Origins: Ivy Tree

Subject: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 04:24 PM

I've wondered at the reference to the 'Ivy Tree' in songs like 'North Country Lament', 'Frog's Song' and 'Holly and the Ivy' because ivy is not a tree. Now I've come across a version of North Country Lament (Freddy Grice, Folk Tales of the North Country, 1944)with this lyric:

Oh the oak and the ash and the bonny rowan tree
Do flourish at home in the North Country

So, can anyone confirm the rowan has also been known as the ivy tree?

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: Susan of DT
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 06:22 PM

There are a lot of songs mentioning trees and a lot of "oak and ash and ___ tree", so do not equate all the third in the list trees.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 06:23 PM

I don't understand ...

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 07:31 PM

The earlier forms are all Ivy Tree so far as I remember. Other trees have crept in, particularly in the Rosemary Lane / Home Boys Home variants that borrowed the chorus. I should say Susan is telling you that there's no need to worry about whether or not they might all be the same tree (they aren't). Or, for that matter, that Ivy isn't really one anyway. It's just a turn of phrase.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:02 PM

Ivy can grow over a tree so it looks for all the world like an Ivy tree. Either it kills the tree, or it's a dead tree to start with. I don't know if there are any traditions associated with it.

Chesterton wrote a song using the concept of Ivy killing the Oak tree (in The Flying Inn):

The Song of the Oak

          The Druids waved their golden knives
          And danced around the Oak
          When they had sacrificed a man;
          But though the learned search and scan
          No single modern person can
          Entirely see the joke.
          But though they cut the throats of men
          They cut not down the tree,
          And from the blood the saplings spring
          Of oak-woods yet to be.
               But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,
               He rots the tree as ivy would,
               He clings and crawls as ivy would
               About the sacred tree.

          King Charles he fled from Worcester fight
          And hid him in the Oak;
          In convent schools no man of tact
          Would trace and praise his every act,
          Or argue that he was in fact
          A strict and sainted bloke.
          But not by him the sacred woods
          Have lost their fancies free,
          And though he was extremely big
          He did not break the tree.
               But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,
               He breaks the tree as ivy would,
               And eats the woods as ivy would
               Between us and the sea.

          Great Collingwood walked down the glade
          And flung the acorns free,
          That oaks might still be in the grove
          As oaken as the beams above,
          When the great Lover sailors love
          Was kissed by Death at aea.
          But though for him the oak-trees fell
          To build the oaken ships,
          The woodman worshipped what he smote
          And honoured even the chips.
               But Ivywood, Lord Ivywood,
               He hates the tree as ivy would,
               As the dragon of the ivy would
               That has us in his grips.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:25 PM

An "ivy tree" was merely a large ivy plant (usage now obsolete, Oxford English Dictionary).
The term was still used in the 18th century (1707, in Husband. and Garden, vol. 71).

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 08:41 PM

it doesn't really matter-after all we,& those that's gone before, are singers-not horticulturalists or arboriphiles!

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 14 Nov 03 - 09:09 PM

Some people like to know what they are singing about.

Subject: RE: Origins: Ivy Tree
From: masato sakurai
Date: 15 Nov 03 - 04:27 AM

Incidentally, The Ivy Tree by Carolyn Brown means "an old ivy covered elm tree." There's a photo of another "ivy tree" here.