{"id":15,"date":"2011-09-22T11:52:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T11:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chalicecentre.net\/blog\/faeries-and-berries\/"},"modified":"2014-10-14T18:20:59","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T18:20:59","slug":"faeries-and-berries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chalicecentre.net\/blog\/faeries-and-berries\/","title":{"rendered":"Faeries and Berries"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blackberrybutterfly\"<\/a>Back in Wales after summer travels, I was seized with an obsession to pick berries. Rather than staying inside to catch up with the mountains of email that demanded attention, I found myself, basket in hand, tramping through the lanes and coastal cliff paths, determined to fill them up with as many ripe blackberries, elderberries, sloes, wild damsons, hips, haws, and rowan berries as I could. The overt reason was to make jams and jellies, but since I don\u2019t even eat the sugary stuff, (I leave that to David) I was merely obeying the irresistible atavistic impulse to gather as much free food as possible before the glistening hedgerows turn into the khaki ranks of autumn\u2019s army.<\/p>\n

\"berries-and-crabapples\"<\/a>Standing at the garden table up to my elbows in purple juice, beating off the wasps who have their own agenda when it comes to berries, I thought about the faery-lore of my bountiful hoard.<\/p>\n

The spirit of the elder is an old woman, the Elder-Mother, who lives in the trunk of this bushy tree. In Ireland elder was regarded as highly sacred, and it was forbidden to break even one twig. But in Lincolnshire you could barter for wood from the \u201cOld Lady\u201d or \u201cOld Girl\u201d by saying: \u201cOld Woman, give me some of thy wood and I will give thee some of mine when I grow into a tree.\u201d If you bathe your eyes in the green juice of the wood, you will gain the second sight. And if you stand under an elder-tree at Samhain in Scotland, you can see the faery host riding by. Elderberries plucked on Midsummer\u2019s Eve confer magical powers, but since they generally don\u2019t ripen until August, it\u2019s a safe bet that doesn\u2019t happen very often.<\/p>\n

\"rosehips-and-sloes\"<\/a>Within the blackthorn tree lives the lunantishee, a thin, wiry old man with pointed ears, long teeth, arms and fingers \u2013 a personification of the sharp thorn itself. He will not allow a stick to be cut either on the 11th of May or November (the old Beltaine and Samhain dates.) To do so is bound to bring misfortune. The thorns also protect the white flowers in the spring, which ripen into the black sour sloes, an ancestor of our orchard plums. Blackthorn\u2019s sister is the hawthorn, whom the Irish have always recognised as a faery tree. Hawthorns were often referred to as \u201cgentle bushes\u201d after the custom of not naming faeries directly out of respect. Solitary thorns were known as the faeries\u2019 trysting trees, as they frequently grow on barrows and tumps, or at crossroads \u2013 typical \u201cthin\u201d places in the landscape. To sit beneath the hawthorn tree on Beltaine Eve pretty much guarantees a sight of the fairy cavalcade riding out into our world at this liminal time.<\/p>\n

\"rowan\"<\/a>We don\u2019t hear much about the bramble faery who scatters her gleaming jewels throughout our hedgerows with such profligacy, but mothers used to warn their children not to eat any blackberries after Michelmas as the faeries had blighted them \u2013 which no doubt served to safeguard their offspring from the ills of eating mouldy berries. But rowan berries are said to be the food of the high faery race known as the Tuatha De Danaan in Ireland. In olden times anyone who ate one of these magical berries remained free of sickness. An old person who ate them became young again, and they bestowed unsurpassed beauty on any maiden. Despite its virtues, the rowan-tree faery is an unprepossessing fellow: thick-boned, large-nosed, crooked in the teeth, and with one red eye in a black face. It is said that the Welsh used to brew an excellent ale from the berries, the secret of which is sadly now lost. Herbalist John Evelyn seems to confirm this in his Sylva: or, A Discourse of Forest-Trees:\u201dAle and beer brewed with these berries, being ripe, is an incomparable drink, familiar in Wales, where this tree is reputed so sacred, that there is not a churchyard without one of them planted in it\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DSCN5624\"<\/a>I ended up making pots and pots of jellies, both blackberry-apple and wild damson, sieved through muslin and hung over the bath for two days; hedgerow jam \u2013 a brilliant tangy concoction made from crab-apples, rose-hips, a few rowan berries, sloes, blackberries and raspberries from the garden; and froze the rest for future crumbles and pies.<\/p>\n

I also left some outside on the doorstep for the faeries, as wise old Jill did in Walter de la Mare\u2019s poem:<\/p>\n

BERRIES<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was an old woman went blackberry picking
\nAlong the hedges from Weep to Wicking. –
\nHalf a pottle- no more she had got,
\nWhen out steps a Fairy from her green grot;<\/p>\n

And says, \u2018Well, Jill, Would \u2018ee pick mo?\u2019
\nAnd Jill, she curtseys, and looks just so.
\n\u2018Be off,\u2019 says the Fairy, \u2018As quick as you can,
\nOver the meadows to the little green lane<\/p>\n

That dips to the hayfields of Farmer Grimes:
\nI\u2019ve berried those hedges a score of times;
\nBushel on bushel I\u2019ll promise \u2018ee, Jill,
\nThis side of supper if \u2018ee pick with a will.\u2019<\/p>\n

She glints very bright, and speaks her fair;
\nThen lo and behold! She had faded in air.
\nBe sure Old Goodie she trots betimes
\nOver the meadows to Farmer Grimes.<\/p>\n

And never was queen with jewelry rich
\nAs those same hedges from twig to ditch;
\nLike Dutchmen\u2019s coffers, fruit, thorn, and flower –
\nThey shone like William and Mary\u2019s bower.<\/p>\n

And be sure Old Goodie went back to Weep,
\nSo tired with her basket she scarce could creep.
\nWhen she comes in the dusk to her cottage door,
\nThere\u2019s Towser wagging as never before,<\/p>\n

To see his Missus so glad to be
\nCome from her fruit-picking back to he.
\nAs soon as next morning dawn was grey,
\nThe pot on the hob was simmering away;<\/p>\n

And all in a stew and a hugger-mugger
\nTowser and Jill a-boiling of sugar,
\nAnd the dark clear fruit that from Faerie came,
\nFor syrup and jelly and blackberry jam.<\/p>\n

Twelve jolly gallipots Jill put by;
\nAnd one little teeny one, one inch high;
\nAnd that she\u2019s hidden a good thumb deep,
\nHalf way over from Wicking to Weep.<\/p>\n

\"gallipots\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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