"Those useless trees produce the air that I am breathing" - The Trees, Pulp.
Trees, of course, are anything but useless and are in fact, as Thomas Pakenham famously asserted, remarkable. Nobody should be in any doubt of that but last night's A Folklore of Trees at The Old King's Head (hosted by SELFS and my first visit since May's A Garland of May event with Lisa Knapp in, er, May) would make me realise that even I, a huge fan of trees, had underestimated just how important they are to us.
Trees are as entwined in our legends, our history, and our lives as much as their roots are entwined into our soil and I clutched a regulation brace of Doom Bars as SELFS host, curator, and, last night, speaker and musical performer George led us down a roughly hour and a half journey into the world of brilliant trees.
Trees are the largest of all living things. Their roots go deep into the earth, their branches point out into the sky. They lead us from the underworld to heaven itself so it's hardly a surprise that sacred trees should crop up in all cultures. Jesus himself was crucified on the wood of one yet the worship of trees goes back a lot further than that.
George used to be a landscape gardener himself so, personally, has a great passion for the arboreal (he has an oak tree tattooed on his arm, all I've got is a tree of life necklace - though I do like it). It's a passion he'd have been even more at liberty to indulge before the Norman conquest when it is said that a squirrel could travel across Britain, from the Severn to the Wash, without touching ground so thickly forested was our sceptred isle.
In Ireland to consider a specific tree to be sacred is to view it with such reverence that it must not be cut in any way and there's been some credence given to the theory that production of the DeLorean car in Belfast failed due to the destruction of a sacred tree to make way for the factory. Often these trees are where kings and chieftains have been inaugurated and there's also a pre-Christian belief that the 'little people' live inside them and these little people must be protected at all costs.
There's a famous ash tree in Cork and it's believed that a mere twig, or even a single piece of bark, from it can save you from drowning. Scotland's tree crazy too (almost everywhere is) and the word 'Caledonia' is said to come from Celtic and mean 'forest fortress' (though this is disputed). Forests in Scotland (as elsewhere) provided food, fuel, timber, and sanctuary and children there were taught the alphabet using tree based words (think about A for Apple).
England, of course, has its fair share of celebrity trees. The Bolan tree on Barnes Common in London is a sycamore where T Rex frontman Marc Bolan, aged just 29, crashed his Mini Cooper in September 1977 ending his life. The Hardy tree in St Pancras Old Church (also in London) is an intriguing sight. The author of Jude the Obscure, Far from the Madding Crowd, and Tess of the d'Urbervilles worked, unhappily, for a short time for the railways and his job was to move gravestones ready for the line into St Pancras. An ash tree in the churchyard has now grown up through many of the stones creating a truly bizarre spiral of tombs.
As humanity developed, polytheism became more prevalent. Instead of the trees being the Gods they became the homes of the Gods. Although it makes far more sense to worship a tree than it does to worship a non-existent omnipresent being, the forest gods were, nonetheless, humanised so when we 'touch wood' for luck these day it's a relic of the pre-Christian belief systems.
The first twenty minutes or so were given over to this background on trees and their role in our lives but things got even more interesting when George picked fourteen of his favourite types of tree and went into a little more depth with each one. Step forward the apple tree, the ash tree, the birch tree, the elder tree, the hawthorn tree, the hazel tree, the holly tree, the oak tree, the rowan tree, the bay tree, the willow tree, the beech tree, the poplar tree, and finally, the yew tree (no jokes about operations please).
THE APPLE TREE (MALUS DOMESTICA)
There are over 7,500 different varieties of apple in the world and they're all descended from one ancestor that first appeared on the Chinese/Kazakh border. In fact Almaty, the largest city and former capital of Kazakhstan, translates as 'full of apples'. These apples arrived in Mesopotamia, via the Silk Road, about three thousand years ago where they were cultivated. From there they rolled on to Greece and the Roman takeover of Greece was the cue for widespread dispersal of juicy red apples around their empire.
We've all heard that 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away' but that may not be the case if you're consuming your apples in the form of cider. Wassailing to welcome in both the spring and, presumably, the cider harvest is particularly popular in Somerset (they make nice Cheddar too but I try not to buy it now as I don't want to support an economy that votes for Jacob Rees-Mogg) and in that county the oldest tree in the orchard is known as The Apple Tree Man.
