Moaighthe:
médaighthe, sochair,
do neoch.
Three sounds of increase:
the lowing of a cow in milk,
the din of a smithy,
the swish of a plough.
~ From The Triads of Ireland
Botanical name: Hedera helix
Family: Araliaceae
Ogham: Gort
Scots Gaelic: Eidheann
Irish Gaelic: Eidhneán
Welsh: Eiddew
French: Lierre
Message: It is time to plant seeds and start ventures. Reach up, reach out, and grow.
The word for this fid in the Ogham translates as ‘greenest of pastures’ or ‘sweetest of grass’. Picture a green pasture under a spring sky, cattle grazing placidly in the grass with full udders. To the passerby, nothing is quite so idyllic.
But the passerby does not see the hours of work the landowner puts in to spread muck and bone meal over the pasture in order to fertilize it. The passerby does not see the quiet, patient hours the farmer puts in with a cow in labor, waiting to help her birth her calf. The beauty of a perfect garden and a well-tended field is made possible only through the sweat of the farmer and the hand of the gardener. This is the fid of that work and its reward. The ivy thrives because it is tenacious, and it is resilient.
The plant itself is not a good food for humans: all parts of the plant, particularly the berries, are filled with the saponins didehydrofalcarinol, falcarinol and hederasaponin. (1) These chemicals can cause intestinal and breathing issues in humans if ingested in large quantities. Cattle, on the other hand, can benefit from small doses of ivy, especially as a supplement in the days when winter fodder was not purchased but grown. In Fergus Kelly’s work, Early Irish Farming, it’s noted that through the 7th and 8th centuries, harvesting ivy to feed the kine in winter was so common that a specific tool, the cromán tige bantrebthaige, ‘hook of a woman householder’, was recorded in law tracts. (2) The plant was valued highly enough to be recorded as one of the ‘bushes of the wood’ in the Brehon law, and clearing a tract of it unlawfully earned the offender the fine of a year old heifer. (3)
The sense of this comes clear with the knowledge that, in the climate of the British Isles, ivy is one of the brightest of evergreens in the depths of winter, and its utility in feeding the animals the Irish based their system of status on was enormously important. Its symbolism of sustained fertility in adversity is bound into winter festivities, and depending on who you ask, it stands for many things related to hope in the darkness. In England, the ivy king and the holly king vie on Yule or on New Year’s Day, ivy standing for summer and the green time of year. As he lost in the autumn, now he has the strength to win and bring summer back. (4) In Ireland, it was the oak king and not the ivy who won, but the ivy and the holly together stood for everlasting life. (5) We still see this in the song “The Holly and the Ivy”, as in these verses:
The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown!
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir (6)
Throughout Ireland, male holly and the female ivy tied together in wreaths and charms were hung to keep the people hoping in the dark days. Of course, this being the Isles, at times these traditions blend, and we see some songs where ivy is a queen denied entry or power while holly rules the winter, as in “Nay Ivy Nay”, a song from the age of Henry VIII:
Nay, Ivy, nay, it shall not be, I wis,
Let Holly have the mastery as the manner is!
Holly standeth in the hall fair to behold,
Ivy stands without the door; she is full sore an’ cold! (7)
In some areas, one of the winter games was a tug of war between holly boys and ivy girls, one more symbol of the fight to survive the winter and bring in the summer heat. (8)
After winter, ivy was a symbol of cultivation and industry in both the positive and negative. Ivy was used as a symbol of tenacity and fertility, but it’s also a pest. Armed with adventitious roots and an amazing growth ability, in wet areas ivy can spread frighteningly fast. Once it gets its hooked rootlets into tree bark, it can grow upwards to 50-100 feet in height. On the ground, it typically grows to 6-9 inches tall but spreads over time to 50-100 feet. (9) It can dig the mortar out of stone buildings and kill trees that it colonizes through blocking their light and damaging their bark. At times throughout the history of Ireland, men have fought ivy to keep pastures open and allow more nutritious plants to grow: grasses for the cattle, barley for the people. Controlling ivy was one of the necessary chores of cultivation, and not one of the easiest.
