Sloe and Willow-Withy Harvests     

The First Days of Frost and the Onset of Winter

The First Month  

Sail is the Early Irish word for willow, and Straif is said to be metaphorical for blackthorn.  In the tree-ogham series, sail stands for "s", being represented by four strokes to one side of a trunk-line.  Straif stands for "str", a strange letter, and is represented by four strokes athwart the trunk-line.  Sail is the fourth letter in the tree-ogham series.  Straif is the fourteenth letter in the tree-ogham series.  Their sounds are cognate, and they bear the same number of lines.  

The Sloe-Tree

The blackthorn is family Rosaceae, the rose family.  

The blackthorn is also genus Prunus.  Essentially, the blackthorn is a wild plum tree.  This wild plum is known to botanists as Prunus spinoza.   

Mistletoe likes to grow on all the trees in the Rose family.  Though mistletoe grows best on the sweet-sapped and thin-barked trees of the sub-family of the apples, blackthorn trees can harbor mistletoe also.

All wild Roaceae have five petaled flowers.  

In prior days, people would have regarded the day-frosts as the time to start checking dark-blue colored, astringent, sloe-fruits, to see if they had become edible.  These purplish-blue fruits are gaggingly bitter until they have frozen enough.  They become mellowed and retain interesting bitter flavors after they have felt a few hard frosts.  Then, with a few days of frosts, the sloes become edible.  Then they were collected.  People have gathered them to make jam, wine or gin.  Birds sometimes eat sloes, but only once they have been frozen enough, and usually the birds have migrated by that time.  Birds make more use of the blackthorn bushes to shelter nests.  

Cold weather has an effect upon the world in many different ways.  One way is to slow everything down; to make people inclined to be slothful, wanting to hibernate and withdrawing into their houses.  The words slow and sloth are both related to the word for blackthorn fruit, which are called sloes.  It is very interesting that the sloe-tree harvest comes exactly at the time when things in the world begin to slow-down, and it turns out that these words have the same root-wood.  In Danish one name for the sloe-tree is sloan.  Sloa-en in Danish means the one that bars or stops.  

There seem to be connections between the halting and resuming of time and the sloe-bush.  This can be found in the original story of Sleeping Beauty (Little Briar Rose in the folk-tale collections of the Grimm's Fairy Tales).  In the story "sleeping beauty" pricks her finger on the sharp end of a spindle and she and all people and animals in the castle go to sleep.  The entire castle becomes covered with an impenetrable spiny hedge.  I will likely put more here on that subject, but for now I will mention that the root-word of spine and spindle are the same, from the Latin, spina; and that a spindle used to spin thread might most easily be made from a very long, tapered, straight spine growing on a sloe-tree.  The spindle is a symbol of some Goddesses who are said to manipulate the fate of mortals.  

The traditional wood used to make a shillelagh, i.e., a cudgel, i.e., a bata fighting stick, is blackthorn.  Some say the traditional wood for the handle of a broom was made of a blackthorn branch, before the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded England and replaced many of the sacred woods with ash wood.  One thing is certain, the long spines of the blackthorn are ready-made to skewer the ends of green broom branches, keeping them from slipping off the handle.  A blackthorn branch was also supposedly used to make the "blasting stick" of harmful witches.  Blasting is the opposite of burning, i.e., blasting means to destroy by freezing.  

The Willow Withies

The willow belongs to the family Betulae, genus Salix.  One well known European species is Salix alba, the white willow.   

Mistletoe also grows on willows to a noticeable extent.  Willow trees and blackthorn trees can both harbor mistletoe, though less frequently than apple trees.  

At the same time of the season sloes become edible, the long, thin, pliable willow-branches known as "withies" are ready for harvest.  At this time they have grown as long as they are going to. With the first day-frosts, but, before the first snows, just as the willow-leaves begin to turn yellow, traditional willow basket makers have a chance to collect their supplies.  Willow basket makers traditionally weave during winter.  Many many find it gratifying to make use if the long, dark months this way.    

