It was a habit, even of Teutonic poets, to tell of the various trees and their uses in verse, and Spenser and Drayton have both done it in later times.

But few of them have added, as the Irish story does, a spiritual element to their description, and made us think of malign or beneficent elements attached to them.

The woodbine, and this is a strange fancy, is the king of the woods.

The rowan is the tree of the magicians, and its berries are for poets.

The bramble is inimical to man, the alder is full of witchcraft, and the elder is the wood of the horses of the fairies.