Eoh in the Old English Rune Poem

Eoh's stanza describes the yew as rough barked externally yet hard and firm in the earth, a keeper of fire supported by its own roots, and a joy upon an estate, an image built entirely from the tree's physical durability, its long life, tough wood and deep roots offered as the rune's whole content without the moral or social commentary attached to stanzas such as Feoh or Gyfu. The yew's genuine longevity, among the longest lived trees native to northern Europe, and its use across the Germanic world for bow staves and other objects requiring tough, resilient wood, gives the stanza's admiring tone a firm basis in the tree's real properties, comparable to how Ur's stanza draws its admiration from the aurochs' genuine strength and ferocity.

Halsall's critical edition notes the phrase keeper of fire as somewhat obscure in its precise sense, possibly referring to the yew's use in producing charcoal or kindling, or to a more figurative sense of the tree sheltering or containing something valuable within its toughness, one of several points in the poem where a phrase's exact original sense has not survived with full certainty even where the general image remains clear. Yew wood's real historical importance for bow making across the medieval Germanic and later English world gives the stanza's admiration a practical foundation well beyond mere poetic convention, a tree valued for a use its own toughness made possible.