The willow tree has always been associated with witchcraft, and apparently the words, wicker, wicked, witchcraft and Wicca derive from the same root as willow.  The willow tree is always noted to have a connection with the Crone, though many have not made the connection that the willow-withy harvest takes place the same time as the Celtic New Year of Samhain.  Willow trees are said be very connected to Hecate, the Crone phase of Persephone and Demeter, and it is said that groves of willows were dedicated to Hecate.  In addition, willow has been a symbol of mourning since ancient times.  Some still wear a few willow leaves to express the loss of a loved one.  This may be due to the fact that many very old and very young people would die at the beginning of winter, the time of the willow withy harvest.    

Willow trees gained an ill-thought-of reputation with the onset of Christianity, similar to the way rowan trees, whitethorn bushes, aelder trees, and apple trees were maligned.  These trees had very useful natures for pastoral people, and their original importance reflected that.  At some point willow trees were said to walk muttering behind travelers who walked in the dark of night.  While this was a fairly unlikely situation, some groves of willow trees are said to have been places where bards and other poets would go, gaining inspiration from their swaying boughs, or the sounds their leaves made against each other.  Perhaps the bards gained inspiration from the environment of the willow groves as well, which were undoubtedly planted next to lakes and streams.  

One hard won bit of information is this: the stripped leaves of willow-withies are excellent barn-animal fodder. This is also the time when herd animals are rounded up and brought to barns so they can be over-wintered. Apparently, the traditional time to gather willow withies to make baskets corresponds with the traditional time to gather the herd animals. One can only assume that the herd animals received the benefit of the freshly stripped willow leaves.  This would lessen waste, and stretch the fodder for the animals over winter

*An additional tree that seems, somewhat, aligned seasonally to this time of year is the oak. It seems that the first frosts trigger the fall of the acorn crop, at least in the instances I have observed.

Midwinter Harvest of Holly Boughs and Other Evergreens

The Second Month

Many may disagree with this paragraph; but it is very likely that ruis is metaphorical for the holly-tree.  In the tree-ogham series, ruis stands for "r", being represented by five strokes athwart the trunk-line.  Ruis is the fifteenth letter in the tree-ogham series.  

The word for holly in Scottish Gaelic and Irish is cuilionn.  In Early Irish the word for holly is cuilenn.  In Welsh Gaelic celyn, in Cornish Gaelic celin, in Breton kelenn.  

In Irish ruis essentially means the one who is red.  In modern-Irish, the word for Russian is Ruis.

There is a very old folk saying, “Of all the trees the holly wears the crown.” Most everyone in North America and Europe knows the folk-custom of putting up wreaths, sprays and general decorations of holly during the time of Winter Solstice. Many people still do decorate with holly.  Of course, holly boughs are not as easy to get as those of pine and fir, so these other evergreens often predominate.  However, the other evergreens are almost always decorated with red balls and ribbons, as if to mimic the holly's color.  

Holly boughs were an excellent fodder for herd animals wintering in the barn, and still would be, if herders planted large groves of holly trees for this purpose.  In earlier times there were many, many stands of holly groves in Europe.  Holly was an important supplementary crop, hedging against harsh times.  The holly boughs were relieved of berries and "crimped" to make them less spiny.  The tough mouths of cattle, horses, sheep and goats would then munch holly happily.  Rabbits are also fond of holly branches.   During the darkest time of the year, astride the cold-and-dark Winter Solstice, the evergreen holly boughs were the only vegetation still growing and edible to herbivores.

However, the pretty little red berries of holly are mildly poisonous, due to noxious amounts of tannins, and must be removed if the branches are indeed given to a rabbit or other herbivore. In days past, the berries were removed for tanning hides to make leather. Because of this, there was little to no chance the cattle would be poisoned. A use was found for just about everything, and nothing useful was thrown away. 

