Teora ranna sluinte fri cáintocad:
trumma,
toicthiu,
talchaire
Your good fortune has three parts:
Your surety
Your discipline
Your will
~ From the Book of Ballymote
Botanical name: Pinus sylvestris
Family: Pinaceae
Ogham: Ailm
Scots Gaelic: Guibhas
Irish Gaelic: Giúis
Welsh: Pinwydden
French: Pin
Message: It is time to put in the hard work of honing your craft and cultivating your work.
In the rocky slopes of Northern Ireland, the pines creak in the wind. When one falls or is felled, there is a long, high keening as pliant timbers resist the breaking and the fall. This is perhaps why one of the tracts for this fid in the Ogham names it ardam íachta, ‘loudest of cries’. (1)
But the felling of a pine tree is only the very first step towards the making of something new.
The Scots pine is native from Scandinavia to Anatolia, growing where the land is poor: rocky outcrops, peat bogs, the very edges of forested land. (2) On fertile ground, it is crowded out by others. Where other trees wither, it thrives. A symbol of tenacity, its branches were cut and hung throughout halls and houses at the winter celebrations, mixed into holly and ivy to mark the folk’s defiance of darkness and despair. Mixing these three creates a potent charm for those who know the Ogham: while the holly lends the fire of inspiration and the ivy gives its vitality, it is pine that gives the bearer the will to carry on the work. The only native conifer to the British Isles, the Scots pine was the greatest reminder the Irish people had that the green world was sleeping in winter, not dead. (3)
The wood of the Scots pine was the most versatile of all trees. While not as hard as oak nor as pliant as willow, it was tough, light, easily worked and resistant to decay. (4) Stands of pine were quick to grow back when cut. This made it a favorite wood for daily work. Pine wood was turned to all manner of daily things: wheels and wooden spoons, fences and pit props, gate posts and firewood. Its heartwood was used in the building of ships, and its sap in the caulking of them. (5) For its uses it was named in the Brehon laws as one of the Nobles of the Wood, described as ‘friend to the joiner’ and ‘hand of the carpenter’ in the Auraicept na n-éces. (6)
In the past, the work of carpentry covered every step from selecting the proper tree to putting the final polish on the finished work. The work is neither quick nor easy.
The tree must be selected and cut.
The log must be limbed and sawn to the desired thickness.
The sawn wood must be stacked, or it will stain.
The wood must be aged carefully over the span of a year.
The wood must be well measured, cut, and carefully worked.
The finish work must be rubbed with beeswax or lanolin. (7)
The process is long, and things can go wrong at any step. A tree that seems healthy can prove to be rotten in the center and worthless. Wood warps, splits, and cracks in drying. Wood splits when being worked, rendering the work unusable. (8)
The impatient student of carpentry will soon give up in despair.
But pine is the first wood a carpenter is allowed to work with. Pine teaches perseverance. In the working of pine wood, the student learns tenacity.
The student should learn, as well, the difference between a flaw in their work and a flaw of their character. Every student will fail. Every carpenter will toss away pieces of his work, accepting that the time spent in the rejects was spent in learning. It was not wasted. The worthwhile student is the one who raises their head, lifts their tools and starts again, remembering what they’ve learned. That is how he becomes a craftsman.
Once, it was a man’s tenacity that saved a people.
Long and long ago, Finn MacCool, warrior-magician who would one day be a great leader of men, was out riding when he noticed men working away at a hill fort. He was still a very young man and, being curious, reined in his horse.
“When will the rath be finished?” he asked politely.
One of the men gave a rueful laugh. “Probably never.”
“Why?” asked Finn.
“Every day we raise this rath, but each night it is burnt to the ground. Whatever we do, we sleep in the night, and when we wake the rath is burnt. We may leave soon and choose a new place.”
Curious, Finn bit his thumb in which his gift of knowledge was held, and discovered the secret of what had been happening. Soon, night would fall. “If you’ll let me stand guard tonight, I will find the trouble.”
Finn had learned from the secret knowledge he was gifted with that on the eastern side of the country, there lived an old hag with three sons. She hated the king, and every evening at nightfall she sent the youngest to spell the men to sleep and burn the king’s rath. So he waited. Now night was coming on, and the old woman in the east told her youngest son to hurry on with his torches.
Soon the warriors began to doze, all save Finn and his dog Bran. Soon there was a speeding ball of fire. The hag’s son threw the torches upon the thatched roof to set it alight. But Finn’s dog Bran was quick and tossed the torches into the stream.
“Who is this,” cried the youngest son of the old hag, “who has dared to put out my lights?”
“I,” said Fin.
The hag’s son lashed out. Bran came down from the rath to help Fin: she bit and tore his enemy’s back while Finn fought him. When he turned to fight the dog, Finn ran him through.
In the east the hag said, “You take torches and hurry on, see why your brother is slow.”
Soon a second ball of fire came streaking across the sky, and Finn slew the second son of the hag.
The old woman was raging at the delay in the east. “Now take torches,” she snapped to her eldest and strongest son, “go and see what delays your brothers; I’ll pay them for this when they come home.”
The eldest brother shot off through the air, came to the king’s rath, and threw his torches upon the roof. They had just singed the straw a little when Bran pushed them off.
“Who is this,” screamed the eldest, “who dares to interfere?”
“I,” shouted Fin. And the third son fought and died.
Finn thought he could rest now. But once again, flame shot across the sky. The old hag herself had come, far more terrible than any of her sons.
The battle was long and bloody. Just as daylight was coming, Fin lopped the head off the old woman.
“You are the man who saved the rath,” said the king of the land, “and yours is the reward. Would you become my battle chieftain and lead my men?”
“That I will,” said Finn. And that was the first time Finn led men.
The scent of pine woods and cut pine raises the spirit. It clears the head. Take a breath and remember that there is honor in hard work. There is no shame in failure. The only shame is in surrender: in giving into despair and turning from the work.
Do not turn away.
- “The Early Irish Linguist. An Edition of the Canonical Part of the AURAICEPT NA nECES. With Introduction, Commentary and Indices”, Ahlqvist, Anders, Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum Helsinki 73: 1-81, 1982
- Pagan Christmas: The Plants, Spirits, and Rituals at the Origins of Yuletide, Rätsch, Christian, Müller-Ebeling, Claudia, Simon and Schuster, 2003
- (3). The Native Pinewoods of Scotland, Steven, H. M., & Carlisle, A, Castlepoint Press, 1959, facsimile reprint 1996
- “Trees of Britain and Ireland”, Milner, Edward, Flora: 15 and 120, 2011
- A Druid’s Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine, Hopman, Ellen, Destiny Books, 1994
- “Trees for Life: Species profile: Scots pine”, https://treesforlife.org.uk/forest/mythology-folklore/scots-pine2/
- “Some cruxes in Críth gablach.” Ó Corráin, Donnchadh, Peritia 15 : 311-320, 2001
- Ancient Carpenters’ Tools: Illustrated and Explained, Together with the Implements of the Lumberman, Joiner, and Cabinet-maker in Use in the Eighteenth Century, Mercer, Henry C., Courier Corporation, 2000