A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside. Johnny Scott
witches. From John o’Groats to Lands End, across Wales and throughout Ireland, rowan sprigs were hung above beds as a protection against visits from the night hag and nailed above the doors of stables or cow biers to safeguard the animals. Needless to say, cutting down a rowan tree would incur the most calamitous bad luck, particularly if it grew near a house, and to this day second-home buyers in Scotland and Wales are warned of the danger.
HAWTHORN
Hawthorn is another plant that produces an abundance of red berries – haws – in the autumn and a profusion of tiny pinky-white flowers in about the middle of May. Hawthorn, quickthorn or whitethorn is an immensely hardy bush, commonly used in hedging. In the wild, the woodland variety can grow into a sturdy tree fifteen metres high. Hawthorn blossoms or ‘blows’ joyously regardless of the weather, particularly when a cold east wind persists, inhibiting other plant growth. On the east coast, a cold spring is known as a ‘Whitethorn Spring’ and the ‘hungry’ wind will blow as long as the flower is on the thorn. Before the calendar changed from Julian to Gregorian in the mid-eighteenth century, hawthorn flowered to coincide with the Beltane, the most important of Celtic festivals which marks the arrival of summer. Flowering boughs were part of the riotous, licentious celebrations, and the custom of cutting hawthorn continued long after the introduction of Christianity as part of the May Day celebrations.
HAWTHORN FLOWERED TO COINCIDE WITH THE BELTAIN, THE MOST IMPORTANT OF CELTIC FESTIVALS WHICH MARKS THE ARRIVAL OF SUMMER. FLOWERING BOUGHS WERE PART OF THE RIOTOUS, LICENTIOUS CELEBRATIONS, AND THE CUSTOM OF CUTTING HAWTHORN CONTINUED LONG AFTER THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY AS PART OF THE MAY DAY CELEBRATIONS.
Folklore about hawthorn tends to be contradictory; in some rural areas the farm servant who brought a hawthorn bough in bloom to the farmhouse on May Day was rewarded with a dish of cream. This was made into a garland and hung in the kitchen for a year and then taken into a grain field and burnt to protect the crop from malevolent spirits and disease. In other regions there was an absolute conviction that bringing hawthorn flowers into a house was extremely unlucky and would inevitably be followed by sickness and death. This belief stemmed from the sickly-sweet scent of the flowers, which is not unlike the stench of decomposing flesh – an all-too-familiar smell in the age when corpses were laid out at home for several days prior to burial. Scientists later discovered that the flowers contain trimethylamine, a product of decomposition responsible for the odour when body tissue starts to decay. A curious custom, which endured into the early twentieth century, was hanging the fresh placenta of a cow or mare on a hawthorn bush. This was believed to protect the mother from postnatal illness and bring good luck to the calf or foal.
Britain’s most famous hawthorn is the Glastonbury Thorn, which miraculously flowers at Christmas and was reputedly grown from a staff belonging to Joseph of Aramathea, uncle of the Virgin Mary. The original tree was cut down and burnt by Cromwell’s soldiers during the Civil War, but by then there were plenty of other trees across Britain grown from cuttings of the original, and a sapling from one of these was replanted outside St John’s Church. A sprig of Holy Thorn is traditionally sent to the monarch each Christmas by the vicar and Mayor of Glastonbury, a custom started by the Bishop of Bath and Wells in the reign of James I. ‘Thorn’, or derivatives of the word, are the most common tree-related place names in Britain after ash and grove.
CRAB TREES
Crab trees – crab from the Norse word skrab, meaning scrubby – is a familiar sight in hedgerows, but was traditionally a woodland tree often found growing among oaks. They produce fragile, sweet-scented, pink-tipped flowers in the spring and bitter, rock-hard little apples – the ancient mother of all apples – in late September.
As a spring-flowering, autumn-fruiting tree, crab apples were venerated by pagans across Europe, with many beliefs and legends connected to them. Most were centred around the fruit being a symbol of love, fertility, wisdom and plenty. Crab apples are one of the hosts for mistletoe and the Druids are believed to have planted them near oak groves to ensure the sacred trees would have their ‘Golden Bough’. The little fruit were highly prized as the essential ingredient in the highly alcoholic drink cyser, or melomel – a potent cider and mead mixture drunk during the various winter festivals.
During the period of the Roman occupation, domesticated apple varieties were introduced and apple orchards became established, often run by army veterans who were persuaded to stay in Britain by being given land on which to plant apple trees. The Vikings brought with them the habit of ‘wassailing’, in mid-January. Wassail is derived from the Norse ves heill, meaning ‘be healthy’, and wassailing was the equivalent of our New Year’s Eve partying, at which the centrepiece was the wassail bowl, containing strong ale mixed with pulped roasted crab apples. During the Middle Ages, wassailing the apple orchards became a popular event in the cider-making counties, and it is still carried on in parts of the West Country.
One of the strangest customs in Britain is the Egremont Crab Fair, which has been held every September almost continually since the Cumbrian town was granted a Royal Charter in 1267 by Henry III. A principal feature of the fair is the World Gurning Championships, where contestants compete to pull the ugliest face whilst their head is stuck through a horse collar. This extraordinary practice, where competitors have been known to devote a lifetime to achieving exceptional ugliness, was inadvertently started by Thomas de Multon, Lord of the Barony of Egremont. After harvest, de Multon was in the generous habit of rewarding his serfs by riding through the town and tossing each a crab apple; the bitter taste of the apples caused the peasants’ faces to contort and thus began the tradition. Giving away crab apples continues to this day with the ‘Parade of the Apple Cart’, where apples are thrown to the people who line the main street.
HAZEL
The importance of hazel trees to our ancestors cannot be overestimated. Hazels grow throughout Britain except on very poor or waterlogged ground and are the most prolific tree or shrub to cultivate beneath the canopy of other woodland trees, particularly oak and ash. They grow most frequently in the form of a multi-stemmed bush of slender trunks, and the pliable rods and whips, which can be bent, twisted, woven and even knotted, provided Mesolithic nomads with the materials to make their fishing creels, baskets, hoops to spread skins over for shelter and an infinity of other uses. As communities became settled and early man discovered coppicing, hazel rods were split and woven into wattle hurdles for fencing or as panelling for house walls when daubed with clay. Hazel leaves, which are usually the earliest to appear in spring and often the last to fall in autumn, were fed to cattle as fodder. Hazel catkins, which appear in February, are among the first plant food for bees – an important consideration for the mead-dependent Bronze or Iron Age man – and the autumn crop of hazelnuts provided a plentiful and easily stored source of protein.
The significance of hazel is reflected in the wands and nuts found in virtually every Neolithic, Bronze Age or Iron Age burial site across Britain. Hazel nuts also appear to have been among the votive offerings at holy wells; during the excavations of an Iron Age well shaft at Ashill in Norfolk, quantities of hazel nuts were among the artefacts discovered within the walls of the shaft.
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