George treated us to a song about apples and apple trees and we learnt that strong cider is called 'witches brew' because a sideways cut in an apple leaves a five sided star, that Avalon means 'place of apples', and that in Wales there was once a custom where you'd lay apple blossom in coffins to restore the deceased to a youthful state when they reach the afterlife.
Birth, as well as death, can be marked with an apple. There are parts of Europe where it's customary to plant an apple tree on the birth of a baby boy (pear tree for a girl) and there's also a belief that if you manage to peel an apple in one go and throw the peel over your shoulder it will reveal the initial of your one true love!
It doesn't sound like something that's likely happened very much. If at all. A more credible tale was that of Boudica's being able to burn down London because the Roman troops were away in Anglesey doing their own bit of arson and burning down the sacred apple trees of the Druids who were stationed there.
ASH (FRAXINUS)
The ancient Greeks made the ash tree sacred to Poseidon (god of the sea, earthquakes, and horses) and the Germanic and Norse linked ash to Odin (or Woden, Wodan, even Wuotan) who was god of a ludicrously large amount of things including war, wisdom, death, poetry, sorcery, and even 'frenzy' while Vikings believed ash gave strength to women in labour and the Cornish thought it lucky to pluck one singular ash leaf.
It's also been variously believed that ash can protect you from the bite of a snake and, in Cheshire, that combined with bacon rashers it can offer a viable remedy for warts. Farmers once believed that shrews could bewitch cattle and cause them to go lame so they'd catch aforesaid shrews, imprison them in a hollowed out ash tree, and use that tree's branches to stroke their inflicted herd.
'Sympathetic magic' like this was often linked with the ash and it was even once thought that children could be cured of hernias by carrying them between seven and nine times through the cleft of an ash tree. More prosaically the humble besom broom is made of ash (as well as birch). Tadley is the home of the besom. It was my home too once.
BIRCH (BETULA)
Known as 'the Lady of the Wood', the birch was the first tree to reappear across Europe after the thawing of the Ice Age and, possibly because of this, is particularly popular in spring fertility rites. That could also be down to the fact that it is the first of our trees to put out its shoots each spring. In Russia they go so far as to dress a birch sapling in women's clothes and house it where it's treated as a valued guest until Whitsun when it's unceremoniously dumped in a river! Here, it gets off more lightly as it is used for the 'beating of the bounds' and there'll be more about that when you get to the section about the mighty oak.
ELDER (SAMBUCUS NIGRA)
Part of the honeysuckle family, there's a legend that Judas hanged himself from an elder (which, looking at one, seems highly dubious) and some say its the tree of crucifixion (though the smart money is on the poplar). The poor elder's folklore seems to be even more conjectural than its arboreal relations but it seems reasonable to believe evidence that it provided the wood for the first pea shooters even if the belief that the burning of elderwood can summon the devil seems fanciful.
HAWTHORN/MAY (CRATAEGUS)
It is said than in the year 1AD a certain Joseph of Arimathea visited Glastonbury with his infant son Jesus Christ and thrust his staff into Wearyall Hill and from there grew the Glastonbury Thorn, also known as the Holy Thorn. It's a fishy tale but the tree still stands, despite having branches cut off by vandals in 2010, looking out towards Glastonbury Tor.
In the time of Cromwell, a Puritan fanatic attempted to cut it down and was immediately blinded by a splinter and, no doubt because of its religious significance, the hawthorn (or may) tree is said to be magical. Even before Christianity may queens were crowned with hawthorn blossoms and it was believed that fairies lived underneath them.
HAZEL (CORYLUS)
The wood of the hazel was the wood that was used for dowsing for underground water or buried treasure but when James I (James VI of Scotland) wrote the book Demonology it kicked off a witch hunting craze (think Hopkins, Witchfinder General) that soon turned its attention to dowsers. In Celtic law hazel is linked to both fertility and fire rituals.
HOLLY (ILEX)
Holly is, of course, most famously associated with Christmas, a time of year when it is used to warn off goblins. Pliny the Elder claimed that holly could defend us from both lightning and witchcraft and in Welsh mythology it is said that each Mayday there is a battle between the holly king and the oak king (Gawain). George had another song for holly and this time people joined in.
