medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Apologies for the extensive cut-and-pastes (from
http://www.stavinternational.org/pbessay03.htm and
http://www.femhealth.com/hawthornberries.html):
Hawthorn
Crataegus monogyna - Hawthorn, May, Whitethorn, Irish Sceach geal
Family - Rosaceae
Description
Deciduous tree dense leaved and thorny with short trunk. Commonly used for
stock proof hedging. New shoots and leaves are reddish. Distinctive white
blossom with strong scent and red berries (haws) later.
Height 10 - 15m. Age long lived - 250 years
Habitat
Found on all soil types. Protects seedlings of other broadleaved trees
particularly oak from predation and hence aids natural regeneration.
Natural Distribution
Throughout British Isles and Europe to 500m.
The Tree Year
Flowers Leaves Fruit Rippen Fall
May-June Mar-April Jul-Aug Oct-Nov Nov
Propagation and growth
Seed is deeply dormant - treat as for Acer campestre. Approx 8000 germinable
seeds per Kg.
Also grown from cuttings. Grows rapidly for first 15 years or so. For hedges
grow in seed beds for 2 years and then transplant into rows. Ready to plant
into hedges at 4 years. Weeding improves growth significantly. Laying hedges
to make them stockproof is an old country skill.
Timber
White streaky or pale pinkish. Tough hard and heavy wood.
Uses of Wood
Walking sticks, tool handles, engraving and all turnery. Good firewood.
Food and Drink
Haws attractive to birds and spread in this way.
Related Species
Midland Thorn
The Hawthorn - Huathe
Crataegus
by Mara Freeman
"A hundred years I slept beneath a thorn
Until the tree was root and branches of my thought,
Until white petals blossomed in my crown."
From "The Traveller" by Kathleen Raine
The hawthorn, once known simply as "May", is naturally enough the tree most
associated with this month in many parts of the British Isles. When we read
of medieval knights and ladies riding out "a-maying"on the first morning of
May, this refers to the flowering hawthorn boughs they gathered to decorate
the halls rather than the month itself. For on this day, according to the
Old Style calendar that was in use until the 18th century, the woods and
hedges were alight with its glistening white blossoms.
This and similar customs to welcome in the summer flourished in rural places
until quite recently. In some villages, mayers would leave a hawthorn branch
at every house, singing traditional songs as they went. The
seventeenth-century English poet Robert Herrick wrote:
"There's not a budding boy or girl this day,
But is got up and gone to bring in May;
A deal of youth ere this is come
Back, with whitethorn laden home."
The young girls rose at dawn to bathe in dew gathered from hawthorn flowers
to ensure their beauty in the coming year, as the old rhyme goes:
"The fair maid who, the first of May,
Goes to the fields at break of day
And washes in dew from the hawthorn tree,
Will ever after handsome be."
For May was the month of courtship and love-making after the winter's cold;
and so the hawthorn is often found linked with love-making. In ancient
Greece the wood was used for the marriage torch; and girls wore hawthorn
crowns at weddings. One writer has even gone so far as to suggest that the
"stale, sweet scent from the trimethylamine the flowers contain, makes them
suggestive of sex." (Geoffrey Grigson: The Englishman's Flora, Phoenix
House, 1956)
But while hawthorn was a propitious tree at Maytime, in other circumstances
it was considered unlucky. Witches were supposed to make their brooms from
it, and in some parts it was equated with the abhorred elder, as in the
rhyme:
"Hawthorn bloom and elder-flowers
Will fill a house with evil powers."
Even today many people will not allow the branches inside the house. For, as
one might expect from its association with Beltane, a time when the two
worlds meet, it is considered a tree sacred to the faeries, and thus to be
regarded with fear at the least, respect at most.. As such, it often stands
at the threshold of the Otherworld. In the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, the
Scots poet is taken away by the Queen of Elfland as he sits beneath an
ancient thorn known as the Eildon tree. In another old rhyme, the Ballad of
Sir Cawline, a lady dares the hero to go to Eldridge Hill where a hawthorn
grows, to await there the faery king.
A report of a fairy ride from 19th century Scotland illustrates how
prevalent this tradition was years after these ballads were written: an old
woman, sitting with a neighbor under a hawthorn tree one evening heard loud
laughter and saw the fairies by their own unearthly light. She recounts
that,
"A beam of light was dancing owre them mair bonnie than moonshine: they were
a wee wee folk wi' green scarves on, but ane that rade foremost, and that
ane was a good deal larger than the lave wi' bonnie lang hair, bun' about
wi' a strap whilk glinted like stars.....Marion and me was in a brade lea
fiel' where they came by us; a high hedge o' haw trees keepit them frae gaun
through Johnnie Corrie's corn, but they lap a' owre it like sparrows and
gallopt into a green know beyont it."
In Ireland, too, hawthorns have always been highly respected as faery trees.
They were often referred to as "gentle bushes" after the custom of not
naming faeries directly out of respect. Solitary thorns were known as the
faeries' Trysting Trees, and frequently grew on barrows and tumps or at
crossroads, thought to be a favorite location of pagan altars.
