Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 52

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.