The Faerie Tree

We Irish are a very superstitious lot. We have superstitions about black cats, spilled salt, red-haired women, robins and countless other random things. One such superstition centres on fairy (or if you want to be more quaint about it!) faerie trees. There is a strong belief here that the fairies live at the foot of these trees, and understandably they do not take kindly to having their homes interfered with, never mind having them chopped down from above their heads! You wouldn’t like it either no doubt.

They seem to dwell in or otherwise loiter around free-standing trees, and mostly their preference is for hawthorn trees, although I have read that other types of trees are also favoured dwelling places for these wee folk. So the people (common mortals that is!) who live in these parts are pretty cautious where lone hawthorns are concerned, tending to give them a wide berth for fear of incurring the wrath of our small but apparently vicious little neighbours.

It is believed that various injuries and misfortunes have been visited upon anyone foolish or unlucky enough to have disturbed a fairy tree. Everything from sleep deprivation to painful death has seemingly been dished out to fairy tree vandals. Even minor tree disturbance or interference seems to be treated severely. Such as the chap who peed on a fairy tree and subsequently not one but five buses sent to transport his tour group back to their hotel all broke down. Coincidence, poor engine maintenance – or fairy fury? Or the chap who kicked a fairy tree and who then fell and broke his ankle? Okay maybe he broke it with the kick and then fell over – but maybe it was more fairy justice.

These fairies just take no nonsense from anyone. And such is the fear that some people have of drawing the fairies on them that they will go out of their way to leave these fairy trees undisturbed. It is said that a motorway in the West of Ireland was delayed and eventually diverted because a very significant fairy tree stood in its way.

The fairy tree that diverted a motorway

I don’t know that I believe in fairies myself, but I am delighted that so many people do, because it is at least some deterrent to men with chainsaws who have scant appreciation for trees. In fact many of my fellow country men and women appear not to notice the beauty of trees, or have any understanding of the role they play in purifying the air we breathe. Indeed trees perform so many functions for us that rather than knocking them down we should be planting more and more of them. It bewilders and saddens me when I see trees being knocked down needlessly when they could be left to live and breathe and enrich our lives.

So when I see one of these lone hawthorns standing smack in the middle of a field I have to smile and bless the fairies for saving another tree. And I love the thought that there are little beings – puddling and chuckling and living interesting little lives under these gnarled and aged hawthorns.

Listen to the bushes – they’ve got something to tell us!

The hawthorns in the distance smoulder like dull embers

The hawthorn trees are red with haws – when the slanting evening sun catches them in its crossfire on these balmy September evenings they actually glow! The holly trees are likewise studded with fat clumps of berries ripening to scarlet. Wonderful you might say!  But according to ancient rural wisdom all this abundance in the berry department means one thing – a hard Winter to come.

Are all these berries a sign of a hard Winter to come?

Irish folklore is full of such signs and portents, especially to do with the weather. To predict the weather ahead we could look to the behaviour of animals, including dolphins, frogs, cows, sheep, swallows and bees; as well as other natural phenomena such as rainbows, red skies, wind direction and onion skins of all things.

So either our forefathers were very observant as they went about their business or they had a lot of time on their hands, because as I see it the ancient business of weather forecasting involved seriously rigorous research across a vast range of phenomena.

I was actually thinking I might do a little bit of hypothesis testing around these old predictions – that is until I did a little exploratory research and discovered that there are dozens of these ‘signs’. So which ones would I choose apart from the abundance of berries which is already noted?

There’s the one about the onion skins:

“If onion skins are very thin, then winter’s mild when coming in, but if onion skins are thick and tough, winter comes in cold and rough.”  But what would this involve and just how scientific would I need to be? Would it involve callipers? And how many onions would you think I should test? What would I compare my measurement to? You can see where I’m going with this..

How to measure the onion skins?

Many methods would involve camping outdoors and observing the movements of animals such as grazing cows and mountain sheep – or more astronomical studies of such things as haloes around the sun and the moon – which I have to admit sounds intriguing but tricky enough in a cloudy sky.

And what you do when you get contradictory prophecies? Which do you go with? Is there a pecking order or a protocol to deal with such a likely possibility?

The whole business is fraught with difficulty. I can see that my rash idea of becoming a part-time soothsayer is not really a runner – charming and all as it might seem. So I’ll leave it to Evelyn and Gerry at Met Eireann, and I’ll just enjoy watching the birds scoffing the berries. Just leave me a few on the holly trees for Christmas is all I ask.

The berries on the holly are already turning red