity who was probably once worshiped in this region.

There is a visual comparison between the stag’s antlers and the jagged dead branches of the oak, an identification which strengthens the link between the two.

In Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff disguises himself as Herne the Hunter, complete with antlers, and goes to Herne’s Oak in Windsor Forest. There is a painting by Robert Smirke (1752 - 1845) of Falstaff under Herene’s Oak, circa 1800 (Royal Shakespeare Theatre).

THE ROYAL OAK

On May Day was held the old greenwood festival which celebrates the renewal of life with the coming of Spring. Among other customs associated with the oak on that day, a character who represented the Green Man, or Jack-in-the-Green, was garlanded and disguised in oak sprays.

Oak-apple Day on 29th May commemorates the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. He rode into London on that day amidst rejoicing from a crowd weary of Puritian rule. According to tradition, it was an oak at Boscobel in which he hid when fleeing after the battle of Worcester. The oak tree and the oak-apple henceforth became symbols of restored monarchy. And the legend of the Boscobel Oak gave rise to one of the most popular English inn-names, The Royal Oak.

A custom which has been transferred to Oak-apple Day from May Day is that of cutting green boughs of oak and decorating houses and churches with them. The tradition is still kept alive at Great Whishford, Wiltshire, with a procession and dancing following the ceremonial branch-cutting.

The frames of most timber-framed buildings in Europe were made of oak. And when it came to more elaborate building projets, oak was also relied upon. The roof of Kings College, founded in 1444, is oak, and so are the piles which support the great Campanile at Venice. It was also used in the roof of St. Paul’s: in a letter to the steward of the Duke of Newcastle in 1695, Sir Christopher Wren asked for ‘great Beams . . . 47ft long, 13" at the small end; of growing timber and as near can be without sap’.

HEARTS OF OAK

Oak acquired great importance in shipbuilding. British sea power began when King Alfred built 60-oared oak ships to fight the Danes. Then in the 15th century came the Great Harry, the first double-decked English warship. And the warships of Elizabethan England sailed to defeat the galleons of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Typical of the 17th century was the East Indian, an oak-built cargo and fighting vessel of about 600 tons, trading with India and China. By the end of the 18th century a ship of the line had reached a length of 250ft, displaced about 3000 tons and carried 100 guns.

A Liverpool shipwright in 1763 wrote Heart of Oak, a plea for a better legal protection of oak woods. The phrase has become commonly used as an expression to suggest not only the oak as the economic core of the country, but also to express the strength and courage of the British people.

Originally it was used by Virgil to describe the pre Romans: ‘a race of men from tree-stocks sprung and stubborn heart of oak’. David Garrick (1717 - 1779) staged a Christmas pantomime of Harlequin’s Invasion in which the song ‘Hearts of oak are our men, hearts of oak are our ships’ appeared for the first time.

One of the last great naval battles using oak-built warshps was the battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when a British fleet under Nelson (in the flagship Victory) defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain. As well as ‘hearts of oak’, ships became known as the ‘wooden walls of England’.

The famous painting of the Fighting Téméraire by J.M.W. Turner (1775 - 1851), now hanging in the National Gallery, depicts a veteran wooden three-decker being towed to her last berth by a squat and powerful steam-tug. The age of the oak-built galleon was at an end, and the painting symbolizes this passing of an epoch, the old order being supplanted by the iron and steam of the Industrial Revolution.

THE BLASTED OAK

Turner himself did a great deal to make a separate genre in the art establishment of the 19th century. But paintings of the oak tree have always been popular, even though earlier works featured people in a wooded landscape setting rather than the trees themselves. One example is Gainsborough’s Wooded Landscape with Peasants (Gipsies) (c. 1753 - 4), which survives as an engraving by John Wood in the British Museum. It shows figures beneath a magnificent oak.

John Constable (1776 - 1837) is probably the best known painter of the English landscapes. His An Oak in Dedham Meadows, 1827, and An Oak Tree in Hayfield, 1819, both in the Victoria and Albert Museum, are two particular examples of relevance here.

The ‘blasted oak’ was also a commonly used theme in art. (It has been said the oak is more frequently struck by lightning than any other tree.) In the Destruction of Niobe’s Children by William Woollett, 1761 (Manchester University’s Whitworth Art Gallery), a blasted oak is used as a symbol of divine wrath.

Later examples can be seen in Tree struck by Lightning, Durham Park, 1808, by John Boultbee, in the Courtauld Institute of Fine Arts, John Crome’s The Blasted Oaks, Circa 1812, and his Road by Blasted Oak, 1813, both in the Norwich Castle Museum, also The Blasted Tree by Andrew McCallum, 1821 - 1902 in Nottinghamshire Castle Museum, and Edward Burra’s Blasted Oak, 1942, in the Arts Council Collection.