Eó Rossa

Worth knowing: Eó Rossa was Leinster’s sacred yew at Old Leighlin, Co. Carlow, one of the five great trees of early Ireland; its thirty-one-epithet praise litany, including “door of heaven,” is the most complete literary treatment any Irish sacred tree received; two distinct traditions explain its fall, a dynastic era and a saint’s prayer; and its timber passed into church roofs as relic-wood.

What does the name Eó Rossa mean?

The name Eó Rossa, also Eo Rosa, Eó Ruis, Bile Rossa, translates as “the Yew of Ross.” In Old Irish, eo (eó) denotes the yew (Taxus baccata); the twentieth and final principal letter of the ogham alphabet, idad, is traditionally glossed as the yew (ibar), locating the tree at the threshold, the last letter before silence. Niall Mac Coitir has proposed that Ériu (Ireland) itself may derive from a Proto-Irish root meaning “yew-land,” making the yew the etymological tree-soul of the island. The toponym Ross carries the meaning “headland” or “wood-promontory,” giving the full name the sense of “the yew of the wooded point”, a tree rooted at a liminal edge, appropriate for a tree of death and crossing.

The tree is located by tradition at Old Leighlin (Leathghlenn, “half-glen” or “grey valley”), Co. Carlow, near the River Barrow. Three new yew trees have been planted at St Laserian’s Holy Well at Old Leighlin as a symbolic replacement.

What were the five great trees of Ireland?

Eó Rossa was one of the five bileda, the five legendary sacred trees regarded as the pillars of each province and the vegetable embodiment of sovereignty, wisdom, and cosmic order. The five were: Eó Mugna (oak, Co. Kildare); Bile Tortan (ash of Tortu, Co. Meath); Eó Rossa (yew of Ross, Co. Carlow); Craeb Uisnig (ash of Uisneach, Co. Westmeath); and Craeb Dáithí (ash, Farbill, Co. Westmeath, name-tree of the Fir Bile). These are collectively named in the Metrical Dindshenchas (Gwynn, vol. 3, p. 149): “The Ash in Tortu, take count thereof! / the Ash of populous Usnech. / their boughs fell, it was not amiss, / in the time of the sons of AEd Slane. / The Oak of Mugna, it was a joyous treasure; / nine hundred bushels was its bountiful yield… / The Bole of Ross, a comely yew / with abundance of broad timber, / the tree without hollow or flaw, / the stately bole, how did it fall?”

The bile was, in early Irish law and custom, a specially designated sacred tree, the habitation of gods or spirits, place of royal inauguration, an inviolable meeting point. To fell a rival’s bile was an act of war. The Annals record historical instances: in 1099 the Cenél nEógain felled the Craeb Telcha, the sacred tree of the Ulaid.

Where did Eó Rossa come from in the myth?

The mythological origin of Eó Rossa is given in Suidigud Tellaig Temra (“The Settling of the Manor of Tara”), translated by R.I. Best in Ériu 4 (1910). The text records that Trefuilngid Tre-eochair, the “Triple-Bearer of the Triple Key,” a supernatural being carrying a branch bearing three fruits simultaneously, entrusted Fintan mac Bóchra with berries before departing: “So Trefuilngid Tre-eochair left that ordinance with the men of Ireland for ever, and he left with Fintan son of Bóchra some of the berries from the branch which was in his hand, so that he planted them in whatever places he thought it likely they would grow in Ireland. And these are the trees which grew up from those berries: the Ancient Tree of Tortu and the tree of Ross, the tree of Mugna and the Branching Tree of Dathe, and the Ancient Tree of Usnech” (Best 1910, §29).

Fintan’s elegy runs: “Bile Tortan, Eó Rosa, / one as lovely and bushy as the other. / Mugna and Craebh Daithi to-day / and Fintan surviving [?].” The text identifies Trefuilngid’s branch with “the wood of Lebanon,” equating the Irish sacred tree tradition with the cedars of Scripture, a Christian-scribal gloss that reveals how seriously medieval scholars took the bile.

What is the kenning litany of Eó Rossa?

The most celebrated treatment of Eó Rossa is the thirty-one-epithet kenning litany printed by Whitley Stokes in the Second Supplement to his Rennes Dindshenchas edition, from the Book of Leinster (LL 199b; Revue Celtique 16 (1895): 277-278), attributed to the poet-figure Druim Suithe (“Ridge of Science” in Stokes’s rendering). Bondarenko (2014) analyses it as an archaic panegyric poem with each couplet of epithets linked by alliteration:

Eo Rosa, Tree of Ross roth ruirech, a king’s wheel recht flatha, a prince’s right fuaim tuinni, a wave’s noise dech duilib, best of creatures diriuch dronchrand, a straight firm tree dia dronbalc, a firm-strong god dor nime, door of heaven nert n-aicde, strength of a building fó foirne, the good of a crew fer ferbglan, a word-pure man gart lánmar, full great bounty tren trinoit, the Trinity’s mighty one dam toimsi, a measure’s house maith máthar, a mother’s good mac Maire, Mary’s son muir mothach, a fruitful sea miad maisse, beauty’s honour mal menman, a mind’s lord mind n-angel, diadem of angels nuall betha, shout of the world blad Banba, Banba’s renown brig buada, might of victory breth bunaid, judgement of origin brath brethach, judicial doom brosna suad, faggot of sages saeriu crannaib, noblest of trees clu Galion, glory of Leinster caemiu dossaib, dearest of bushes din bethra, a bear’s defence bríg bethad, vigour of life bricht n-eolais, spell of knowledge Eo Rosa, Tree of Ross!

(Irish text and English translation: Stokes, Revue Celtique 16 (1895): 277-278; Stokes marks four of his renderings, including “door(?) of heaven”, with query marks, omitted above; Bondarenko 2014, pp. 69-76, prints and analyses the poem.)

