Hawthorn Hedgerow

I love plant folklore, especially when you start digging into the history and realize it is a lot messier than the little lists of magical plant correspondences make it seem. Hawthorn is a perfect example.

Hawthorn (Crataegus spp.) has a very long history in European folklore, especially in Ireland and Britain. Today you'll often see it listed simply as a plant for “protection,” but there is a lot more to the story than that.

First, hawthorn is quite literally a protective plant. It has thorns, grows densely, and has been used extensively in hedgerows. A good hawthorn hedge creates a real barrier. It marks where one piece of land ends and another begins, keeps livestock where they're supposed to be, and provides a pretty formidable wall of branches and thorns.

So it isn't terribly surprising that a plant already used to create physical boundaries also gathered folklore around boundaries and protection.

But this is where it gets interesting.

In Irish folklore, hawthorn trees could be treated with a tremendous amount of caution. Lone hawthorns in particular were sometimes associated with fairies or the “Good People,” and cutting or damaging one was believed to bring bad luck. The Irish National Folklore Collection is full of stories about particular hawthorn trees that people refused to disturb. Some were growing near fairy forts or other significant places. Others were simply known locally as trees you left alone. Dúchas — Irish National Folklore Collection

There are stories of people becoming ill after cutting one, livestock dying, machinery breaking, and all sorts of other misfortune blamed on disturbing a hawthorn.

Whether or not we believe any of that now isn't really the point. I just love that people knew individual trees well enough for them to have reputations.

And hawthorn folklore gets even stranger when you start looking at bringing the plant inside the house. In some places, bringing hawthorn blossom indoors was considered terribly unlucky. Other recorded traditions actually involved bringing hawthorn branches home around May Day.

That's something I think gets lost when old folk practices are turned into modern magical instructions. Folklore wasn't standardized. One village could have a custom that would have horrified someone living fifty miles away. Traditions changed over time, too.

So I wouldn't tell you that people historically hung hawthorn over their doors to “ward their homes” as though that were a universal practice. And I definitely wouldn't tell you to go cut a branch from the nearest hawthorn because you read that it is protective. Depending on which bit of folklore you're looking at, cutting that branch might be the exact thing you're not supposed to do.

I love the idea of imbuing our homes with ‘hedge’ energy.

Our homes have boundaries. Our gardens have boundaries. We decide what we welcome into them, what we keep out, what we allow to grow there and what we protect.

If hawthorn grows where you live, learn which species you have. North America has its own native hawthorns, and Crataegus is a wonderfully complicated genus. Find one and visit it throughout the year. Look at the flowers in spring, the haws in autumn, and the bare branches in winter. See what birds and insects are using it.

If you have the space and the right conditions, you could even plant one along the edge of your property rather than turning the plant into something you hang over a doorway. Plant a tree. Let it become part of your home. Let the birds eat from it and nest in it. Learn how to care for it. Maybe gather some berries when there are plenty to share.

Twenty years from now, it may be the hawthorn your family has a story about.