Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/257

 io 8. viii SEPT. 14, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

211

ELDER-BUSH FOLK-LORE.

(10 S. viii. 131.)

IT is perhaps impossible to furnish direct evidence that any examples of pre-Christian folk-lore relating to the elder have come down to us. but the character of much that we do possess suggests a heathen origin. A few years ago an admirable paper on the The Edinburgh Review, from which I quote a paragraph regarding this interesting, and during the long days of summer most beau- tiful, tree :
 * Folk-lore of Human Life ' appeared in

"Nor has that other tree dear to folk-lore, the elder, changed its hue since it took to itself the occult qualities superstition still ascribes to it. Its sinuous boughs, its baldachin of cloud - white blossoms, its red-black fruit-berries, in which lie the juices of that sweet wine, well known to country-folk, where fire and sleep meet, all wear the same aspect they wore of old when men saw in the tree, born of blood, a goddess-mother. ' Lady Elder,' the kneeling woodsman cries before he strikes, ' give me of thy wood, and I will give thee of mine, when it grows in the forest.' From its wounds blood flows, and in the dusk of Northern climes the tree itself moves from place to place in the thicket. Irish legend transmutes its influence from good to evil ; there it is unholy. Elsewhere it is a tree of witchcraft, and no cradle may be fashioned of its wood." January, 1904, p. 54.

I am not aware that the folk-faith as to the elder has ever been reduced to order. As it probably extends to every land where the elder grows, it would take no little thought and labour to arrange these dreams (if, indeed, they be dreams only) in a coherent shape, since we know that in some places it is a tree of good repute, and in others the shadow of the substance of things evil. Out of the evil nature that is attributed to the elder must have arisen the idea that it was on this tree that Judas hanged himself. Pulci, Shakespere. the authors of ' Piers Plowman ' and the ' Voiage and Travail of Sir John Mandeville,' and a host of books too numer- ous to mention, bear testimony to this belief ; but it has never been traced, so far as I know, to its origin.

It would seem that in this island the cha- racter of the elder is very mixed. It is hard to say whether the good or the evil principle predominates. Hawker, the Corn- ish poet, records that it is unlucky to burn it (' Life ' by C. E. Byles, p. 67) ; while Sir Thomas Browne tells us in his ' Pseudodoxia Epidemica ' that if a pregnant woman treads on the elder or the female fern, abortion is produced (Book I. chap. viii.).

We hear also that the leaves, if plucked on the last day of April, cure wounds ; and in Suffolk it is thought that lightning never strikes the elder- tree (Lean, ' Collectanea,' vol. i. pp. 252, 391).

I have before me a note made from one of the Aubrey MSS. (I am unable to give a further reference) which exhibits the elder in a beneficent light. There was, it seems, a Mr. Allen, a reputed sorcerer, who on one occasion was staying at Home Lacy, in Herefordshire. He was so careless as to leave his watch in the window of his bedroom. Watches were rare objects in those days, and when the housemaids came to make the bed, they heard something repeating " tick, tick, tick." Having traced the sound to its source, they concluded that the watch was Mr. Allen's private devil, or familiar spirit, so, with the help of the tongs for they dare not touch it with their hands they endeavoured to throw it into the moat, in the hope of drowning the devil. There was, however, an elder-bush growing out of the side of the moat, and this mercifully intervened by catching the chain on one of its branches. So Mr. Allen got his watch again uninjured, and the servants were confirmed in their belief as to the noxiousness of the elder.

Jean Baptiste Thiers in his ' Trait6 des Superstitions qui regardent les Sacremens ' thus speaks of the medicinal uses of the elder :

To cure witchcraft caused by the hair of animals, pins, needles, thorns, &c., take some of the pus of the wound, and put it into a hole made on the east side of an elder or oak, and plug it up with some of the same wood. Ed. 1777, vol. i. p. 359.

EDWABD PEACOCK.

It is believed in some part of England that the wood of our Lord's cross was eider ; and RUBI, an early correspondent of ' N. & Q.' (1 S. vii. 177), records :

" I was visiting a poor parishioner the other day, when the following question was put to me : '.Pray, Sir, can you tell me whether there is any doubt of what kind of wood our Lord's cross was made ? ] have always heard that it was made of elder, and we look carefully into the faggots before we ourn them, for fear that there should be any of this wood in them.' "

The passage was reprinted in ' Choice Notes: Folk-lore,' pp. 60, 61, and I think the fancy it embodies justifies the name of Christ's tree being given to the elder in Shropshire. A mediaeval legend concerning the wood of the Cross is crystallized in the Latin lines :

Pes crucis est cedrus ; corpus tenet alta cupressus ; Palma manus retinet ; titulo Isetatur oliva.