The litany opens and closes with the tree’s own name, creating a verbal ring-structure. It moves across political (roth ruirech, recht flatha), natural (fuaim tuinni, muir mothach), structural (nert n-aicde), bardic (fer ferbglan, brosna suad, bricht n-eolas), and emphatically Christian registers (ren trinoit, mac Maire, mind n-angel). Bondarenko observes the poem operates simultaneously on pre-Christian heroic, poetic-craft, and Christian typological levels, with the yew becoming a living icon of Christ. The epithet dor nime, “door of heaven”, is particularly significant: the yew as threshold between this world and the next. This Christian overlay almost certainly post-dates the original composition; an early pagan praise-poem for the sacred bile was reworked under Christianity not to destroy its prestige but to amplify it.

How did Eó Rossa fall?

The Metrical Dindshenchas verse (Gwynn, CELT T106500C, vol. 3 p. 149) laments Eó Rossa alongside the other trees, dating the fallen boughs of the two ashes to “the time of the sons of AEd Slane,” i.e. the Síl nÁedo Sláine, descendants of Áed Sláine who died in 604 AD, while asking of Eó Rossa only “how did it fall?” [Contradiction flagged: the elegiac grouping of the trees in one poem is a poetic convention, an elegiac sweep treating all fallen trees as belonging to one era of loss, rather than a literal simultaneous felling. Lucas notes Bile Tortan “and the Eó Mugna are stated to have fallen at the same time in the reign of the king Aed Sláne”, i.e. the king himself, not his sons. Eó Rossa almost certainly fell in a different discrete event from Bile Tortan.]

The hagiographical tradition adds a different account. As Lucas (1963, p. 18) summarises the Life of St Laserian of Leighlin (following O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, vol. 4, p. 218): “the saints of Ireland coveted its wood for church-building and assembled around the tree to pray and fast for its fall. As each uttered his prayer, the roots seemed to move but only when Laserian’s turn came did it finally fall. He distributed the timber among the saints.” [Contradiction flagged: This account frames the fall as caused by a prayer-fast (troscadh) of assembled saints. The dindshenchas dates the fall to a dynastic era, the time of the sons of Áed Sláine. These versions are not necessarily incompatible, the hagiographical account gives the agent (Laserian), the dindshenchas gives the era, but they arise from different traditions and should not be merged uncritically.]

St Laserian (Molaise) of Leighlin is a historical figure who took a leading part in the Synod of Leighlin of about 630 AD and died c. 639 AD; tradition, which O’Hanlon reports with the caution “if it be true, as related”, has him trained in Rome and ordained by Pope Gregory the Great. His presence in the same locale as Eó Rossa is geographically coherent. The distribution of timber is a relic-economy gesture: the wood of a sacred bile becomes a Christian relic, its potency transferred to the new order.

What happened to the yew’s timber?

St Moling (c. 614-696 AD) received timber from Eó Rossa for Tigh Moling (St Mullins, Co. Carlow): in Stokes’s edition of the Life (Revue Celtique 27: 281), “the Yew of Ross fell, and Molaisse distributed it to the saints of Ireland… Of the tree Molaisse gave him the roofing of his oratory.” The Life adds that when a further tree was later felled for the building, “the first chip that was struck out of it chanced on Moling’s eye and broke (it) in his head”; a student, whom the text reveals as the Devil, mocked the wound in a malicious verse (“A millshaft under thine eye: a holly-branch under thine eye: every trouble in thy cheek: a griffin under thine eye!”), and a grey-haired cleric sent from God healed it. The popular retelling that Moling himself compared the pain to an eagle’s talons is a modern paraphrase with no basis in the text.

Why is the yew a tree of death and threshold?

The yew’s association with death in Irish tradition is ancient and multi-layered. As the last letter of the ogham alphabet (idad), the yew stands at the end of things, but in a tradition understanding death as transformation, “end” means threshold. In early Irish legal texts (Bretha Comaithchesa, 8th century), the yew is a “Lord of the Wood” (airig fedo), attracting the highest penalties if felled without cause. The riddling exchange in Imtheacht na Tromdhaimhe, “Which are the two trees whose green tops do not fade till they become withered?”, answered by Marbhán with “Eó-Rosa and Fidh-Sidheang, namely, Holly and Yew” (quoted from Lucas 1963: 18; the Ossianic Society text not directly verified), positions the yew as an emblem of evergreen endurance: a tree that outlives dynasties.

How is Eó Rossa remembered today?

Eó Rossa was famous enough to be alluded to in a poem attributed to Dallán Forgaill (fl. c. 597 AD) (UNVERIFIED; cited Lucas 1963), indicating the tree’s fame in early Christian Ireland. Its appearance in the Imtheacht na Tromdhaimhe riddle shows it remained in active learned circulation well into the Middle Irish period. The thirty-one-epithet kenning litany, with its virtuosic alliterative structure, would have been standard in any educated poet’s repertoire.

Bondarenko (2014) has studied the alliterative poem as a formally distinct composition, noting its three simultaneously operating registers, and placed it in the context of Indo-European and Eurasian cosmologies of the sacred tree. The composer John Williams drew on the Eó Rossa tradition for the third movement of his bassoon concerto The Five Sacred Trees (1995), quoting from the litany (“a mother’s good,” “Diadem of the Angels”) in the liner notes. Three yews were planted at Old Leighlin’s holy well to replace the lost Eó Rossa, an act of ecological and spiritual mourning that speaks to modern nature-memorial practice. The yew’s status as source of taxol (a key cancer drug) adds a contemporary register: the tree is literally a bricht n-eolais, a spell of knowledge, a source of healing long after its fall.