should cool with its shade the spring of St Thomas; it is only strange
that the vandal has spared it for us to bless. But why the elder was
sacred to travellers I do not know.

Wayfaring Tree! What ancient claim
Hast thou to that right pleasant name?
Was it that some faint pilgrim came
Unhopedly to thee
In the brown desert's weary way
'Midst thirst and toils consuming sway,
And there, as 'neath thy shade he lay,
Blessed the Wayfaring Tree?


But doggerel never solved anything. In truth a very different story is
told of the elder and on good authority too. For if we may not trust
Sir John Maundeville who tells us that, "Fast by the Pool of Siloe is
the elder tree on which Judas hanged himself ... when he sold and
betrayed our Lord," Shakespeare says that, "Judas was hanged on an
elder," and Piers Plowman records:

Judas he japed
With Jewish siller
And sithen on an elder tree
Hanged himsel.


It is from the quietness and neglected beauty of this well of St
Thomas that under the evening I turned back into the road and,
climbing a little, looked down upon what was once the holiest city of