The Mysteries of Common Hawthorn
Everything from luck and magic to sexy smell and death
It’s that time of a year again when all of Ireland wears its Sunday best. No, I don’t mean any religious or national celebration that would prompt every dutiful citizen to put on their best clothes and parade around. I’m referring to every hedgerow in this country since the common hawthorn is now in full bloom.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just stop for a minute and do the math yourself. The network of hedges stretches for approximately 380,000 kilometers across Ireland, and hawthorns are found in 98 percent of those hedgerows. Now, imagine all of them blanketed in heaps of white flowers, sometimes tinged with speckles of pink, and you’ll get the enormous scale I’m talking about.
The extensive web of hedgerows usually marks field boundaries and adorns roadsides. Farmers have found this fast-growing small tree covered in prickly thorns to be the best choice for hedging. Hawthorn is perfect for containing livestock and keeping out unwelcome intruders as well as supporting birds, insects, and small animals.
However, it’s not only the hedgerows I’m talking about. Here, the hawthorn trees line streets and decorate gardens. They pop up among forest greenery like striking brides with their white floral lace veils slightly swaying in the wind.
There is one on the edge of our backyard — around five meters tall and serving as a favorite battleground for several garden birds. Based on my previous life experience, I considered it to be a fairly large hawthorn. Only now, looking over to my neighbor’s garden and his massive tree towering well above a two-story house, I understand how wrong I was. It leaves me flabbergasted every time I look up because I didn’t know how big the hawthorn trees can get.
While trying to find answers to the Irish obsession with hawthorns, I discover that they are an integral part of the country’s cultural heritage and surrounded by many superstitions, often contradictory ones.
On the one hand, it is believed to bring good luck and success to its owner. On the other, they are greatly feared, especially the lone ones that haven’t been planted deliberately. Don’t even think about sitting under the solitary hawthorn tree because you may be whisked into the Fairy World. If you are lucky enough to get out of there after only a brief moment, it may turn out that you have been away for many years. That’s what happened to a Scottish poet eight centuries ago, at least that’s what he claimed.
Hawthorn is also known as the May tree. Historically, the blooming of the hawthorn trees would have been at its fullest around Beltane — the Pagan Irish festival celebrated on May 1, marking the beginning of summer. Now, we enjoy the bounty of hawthorn flowers in the middle of the month due to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the 18th century. Pagan traditions associate this time with fertility, and many families would have had a new addition nine months later. However, at some point in history, marriage during this time of a year was considered unlucky and doomed to fail.
Although branches of hawthorn, heavy with flowers, were used for decorations on May Day, they were rarely brought into the house as it was believed to be an omen of illness or even death. This superstition may have something to do with the potent smell of the innocent-looking flowers. They contain a chemical compound called triethylamine that has a fishy odor reminiscent of ammonia and is also produced by decaying flesh, creating an association with death.
Amusingly, others believe that the smell of hawthorn is similar to the smell of sex. Most probably, the British writer G. Grigson is to blame for this romantic notion as stated in one of his books.
After reading this information, I deliberately turn our evening walk into a hawthorn smell test. It’s possible I have missed some subtle notes of this mysterious fragrance and I’m ready to adjust my olfactory senses.
As I approach the first hedgerow, a bitterly-sweet aroma I have always associated with hawthorn wafts from the dense shrubbery. I stick my nose directly into a cluster of flowers and inhale deeply. Nothing.
I urge my husband to lean closer to the trees and sniff with all his might in a hope of getting different results since people perceive smells differently. He shakes his head. No hint of dead fish, rotting bodies, or sexual bodily fluids. Only our noses sprinkled with pollen to show for it.
