(Vol. viii., p. 346.)
This has long been to me a vexed question, and I fear that none of your
correspondents have given a satisfactory answer.
I have seen in London sprigs of yew and palm willow offered for sale before
Palm Sunday. At this period they may, I think, be always found in Covent
Garden Market. I saw them last year also in the greengrocers' shops at
Brighton. To me these are evident traces of an old custom of using the yew
as well as the willow. The origin is to be found in the Jewish custom of
carrying "branches of palm-trees, and boughs of _thick trees_, and willows
from the brook" (Leviticus xxiii. 39, 40.).
Wordsworth alludes to this in his sonnet on seeing a procession at
Chamouny:
"The Hebrews thus carrying in joyful state
Thick boughs of palm and willows from the brook,
March'd round the altar--to commemorate
How, when their course they from the desert took,
Guided by signs which ne'er the sky forsook,
They lodged in leafy tents and cabins low,
Green boughs were borne."
In _A Voyage from Leith to Lapland_, 1851, vol. i. p. 132., there is an
account of the funeral of the poet Oehlenschlaeger. The author states,--
"The entire avenue was strewn, according to the old Scandinavian
custom, with evergreen boughs of fir, and bunches of fir and box,
mingled in some instances with artificial flowers. It is customary at
all funerals to strew evergreens before the door of the house where the
body lies, but it is only for some very distinguished person indeed
they are strewn all the way to the burial place."
Forby, in his _East Anglican Vocabulary_, says it is a superstitious notion
that--
"If you bring yew into the house at Christmas amongst the evergreens
used to dress it, you will have a death in the family before the end of
the year."
I believe the yew will be found generally on the south side of the church,
but always near the principal entrance, easy of access for the procession
on Palm Sunday, and perhaps for funerals, and that it was used as a
substitute for the palm, and coupled with "the willow from the brook,"
hence called the palm willow.