The oak has figured repeatedly in English history and occupies a unique place in our national tradition, commencing with its Druidical worship as a sacred tree.  It was from an oak that the arrow of Walter Tyrrel which struck down William Rufus is said to have glanced, and Magna Charta was signed beneath an oak by the unwilling hand of King John.  It is associated in all ages with preachings, political meetings, and with parish and county boundaries.  These boundary oaks were called Gospel-trees, it is said, because the gospel for the day was read beneath them by the parochial priest during the annual perambulation of the parish boundaries by the leading inhabitants in Rogation week.  Herrick alludes to the practice in the lines addressed to Anthea in Hesperides: 

         “Dearest, bury me
     Under that Holy-oke or Gospel-tree,
     Where (though thou see’st not) thou may’st think upon
     Me, when thou yeerly go’st Procession.”

But perhaps the oak that appeals most to the lively imagination venerating old tales of merry England, and with whose story generous hearts are most in sympathy, is that

“Wherein the younger Charles abode
Till all the paths were dim,
And far below the Roundhead rode,
And hummed a surly hymn.”

The beech is not a common tree in the Vale of Evesham, preferring the dryer soils of the Cotswold Hills.  It is said to have been introduced by the Romans, and is familiar as the tree mentioned by Virgil in the opening line of his first Pastoral: 

     “Tityre tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi;”

the metre, and the words of which, apart from their signification, suggest so accurately the pattering of the leaves of the tree in a gentle breeze.  This device like alliteration is a method of intensifying the expression of a passage, and is frequently adopted by the poets.

In another famous onomatopoeic line—­

     “Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum”

—­Virgil imitates the sound of a galloping horse, and the shaking of the ground beneath its hoofs.

Tennyson renders very naturally the action of the northern farmer’s nag and the sound of its movement, by—­

“Proputty, proputty sticks an’ proputty, proputty graws.”

And an excellent example of the effect of well-chosen words, to express the sound produced by the subject referred to, occurs in the Morte d’Arthur: 

                 “The many-knotted waterflags,
     That whistled stiff and dry about the marge.”

Blackmore’s passage in Lorna Doone, describing the superlative ease and speed of Tom Faggus’s mare, when John Ridd as a boy was allowed to ride her—­after a rough experience at the beginning of the venture—­is, though printed as prose, perhaps better poetry than most similar efforts.  To emphasize its full force it may be allowable to divide the phrases as follows: