Hawthorn

The perfume of early summer, the hawthorn is the beautiful Queen of May, coinciding with the festival of Beltaine. it was entwined with blackthorn on top of the maypole. “Hawthorn was also always carried in wedding processions to give fertility to the marrying couple and hope to their desires, while in Ireland newly married couples still dance around thorn bushed to gain extra blessings on their marriage.”

In past times the country folk ate the leaves of the hawthorn, calling them bread and cheese, while in Scotland it was used to dye wool black. Sacred to the Sidhe, or fairies of Irish tradition, in the old days no one would dare cut down a ‘fairy thorn’, and sometimes houses were not built if it was thought to obstruct a fairy path.

One thing I love is that hawthorn almost always appears at sacred sites, whether a stone circle or a holy well, with pretty blossoms or blood-red berries it imbues the land with extra magic. The photograph above was taken on the slopes leading up to Slieve na Calliagh, or Loughcrew. A connection is made in winter when the red berries hang in the branches, and it becomes known as the ‘Hag Thorn’, sacred to Cailleach, to the Veiled One, or the Crone who rules over the time around Samhain.