Controlling wild growth and channeling the energy into useful purposes was, and still is, the main work of those embarking on tasks intended to bring forth a harvest. The task of cultivation demands three things: discipline, patience, and tenacity. As it is today, so it was in the beginning of things, when people first began to work the land.
The Lebor Gabála Érenn, the ‘Book of the Takings of Ireland’, tells us how it was for the first people who worked and tended the soil.
The tale is told to us through Fintan, one of the first people to arrive in Ireland. Unable to do the duty of working the land himself with his own people under Queen Cesair, Fintan hid himself away and became the recorder of all the folk who came after, living in the forms of animals to extend his life and his knowledge of the land.
In the form of an eagle, he watched Cesair’s fifty women die out, for he and the two men she had brought had all failed in their duties to bring about a second generation. He sings:
I was here in Ireland
and Ireland was desert
Ireland was waste,
for a space of three hundred years,
till Partholon came to it
Parthalon’s people set to work on the great barren plain. Fintan tells us in his poetry:
Four chieftains strong came with Partholon:
himself and Laiglinne his son, from whom is Loch Laighlinne
Slanga and Rudraige, the two other sons of Partholon,
from whom are Sliab Slanga and Loch Rudraige
When they began their digging,
the lake there burst forth over the land.
There were seven lake bursts in Ireland in the time of Partholon
Four plains were cleared by Partholon in Ireland
For Partholon found not more than one plain in Ireland before him
Through the lifetimes of Eagle and Stag, Boar and finally Salmon, Fintan watched as each people put their hands and their lives into the soil of the land. The Parthalonians died by plague and their bodies grew rich grass. The Nemedians came to plant the great forests of Ireland. They defended the land against the destruction of those who did not care to till and cultivate, but came to loot and kill. When their time passed and Fintan was a boar, the Fir Bolg built Ireland’s hills so that the rain would run to feed the land. The Tuatha De Dannan planted the great bile trees and partitioned the country into its five provinces, fighting the forces of destruction all the while. At last, when the Milesians from whom the Irish people descended set foot upon the land, it was a rich and fertile place. A lady caught a salmon, ate it, and nine months later a boy was born who told the tale of all the ages that had come before.
It would have been easy for any one of the seven races to throw up their hands, get in their boats and go elsewhere. It would have been easy to simply take what was there. But each generation worked the land, cultivated it and helped it grow into its full glory. That is the virtue of the ivy: persistent, tenacious hope. Ivy will tell you that all the work is worth your while, and every failure is merely a step towards something greater.
What you tend will flourish and bear fruit. But you must be there to tend it.
- Poisonous plants in Britain and their Effects on Animals and Man, Cooper, M. R., Johnson, A. W., Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, England, 305 pp. Frohne, D., Pfander, H. J., 1983. A colour atlas of poisonous plants. Wolfe Publishing Ltd., London, England, 1984
- Early Irish Farming, Kelly, Fergus, Early Irish Law Series 4: 74-106, 1997
- Ireland’s Wild Plants – Myths, Legends & Folklore, Mac Coitir, Niall, the Collins Press, 2010
- A Druid’s Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine, Hopman, Ellen, Destiny Books, 1994
- Glamoury: Magic of the Celtic Green World, Blamires, Steve, Llewellyn Worldwide Limited, 1995
- “The Holly and the Ivy (arr. J. Rutter)”, Evanson, John, et al., The Holly and the Ivy, 2006
- Mediæval Christmas Carols, Ashley, Judith, Music & Letters, 65-71, 1924
- Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide, Rätsch, Christian, Müller-Ebeling, Claudia , Simon and Schuster, 2003
- The Gardener’s Guide to Growing Ivies, Rose, Peter Q., Timber Press, 1996
- Lebor gabála Érenn: The Book of the Taking of Ireland, vol. 6:, Ó Riain, Pádraig (comp.), Index of names, Irish Texts Society 63, London: Irish Texts Society, 2009