Fairies, according to some accounts, are said to get most displeased if you sweep your chimney with a holly branch but of far more interest to me was the little nugget of information that in days of yore, when most folk couldn't read, alcohol could be located at fairs as it was served under holly trees. It helped the illiterate locate booze. It's the reason we have so many pubs now with names like The Holly Bush (I got pleasantly inebriated in Hampstead's Holly Bush last November).
OAK (QUERCUS)
The mighty oak. The tree of the thunder gods in Norse and Germanic legend. These trees can live a very very long time and there was a medieval tradition of burning oak logs for an entire year each midsummer day. It's not known if the arrow that killed William Rufus was made of oak but it is said that he believed himself to be Gawain, the oak king. It's also said that sometimes kind dwarves look after animals in oak trees.
More plausible is the idea that children who had died were buried with an acorn in each hand and that that has given way to several 'twin' oaks around the country and it's not disputed at all that mistletoe grows in oak trees, even if that is an infrequent occurrence. If, whilst beating the bounds in the old days (to symbolically mark out territory) with birches, one was to come across an oak in one's path the protocol was to recite the gospel to the tree and that's why we have place names now like Gospel Oak.
ROWAN/MOUNTAIN ASH (SORBUS)
Both a tool of witchcraft and a defence against it, the Druids believe the berries of the rowan tree have divinatory powers and that rowan crosses can prevent witches stealing your milk during Beltane (although the milk was probably yucky in those days anyway). It's also said that if you tie rowan to the collar of a hound it will run faster and in Icelandic lore the rowan and the juniper trees are sworn enemies!
BAY (LAURUS NOBILIS)
Bays were perceived as symbols of nobility and even immortality by the Greeks and the Romans, it was thought they protected against plague, and served as a symbol of poetry - giving us the phrase 'poet laureate'. If you wish to divine your future using the wood of a bay tree simply throw it on a fire.
WILLOW (SALIX)
There are many different willows but the two that seemed to be of most interest to us were the osier (which was used to make wicker chairs and even The Wicker Man from the film of the same name) and the pussy willow which, in Irish lore, protects against 'enchantment'. Heaven forbid I should ever become enchanted!
BEECH (FAGUS)
There are no interesting stories or facts about the beech tree whatsoever.
POPLAR (POPULUS)
As already established, poplars are seen as complicit in the crucifixion of the infamous middle eastern confidence trickster Jesus Christ. As such their swaying in the breeze is considered by some to be guilty trembling. Hmmm.
YEW (TAXUS BACCATA)
Its name sullied further of late by association with notorious paedophiles and sex offenders like Gary Glitter, Max Clifford, and Rolf Harris, the yew has never been a friendly tree. Everything on a yew, bar the flesh of its fruit, is poisonous and for many it is the tree of death and the ancient Greek goddess Hecate held the tree to be sacred. Hecate was goddess of, among other things, witchcraft, magic, ghosts, sorcery, and necromancy.
Despite all of this negativity the yew can live to be one thousand years old and is seen as a symbol of eternal life. Often seen in graveyards (perhaps unsurprisingly as they represent both life and death) there's a yew tree in a churchyard in Brittany whose branches are said to have entered each and every coffin there and grown into the mouth of each and every corpse. Yew is seen as excellent material for magic wands and George finished off his tree talk with a song dedicated to the macabre and mysterious yew. This time even I joined in the chorus. Which consisted simply of repeating the word 'BURN' nine times in a row.
With a Q&A that took in the deforestation of Iceland, talking cows and donkeys, a man made entirely of wood, the patriarchy, the folk song collector AL Lloyd, John Barleycorn, and the difference between forests and chases it had been a fascinating, enlightening, and enjoyable evening and in George, SELFS is blessed with a curator, administrator, presenter, and singer with both a singular and a generous talent.
It's a delight to spend an evening in his company and future events regarding the folklore of railways, stone circles, and even watching the 1920s silent horror film Haxan (accompanied by a prog-rock Moog soundtrack) in Wanstead all sounded incredibly tempting and will, surely, draw as impressive a turnout as A Folklore of Trees did. The air that trees provide helps us breathe and helps us grow physically but taking a look inside the wonderful and frightening world of trees helps us grow mentally. I dug the talk and I think I'm gonna stick to these SELFS evenings however they branch out in the future. On the way home I looked at trees and I saw not only wood and leaves, I saw multitudes. I saw infinity.
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