Hawthorns often stand over holy wells, also traditional thresholds of the
Otherworld, where pilgrims festoon them with ribbons, rags and other votive
offerings. A sacred hawthorn hung over the St. Patrick's Stone on an island
in the River Shannon and filled its hollow with dew, which had great healing
powers. St. Bridget's Well in Cork also collected the dew from an ancient
faery thorn above it.
I myself can attest to the powers of the old thorn at St. Madron's Well in
Cornwall, on which my then husband-to-be and I hung two strips from an old
bandanna: we both made a silent wish that came true when I accepted his
proposal of marriage a few weeks later!
Dire consequences have traditionally attended those foolhardy enough to
disturb a faery thorn, as many local tales recount. Sickness, death or
financial loss could attend picking a leaf or plucking a switch, and the
tree might even bleed or scream. Even hanging out your washing on a thorn
was ill-advised, as it might cover up the faeries' clothes already spread
out there.
Earlier in this century, a construction firm ordered the felling of a faery
thorn on a building site in Downpatrick, Ulster. The foreman had to do the
deed himself, as all of his workers refused. When he dug up the root,
hundreds of white mice - supposed to be the faeries themselves - ran out,
and while the foreman was carting away the soil in a barrow, a nearby horse
shied, crushing him against a wall and resulting in the loss of one of his
legs.
Even as recently as 1982,workers in the De Lorean car plant in Northern
Ireland claimed that one of the reasons the business had so many problems
was because a faery thorn bush had been disturbed during the construction of
the plant. The management took this so seriously that they actually had a
similar bush brought in and planted with all due ceremony!
Christianity also played its part in preserving the veneration of the
hawthorn. Because Christ was given a crown of thorns at his crucifixion, the
tradition of the tree's magical associations has continued in Christian
legend. In the Middle Ages, Sir John Mandeville wrote:
"Then was our Lord ylad into a Gardyn...and there the Jews scorned him, and
maden him a Crowne of the Braunches of Albespyne, that is White Thorn, that
grew in the same Gardyn, and setten yt on hys Heved.....And therefore hathe
the White Thorn many Vertues. For he that berethe a Braunche on him
thereoffe, no Thondre ne no maner of Tempest may dere (hurt)him; ne in the
Hows that it is inne may no evylle Gost entre."
The reference to the hawthorn providing protection from storms may relate to
the ancient belief in the Classical world, that it sprang from lightning.
The most famous holy thorn is at Glastonbury, in south-west England, where
it grows amid the ruins of the medieval abbey. According to legend, Joseph
of Arimathea brought it from the Holy Land when he bore the Grail to
England, and it blooms every Christmas to celebrate Christ's birth. It is
likely, however, that the Glastonbury monks attached Christian associations
to the tree in an attempt to put an end to the hawthorn's association with
the pagan sexuality of spring festivals. Certainly, the thorn seems to have
roused the ire of the Puritans who cut it down twice - first in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth I, and later under Cromwell. One scion of this tree still
grows on nearby Wirral Hill, which is almost certainly an ancient pagan
site.
So no wonder a confusion of meanings attends the humble hawthorn in later
times! While some believed witches rode on hawthorn brooms, others were
placing sprigs of it above cottage and stable door to keep witches out. In
some places, to sit beneath a hawthorn tree meant to meet with the denizens
of the Otherworld; while in others the tree afforded protection from the
same! (("Creep under the thorn,/It will save you from harm.") If you are
lucky enough to lie under a hawthorn bush on Beltane eve, and inhale the
musky scent of the five-petalled white blossoms, guarded by their dark spiky
thorns, then you may discover its meaning for yourself.
On a Hawthorn Tree
Oh! come tosee me, when the soft warm May
Bids all my boughs their gay embroidery
wear,
In my bright season's transitory day,
While my young perfume loads the enamoured air.
Oh, come tosee me, when the sky is blue,
And backs my spangles with an azure
ground.
While the thick ivy bosses clustering through,
See their dark tufts with silvery circlets
crowned.
Then be the Spring in all its pomp arrayed,
the lilac's blossom, the laburnum's blaze,
Nature hath reared beyond this Hawthorn glade
No fairer alter to her Maker's praise.
George W.F. Howard
Earl of Carlisle 1802-1864
--------------------
Hawthorn reduces the burden on the heart. It has been successfully used in
other countries for the heart as a cardiac tonic to feed and give strength
to the heart, it also helps with angina, valve murmurs, enlarged heart and
helps regulate rapid or feeble heart beat...
The fruits (berries) of various species, long used in traditional European
herbal medicine, are edible (Hedrick, 1972). Hawthorn is one of the oldest
known medicinal plants used in European medicine; its cordial actions on the
heart were first reported by first century Greek herbalist Dioscorides and
later by Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) (Weihmayr and Ernst, 1996).
Other sources state that its clinical use for heart disease and
cardiovascular disorders did not begin in Europe until the nineteenth
century (Anschutz, 1900; Hobbs and Foster, 1990)...
---------
Best wishes.
Rob Howe
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