iw

Old English iw comes from Proto-Germanic *ihwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h1eyHwo-, of uncertain meaning. The word is among the most ancient in the English language. The Elder Futhark rune ᛇ (eihwaz) was named after the yew tree and associated with death, endurance, and the boundary between worlds. The tree was sacred before Christianity arrived.

Yew wood made the English longbow — the weapon that won Crecy (1346) and Agincourt (1415). Yew is elastic and strong in both tension and compression, which makes it ideal for bow-making. English demand for yew wood was so high that the supply was exhausted domestically, and bow staves were imported from Spain, Italy, and Germany. The yew that grew in English churchyards was too sacred to cut.

Nearly every ancient churchyard in Britain has a yew tree, and many of the yews predate the church. The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, Scotland, is estimated at 2,000 to 5,000 years old — possibly the oldest living thing in Europe. Churches were built next to yews, not the other way around. The tree marked the sacred ground first.

In 1962, chemist Monroe Wall discovered that bark from the Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia) contained taxol (paclitaxel), which became one of the most important chemotherapy drugs in history. The tree associated with death for thousands of years — planted in graveyards, carved into symbols of the underworld — turned out to contain a compound that fights cancer. The death tree became a medicine.