6th August 2025 - Bringing forward

An Ash tree up on the Bath Downs.  Do you have a special tree?  I am hundreds of miles away from my tree.  It has had barbed wire fencing wrapped round it cruelly, the hooks digging into the bark.  I have told this tale often but it is Odin's tree, the great Scandinavian World Yggdrasil tree with all its legend which is an Ash tree, powerful and strong.  Nine leafed twigs, a magic number, though of course there can be 11 or 13 leaves.  Magic just doesn't have to be confined.  But conversely in folklore, if you found an equal number of leaves than you were sure to find your love by night.

Gilbert White (1720 to 1793) talks of shrew-ash (shrews or fairy mice). Shrews apparently ran over the cattle and stiffened their limbs.  The cure was to entomb the little shrew mouse inside the trunk of an ash.  A branch off the tree when stroked over the cattle would then cure them!

I hate to bring sex into the room but Aubrey Burl says this, and he is a great hero of mine.  Well in winter when you look at the buds of the new growth, you will see a large bud with two smaller ones on either side.  This is phallic and was why the Ash tree became sacred to Odin.  Do I believe this? well it is a nice addenda to the story, and talking of stories, have you met the Man in the Tree, a good Celtic tale of nonsense.

A celtic story to tell, this again features Finn, who was walking through a wood one day and happened to spy a man sitting at the top of a tree. A blackbird on his right shoulder, and in his left hand a bronze vessel filled with water, in which swam a skittish trout, and a stag at the bottom of the tree. The man would crack a nut, half of which he ate himself the other half he gave to the blackbird. Then he would take an apple out of the bronze vessel, half of which he ate himself the other half he threw to the stag below. Then he would take a sip of the water in the vessel, as did the stag and the blackbird - they would all drink together.
The followers of Finn asked who this disguised hooded man was. Ann Ross speculates that this 'nurturer of animals' could be attributed to Cernunnos again or the romano-celtic god Vosegus, who has some of the attributes of the man in the tree.

Ash is strong

I haven't got a tree here in Yorkshire that somehow appeals to me, though when I sit in the park at Hebden Bridge, waiting for the hour of my optician appointment I look up to a fir tree with its many branches and feel its age and I wonder can it feel mine.

Trees are a gift, their presence gives us oxygen to breathe, clears the air and most of all calms us with their presence.  A new forest across the Western side of England is to be created so the government says.  It will take in Wiltshire, Gloucester, Mendips and the Cotswold.

2007 -  Winter Poems

2008 - Celtic Gods