It’s that time of year again when the flapping sound of blackbirds fluttering and chuckling through the rowan tree draws me to its dense clusters of red berries. Weighed down with ripeness, they hang, presenting themselves for easy picking by blackbirds mostly, but also thrush and starling.
Shakespeare describes the blackbird as “the ousel cock so black of hue/With orange-tawny bill”, which loves to feast on this early autumn food source while also helping to disperse the seed.
Sorbus aucuparia is known too as ‘mountain ash’ as its leaves resemble those of common ash and also because it grows well in upland areas. The smooth bark of silvery grey speaks to the tree’s maturity now and its presence for thirty years, providing food and shelter for many invertebrates and a multitude of visiting birds including long-tailed tits flocking through, treecreepers spiraling up its trunk, and warblers and goldcrests feeding from under slender leaves.
A graceful tree, boasting creamy-white, spring flowers, before its bright red berries begin to appear in early autumn, its leaves are arranged featherlike, opposite each other on a single stem, long, oval and toothed.
The tree’s Irish name, Caorthann, derives from caor, which Dineen, in Foclóir Gaeilge Gaedilge Agus Béarla (1927), gives as ‘mountain berry’, ‘round mass of flame’ or ‘a red blaze’, while the English name ‘rowan’ is thought to originate from Old Norse words ‘reynir’ and ‘rauðr’ or ‘raun’ for red, referencing the berries again.
The mountain ash has always been valued for its protective and life-giving powers and features large in both Irish and Scottish folk tales which promote rowan as a great preventer of evil. Homes, outhouses and farm animals were adorned with rowan boughs to ward off bad spirits especially on May Eve.
In Scotland, they were also burnt at Hallowmass, All Saints’ Day, to protect animals. The 18th century Scottish songwriter, Carolina Oliphant Nairne, wrote fondly of the rowan tree in her song of the same name, in this verse describing the transition from flower to berry:
How fair wert thou in simmer time,
Wi’ a’ thy clusters white
How rich and gay thy autumn dress,
Wi’ berries red and bright.
On thy fair stem were many names,
Which now nae mair I see,
But they’re engraven on my heart.
Forgot they ne’er can be!
Oh! Rowan tree!
In Ireland the mountain ash was highly regarded by the druids and sometimes called ‘fid na ndruad’ or the druid’s tree. Their association with the tree is well illustrated in the epic tale of The Siege of Knocklong, which I recently unearthed. The story is contained in a manuscript, The Book of Lismore, which was discovered in 1814 in Lismore Castle, Co Waterford.
The story of the siege was thought to have been composed around 1480 and tells of the High King, Cormac Mc Airt, travelling with his army and druids, around 250 AD, to collect taxes from the Munster king, Fiacha, and his people. Ignoring the advice of his own druids, he marched to Knocklong Hill, where the siege began and battles ensued for a year. Cormac’s druids dried up the nearby water sources while the druids on both sides made huge fires of rowan and used rituals and spells against each other as the pyres raged. In the end the Munster men defeated Cormac after their own powerful druid, Mog Roith, released and restored the water supplies.
As we edge towards the lengthening shadows of summer’s end, the rowan will soon thin out, and the resident robin will rest again on a selected branch to release its plaintive, almost melancholy, autumnal song.
