NPPF Comm3: Beech

[Jasper Fidget]

p. 118
"'Tell me more,' [Shade] would say as he knocked his pipe empty against a
beech trunk."

>From Dryden's translation of Virgil's first Eclogue:

"Beneath the shade which beechen boughs diffuse
You, Tityrus, entertain your silvan muse. 
Round the wide world in banishment we roam, 
Forced from our pleasing fields and native home; 
While, stretched at ease, you sing your happy loves, 
And Amaryllis fills the shady groves."

The symbol for the written word in the Celtic ogham alphabet, the beech
(Phagos to the Celts) is the tree from which the pages of the first books in
Europe were made ("beech" in English from "boc" "book," in German "Buche"
"Buch") and associated with various gods of wisdom and learning, as well as
Odin/Wotan, who was given the gift of runes.  Frazer describes it as the
embodiment of Diana for the Romans.  St. Leanard was said to have prayed
away serpents and birds from the beech (as his hut was surrounded by
beeches).  The tree of ancient learning, it is also associated with Cronos,
Greek god of time.  It is also the national emblem of Denmark.

The beech commonly provides covering for witch hazel (common to the
Appalachian Mountains).

The phrase "knock on wood" (an Americanization from the English "touch
wood") purportedly derives from a Celtic superstition that knocking on a
tree would invoke the spirit held within.  In this case, to knock on a beech
tree is to invoke a spirit of new experiences and new information ("The
Battle of the Trees" begins with the beech) -- thus a fitting tree for the
beginning of Kinbote's story.  Another version of the superstition has it
that knocking on a tree would make enough noise to prevent the spirit within
from hearing what you were saying, in which case the opposite intent would
be implied for Shade.

http://www.the-tree.org.uk/BritishTrees/beech.htm
http://www.cygnus-books.co.uk/features/spirit_of_the_beech_tree.htm

In any case, one gets the sense that either Shade is not really listening or
Kinbote is just hearing what he wants to hear.

Reminiscent of the "drunk with a walrus mustache [who] kept staggering
around and patting the trunks of the lindens" (p. 106).

Jasper Fidget