For tree lovers.
The hawthorn tree has white blossom, red berries, and sharp thorns. It is a threshold tree rooting between this and the otherworld. Because of this it often wasn’t directly named by our ancestors for fear of enervating the fairfolk of the otherworld. It was instead referred to as the ‘gentle tree’ in the same way the fairfolk are reverently named the ‘gentle folk’.
The hawthorn is a tree of fertility and the heart, the berries being a heart tonic and good for stimulating the circulatory system. Its blossom smells both sweet, and of death, due to the chemical triethylamine which attacts pollinators. It’s smell is reminiscent of both love-making and decaying flesh, thus the hawthorn is a liminal tree of transformation.
It is also a tree of enchantment. To sit beneath a hawthorn may result in an encounter with otherworldly folk. This happened to Thomas the Rhymer, the poet is whisked away by the Queen of Elfland Herself as he sits beneath an old thorn called the Eildon tree in Scotland many centuries ago. You can find out what happens to him by listening to the ballad ‘Thomas the Rhymer.’
Cutting down a hawthorn is not advised as perpetrators have been known to suddenly ail and die, businesses have failed as well as crops, farms have gone to wrack and ruin. Hawthorns have thus survived uprooting in areas where there is still a respect for the old customs.
Hawthorn is used traditionally as a hedge, thus it protects boundaries. It grows at holy wells, where branches are hung with ribbons, prayers and offerings.
The hawthorn flowers in May, the month of Beltane celebrations, thus it is a tree of fertility, lovers trysts, and was traditionally the tree of the May pole, ‘May’ being another name for the hawthorn.
The background for the poem’s text is artwork I created inspired by the heady green growth of spring.
Leave a Reply