hawthorn

   Traditional beliefs concerning the hawthorn are contradictory. One particular tree, the *Holy Thorn of Glastonbury, was regarded as sacred since it blossomed at Christmas; its real or reputed descendants are pointed out with respect. A few others had individual names or tales: one, called Beggar's Bush, used to stand on the boundary between Sutton Coldfield and Birmingham, and was said to mark the spot where a beggar was found dead, lying partly in one parish and partly in the other, and so was buried where he lay. Doble's Thorn, at St Giles-in-the-Heath (Cornwall), is said to be where a treasure was found by a man led by a dream, like the *Swaffham Pedlar; Cornishmen thought that whenever people buried treasure they planted a thorn over it.

   Under its alternative name of 'may', hawthorn was frequently mentioned as one of the trees from which branches were taken to decorate houses on *May Day. Early texts can be ambiguous, since any tree used for this purpose might be called a 'may-bush', whatever its species; Aubrey, however, is quite clear: 'At Woodstock in Oxen, they every May-eve goe into ye Parke, and fetch away a number of Hawthorne-trees, wch they sett before their dores, 'tis pity that they make such destruction of so fine a tree' (Aubrey, 1688/1880: 118n.). Related to this was a Suffolk custom, mentioned in 1830 as old but disused, that any farm servant bringing hawthorn in full bloom into the house on May Day would get a dish of cream for breakfast.

   In Herefordshire farms it was customary on *New Year's Day to burn a hawthorn 'bush', i.e. a branch whose twigs had been forcibly bent into a thorny globe, which had hung in the kitchen for a year as a luck-bringer. It was burned in the wheatfield in a straw fire, to protect the future crop from evil spirits, witches, and the disease called 'smut'. Then a new 'bush' would be made, and singed on the embers of the old one (Leather, 1912: 92). Another farming custom based on the protective power of hawthorn is that of hanging a cow's or mare's *placenta on a thornbush. This was seen in Hampshire in 1939, with the explanation that it would prevent fever in the cow (Vickery, 1995: 170); and again in Bilsdale (Yorkshire) in 1998, to bring luck to the newborn foal (Jan Ekermann, FLS News 28 (1998), 8).

   On the other hand, hawthorn blossom is the most widely dreaded of all unlucky *flowers; over 500 contributors to a survey on flower-lore in the 1980s reported that bringing it indoors would cause a death, a major illness or accident, or some form of serious ill luck. In many cases they themselves had been rebuked for doing this. This taboo is sometimes linked to the idea that hawthorn blossom stinks of death or of the *plague, first mentioned by Francis Bacon in 1627 (Sylva Sylvarum, § 912) and still common among countrymen in the 19th century. This has a scientific basis; one species, Crataegus monogyna, has a chemical in its blossoms identical to one in decaying meat, and so smells of corpses.

   ■ Opie and Tatem, 1989: 242-5; Vickery, 1995: 166-72.