Trí fáilti ata messu brón:
fáilti fir íar ndiupairt,
fáilti fir íar luga eithig,
fáilti fir íar fingail.
Three rejoicings that are worse than sorrow:
the joy of a man who has defrauded another,
the joy of a man who has perjured himself,
the joy of a man who has slain his own brother.
~From the Book of Húi Maine
Botanical name: Crataegus monogyna
Family: Ericaceae
Ogham: Huath
Scots Gaelic: Sgitheach
Irish Gaelic: Sgitheach
Welsh: Y ddraenen wen
French: Aubépine
Message: Be aware of the dangers around you. Discern the truth from the lie.
At the edge of the field, stark against the wide blue sky, a lone tree guards the gate. It casts no wide shadow, for it is only a little taller than a man. It does not seem a great thing. But brush past this tree at your peril; already its thorns are dyed with blood and adorned with scraps of cloth, bits of hair. Disrespect the hawthorn, and it will exact its price.
The English word for the tree, ‘hawthorn’, comes from an older Saxon word, ‘haegthorn’ meaning hedge-thorn. (1) It is the hedge that guards and warns.
Hawthorn guards the boundaries between many things: between men’s lands when it stretches in thorny hedges between fields throughout the British Isles, (2) between the seasons when its flowering marks the true end of winter, (3) and between the worlds of men and sidhe, when it stands guard over fairy raths and homes.
Hawthorn trees were, and still are, known as fairy trees. They were thought to have magical properties and were often left uncut, even if hedges were being removed. (4)
The fairy tree is easily recognized: it stands alone on a hilltop or in a dell. Often it has been tied with clootie ribbons and bits of cloth enclosing entreaties. The man who would cut such a tree shows either culpable stupidity or willful blindness, and he will pay for it. There are tales of what happens to the man who cuts a fairy tree, none of them pleasant, but many of them recent.
According to the Irish Times, a multi-million-dollar roadway project was re-routed in 1999 to respect a particular fairy thorn of County Clare. The article reads, “There had even been a warning from a folklorist of a curse on the new roadway and of motoring fatalities if the fairy bush was to fall victim to the £100 million plan to bypass Newmarket-on-Fergus and Ennis.” A famed local storyteller had given the warning in no uncertain terms. The article continues, “Yesterday, the county engineer, Mr. Tom Carey, confirmed that after surveying the fairy thorn bush in the detailed plans and drawings prepared, the council has found that it would now be able to incorporate the “sceach” into the proposed bypass.” (5)
This move on the part of the county is wise indeed, considering what happened to a man who was not so respectful. As Mara Freeman writes it, “Earlier in this century, a construction firm ordered the felling of a fairy thorn on a building site in Downpatrick, Ulster. The foreman had to do the deed himself, as all of his workers refused. When he dug up the root, hundreds of white mice–supposed to be the faeries themselves–ran out, and while the foreman was carting away the soil in a barrow, a nearby horse shied, crushing him against a wall and resulting in the loss of one of his legs.” (6)
Older tales tell of even greater costs: death of yourself, your livestock, or perhaps worst of all, loss of your easy sleep, so that you would be restless all the rest of your nights. (7)
But what caused all these harms? Why the cost for harming the hawthorn?
It is the cost of ignoring the warnings life has given you. One may refuse to see the troubles in their life for many reasons: greed, willfulness, fear of what will change when they face the truth, love of the lie they’ve been told or have been telling.
But the refusal will only bring on heartbreak, all the worse because it was self-made. It is the shot in the dark, the scream in the night. In our modern world, this is the symbol of the bug that shuts down your computer and the bill you weren’t expecting. It’s the car that you didn’t see which hits you. Huath is the moment when you slam on the brakes, knowing it’s already too late. This is the fid of the painful surprise, brought on by your lack of awareness.
Even great heroes learn the hawthorn’s lesson, to their cost.
As it is recounted in the Táin Bó Cúailnge, the great hero Cuchulainn was called into a battle that had no good cause and no hope of success. But he had his honor to uphold, and so he prepared for battle.
He had warning against the road he chose. When his mother handed him the blessing cup, he found the mead was turned to blood. Three times his mother filled the cup, and three times it was bloody.
Three times Cuchulainn set to put his horse, the Grey of Macha, in her chariot traces that day. Twice she refused. On the third attempt, she cried blood. But Cuchulainn was determined to go to battle.
Even when he met three crones cooking a hound on a hawthorn spit, Cuchulainn would not heed the warning, nor the meaning of his namesake, the hound, dead upon the spit. That was the day Cuchulainn died.
To sit beneath a hawthorn is no bad thing. White-flowered in the spring and ruby-berried in the fall, it is as beautiful and as dangerous as life itself. If you listen, this is what she tells you.
“Have a care. The things you do not see will do you much harm. The truths you refuse to see will be your undoing. Be aware. Have a care.”
- Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom, Laurie, Erynn Rowan, Megalithica Books, 2007
- A Druid’s Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine, Hopman, Ellen, Destiny Books, 1994
- Whispers from the Woods: The Lore & Magic of Trees, Kynes, Sandra, Llewellyn Books, 2005
- The Plant Lore Archive, National Botanic Garden, Glasnevin, Dublin, August 2014
- “Fairy bush survives the motorway planners”, Deegan, Gordon, The Irish Times May 29, 1999
- “Tree Lore: Hawthorn, The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids”, Freeman, Mara http://www.druidry.org/library/trees/tree-lore-hawthorn
- A Dictionary of Irish Mythology, Ellis, Peter Berrisford, Constable, London, 1987. (1st US edition from ABC Clio (hardcover) Santa Barbara, California, 1989
- “The Book of the Húi Maine”, Royal Irish Academy, 2017 https://www.ria.ie/sites/default/files/mltheuerkauf_ui-mhaine_handout.pdf.pdf