It seems very likely that the bright red holly berries would have been strung as garlands, before using the berries for their tannins, to add color to the festivities of the dark, cold, and  black-and-white winter months.

Even today, evergreens represent and symbolize the hopefulness for the continuation of life in the midst of winter. The vibrant green and red color of holly reassures us that the life force of the world is still evident, even though much of the world outside seems to be dead and dreary.  Many evergreens, those of mistletoe, holly, laurel, pine, fir, yew, and even ivy have been gathered by different cultures for display at this time of year.

While yew branches are too rare these days to gather for display, yew branches have the same coloration as holly. The yew’s bright evergreen branches are covered with bright red berries during winter.  In addition, yew branches were once collected and made into the strongest and most elastic bows. The best time to harvest any kind of wood for carpentry is during the middle of winter, during the coldest and most frozen time of the year, when the sap of the tree is submerged in the roots.  Much of the sap would be retained, allowing a tree to regenerate in spring more easily.  And, it would be critical regarding an evergreen tree, which never fully goes dormant, and only has a lesser amount of sap in its wood during the winter.  Because of this, the best time to gather branches of yew to make a bow is around the time of Winter Solstice.

Last Winter Weather - Harvest of Birch Boughs and Syrup

The Third Month

In the tree-ogham series, beith stands for "b", being represented by one stroke to one side of a trunk-line.  Beith is the first letter in the tree-ogham series.  

Beith is the Irish word for birch.    

Before the leaves flush, and just as the branches are budding, it is a perfect time to collect the branches of birch trees. It is extremely easy to make wreaths out of pliable birch branches. All you have to do is take the longest, thinnest branch you have, tie it in a knot the size of the wreath you want, and add the pliable branches until you achieve the thickness you are looking for.

The branches of birch have been used to make many things, just as the wood. Cutting birches down actually stimulates their growth, since they grow via a rhizome, or underground-runner roots. When the shoots are cut down their rhizome is stimulated to grow sideways, causing them to have a wider base. Then the next year they put up healthy new young trunks.

Mistletoe grows on black birch fairly easily, but is not found very often on white birch.  Birch sap flows very early than the sap of most other trees.  Mistletoe growing on birch is still to cold to flower at the time when the sap of the birch begins to move in the tree.  Still, when the weather warms a little, and the thaw of spring begins, the mistletoe flowers open.  

Birch is one of the first trees to leaf out, because the sap flows very early. In warmer climates, such as a climate where grapes will grow, the sap of the birch tree begins to flow not long after Winter Solstice.  Only the first 10 days of sap-flow are edible. After that birch-water becomes bitter and generally inedible.

To collect birch-water all you have to do is make a small hole, not too far down on the trunk, and collect it in a little bucket or bag. But one of the easiest ways to collect birch-water is to collect a branch or two, and use the shortened branches to hang little buckets. The little droplets of sap oozing from the birch glint like little stars as they catch the sunlight.

The birch-water begins to flow just as the branches begin to bud, and the sap can be collected and boiled down to make syrup. The Algonquin First Nations People have collected this birch-water to make birch-syrup in the Michigan area from time immemorial. They have said its flavor is the taste of life itself.

The Birch tree is a tree of colonization. In the Northern Hemisphere, if floodwaters, a fire or a landslide disturbs the growth of an area that receives snow, birch trees will rapidly colonize it. It is a fast growing and regenerative tree. In fact, it will take root if a young branch of softwood is cut off and pushed down into the soil. Birch is also very hardy in cold weather, and lives in some of the coldest climates.

The birch’s branches should not be pruned between February 1st and September 30th to prevent the tree from loosing too much sap. The birch-water thins even more in the warm weather. In any case, once the first 10 days of sweet sap-flow is over, the sap of the birch tree becomes bitter.

The birch tree is a glorious looking tree, with its glowing white bark and thin, vertical appearance. In some ways a stand of them can look like the rays of the sun shooting out of the earth. It prefers to grow in stands on well-drained soil, although it craves water. The riverbank is a place where it is often seen