The Hawthorn Tree

When I was 11, my Dad took me on my second visit home to Ireland. The first time I went I was six months old. When my aunty saw me again ten and half years later she said ‘welcome home' as if I'd just been away on a holiday, and I said ‘thank you' because some part of me knew she was right.

Even now, 30 years later I remember the forest my uncle took me to. I remember the vibrant green, moss covered logs and rocks, ferns, a running spring, and the shimmering. There was a constant shifting, as if the whole place was coming in and out of view, or as if things were coming in and out of view inside it. Did he tell me it’s where the faeries lived? Or did I just know it? I can't recall. But whenever I think back, I feel them. 

We have a hawthorn tree, a big one, standing alone in our garden. In Ireland, a lone hawthorn in the middle of a field is auspicious. It belongs to faeries, to the Otherworld, the Sidhe. To cut or harm the tree is to incur the wrath of the Faery Queen. Most definitely it would bring you bad luck.

The problem—or rather, I used to think it was a problem—is that I think the tree is dying. Whole sections have died off. But other parts are flourishing, and new shoots are coming up from out of the massive trunk. The effect is rather curious. It’s like a head losing hair, but unevenly. You want to just tidy it up, straighten it somehow, to keep it in line. If it was purely aesthetic, you'd take the tree down. 

Being in this place stopped being an aesthetic experience some time ago. I simply can't see it at face value anymore. I no longer see it with my eyes. Just as I felt faeries 30 years ago, I can feel this tree's life. I see what she protects, and how she anchors the garden. We sit under it, a hammock and a swing hang from her branches. Bees visit the blossom, birds eat the berries and hunt from her branches. Untold insect life live in her branches. And the roots… how long have they laid under the ground? How old is she? Seventy years? She is thoroughly tangled with so many parts of the garden. 

There is a tradition in Ireland and other Celtic countries of tying “clotties” on the branch of a hawthorn tree. They call them wishing trees and the ribbons are tied and blessings asked of the wee folk. People still do it today, as a symbol of prayers or wishes. It is often done in May when the trees are in blossom in the Northern Hemisphere. I tied my first clottie today. I told the faeries I am here, and I am listening.