Ancient Trees and Aged Peasants

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point Jacob George Strutt’s description, in his Sylva Britannica (1826) of the Cowthorpe Oak, an ancient oak tree, as being ‘like some aged peasant, whose toil-worn limbs still give evidence of the strength which enabled him to acquit himself of the labors of his youth’. Strutt’s etching of the tree may be compared with Thomas Barker of Bath’s painting, Man Holding a Staff. Both works compare the life cycle of a tree to that of a human being, and specifically a male peasant, who has spent his working life in the open air, battered by the weather. Symbols of British history and greatness, from the rites of the Druids to the naval victories of the Napoleonic Wars, ancient oaks could stand for stoicism, steadfastness, independence, and peaceful reform. Depictions of aged peasants, in art and literature, served a similar purpose. They appealed to those who felt nostalgic for the idea of a more settled, rural past, and emotionally attached to paternalistic values.