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2. The Yew Tree 
    - the song:

Bill Masino – Lead vocal

Kathleen Mullaly Masino - Harmony vocal
          & pennywhistle

Colin O'Brian - Acoustic Guitar

Bryan Blaylock – Bodhran

Liisa Church - Violin

 

We first heard this song done by Rickey Lashley and have been waiting for the change to record it ourselves.  This song speaks of the turbulent history of Scotland where there is a yew tree that stands as the lone surviving witness to two-thousand years of that history. Yew wood, resilient and dense, played it's own part in war as long bows, spears and dagger handles. To livestock, cattle & sheep, it's leaves and berries are poisonous. It was immoral and illegal to chop down a yew tree. To some, and in myths and legends, Yews are a symbol of immortality. For more background please see the file on this CD called "Yew Trees." 

 

To Kathleen this song means something more.  The Yew Tree has seen the suffering of humanity.  As she interprets the last verse in this song, she sees a person ready to try chop down the tree in the hope that it will relieve that suffering.  Instead, when the axe is in mid-swing,  birds fly from it's branches.  These birds symbolize the goodness in all of us and humankind's ability to become better only in it's suffering.  (Okay, she gets sappy and deep sometimes :)

Lyrics:

1) A mile frae Pencaitland, on the road to the sea

     Stands a yew tree a thousand years old,

     And the old women swear by the gray o’ their hear

     That it knows what the future will hold,

     For the shadow of Scotland surround you,

     ‘Mid the kail and the corn and the kye.

     All the hopes and the fears of a thousand long years,

     Under the Lothian sky.

 

    Chorus: 

     My bonny yew tree, tell me what do you see.

     My bonny yew tree, tell me what do you see.

 

2) Did you look through the haze o’ the long summer days

     To the south and the far English border?

     All the bonnets o’ steel on Flodden’s cold field.

      Did they march by your side in good order?

     Did you ask them the price of their glory

     When you heard the great slaughter begin?

     All the dust o’ their bones 

     Would rise up frae the stones

     To bring tears to the eyes o’ the wind.

 

    Chorus:

 

3) Not once did you speak for the poor or the weak

     When the moss-troopers lay in your shade

     For to hide frae the thunder and count all the plunder

     And share out the spoils o’ the raid.

     But you saw the smiles o’ the gentry,

     And the laughter of lords at their gains,

     Oh, when the poor hunt the poor 

     Through mountain and moor,

     The rich man can keep them in chains.

 

   Chorus:

 

    4) And there as I stood and laid hands to your wood

     It might be a kindness to fell you.

     One kiss o’ the axe and you’re freed frae the racks

     O’ the sad bloody tales that we tell you.

     But a wee bird flew from your branches

     And sang out as never before.

     And the song that he sang was a thousand years old.

     And to learn it along thousand more.

 

Chorus, 

Then Last Phrase: My bonny yew tree, tell me what CAN you see?

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