houses, make their beds and chairs, tables, dishes and spoons; construct their mills; make their carts, ploughs, harrows gates and fences, and even manufacture ropes of [birch]. The branches are employed as fuel . . . the spray is used for smoking hams and herrings. The bark is used for tanning leather and sometimes, when dried and twisted into a rope, instead of candles. 12
In addition, birch is used for wickerwork, for specialised articles like helms, wheels and parts of barrels; for dyes and medicines. Birch oozes a natural oil called betulin, which gives birch bark its silver colour and is also the principal ingredient of ‘wintergreen’, the old-fashioned cream for aches and pains (the botanical name for ‘birch’ is betula ); birch is also used in the making of gunpowder and, bizarrely, contemporary omelette whisks. 13 Above all, its fermented sap was the original Gaelic uisge beatha , the ‘water of life’, a popular and potent drink before grain whisky stole the honour and the title.
Curiously, beech trees are almost entirely absent from folklore. They have little place in legend, and virtually nothing in the way of associated customs or proverbs. Birches, on the other hand, are magical trees: Druids claimed them as the sister tree to the oak; witches’ broom sticks were traditionally made out of birch, and so, in some parts of the country, were maypoles. Birch trees, together with fish, are among the very few items from the natural world that cross over, with their positive magical attributes intact, between the fairy stories of the Celtic and the Teutonic traditions.
In fairy stories, individual trees are always strongly positive forces, but there are no beech trees; there are birches, oaks, limes (linden), ash, willows, pines, larches, junipers and above all hazels, but no beeches. Given that the beech is so well established in Germany, this cannot simply be a translation issue. 14
So although I walked happily that day in the dancing spring sunshine along the limestone ridge in Gloucestershire and enjoyed myself and admired the beech woods, I recognised an underlying resentment. The beech trees were imperious and very beautiful . . . but so were wicked stepmothers. Being ‘the most lovely of all’ 15 may not make you good, may not make you the heroine or the natural princess. Perhaps that is more precisely the difference I am struggling to express: the beech may be the queen, the symbol of English woodland, but the birch is the princess, the heroine of our woodland fairy stories.
Much of this, of course, is of necessity imaginative speculation, because the dissemination of fairy stories is at least as complicated as the dissemination of tree species. Oliver Rackham says that we cannot even imagine how the wildwood (the wood before any human interventions) may have looked, and we cannot reproduce or recreate it. I believe the same is true of the fairy stories. By the very nature of an oral ‘text’ you can only know how it was this time, the time you heard it. Field anthropologists have become sensitive to the fact that asking someone in an oral culture to tell you a traditional story will distort the story; the teller will mould the story to the listener’s expectations – at least as far as such expectations are understood. This is not deliberate deceit or secrecy; it is the job of a story teller to do so.
A written text is fixed from the moment of its inscription. Because it is a physical object, we can usually date it with some accuracy, both by the language and often, too, by its physical manifestations – its graphology and the actual materials it is made of (for example, is it carved in stone, pressed into clay, written on parchment or paper?). Because it was written into an immediately fixed form, we can also often know who wrote it and, in some cases, learn about the text through what we know about the author, and vice versa. None of these ways of de-coding the history of a written text
In addition, birch is used for wickerwork, for specialised articles like helms, wheels and parts of barrels; for dyes and medicines. Birch oozes a natural oil called betulin, which gives birch bark its silver colour and is also the principal ingredient of ‘wintergreen’, the old-fashioned cream for aches and pains (the botanical name for ‘birch’ is betula ); birch is also used in the making of gunpowder and, bizarrely, contemporary omelette whisks. 13 Above all, its fermented sap was the original Gaelic uisge beatha , the ‘water of life’, a popular and potent drink before grain whisky stole the honour and the title.
Curiously, beech trees are almost entirely absent from folklore. They have little place in legend, and virtually nothing in the way of associated customs or proverbs. Birches, on the other hand, are magical trees: Druids claimed them as the sister tree to the oak; witches’ broom sticks were traditionally made out of birch, and so, in some parts of the country, were maypoles. Birch trees, together with fish, are among the very few items from the natural world that cross over, with their positive magical attributes intact, between the fairy stories of the Celtic and the Teutonic traditions.
In fairy stories, individual trees are always strongly positive forces, but there are no beech trees; there are birches, oaks, limes (linden), ash, willows, pines, larches, junipers and above all hazels, but no beeches. Given that the beech is so well established in Germany, this cannot simply be a translation issue. 14
So although I walked happily that day in the dancing spring sunshine along the limestone ridge in Gloucestershire and enjoyed myself and admired the beech woods, I recognised an underlying resentment. The beech trees were imperious and very beautiful . . . but so were wicked stepmothers. Being ‘the most lovely of all’ 15 may not make you good, may not make you the heroine or the natural princess. Perhaps that is more precisely the difference I am struggling to express: the beech may be the queen, the symbol of English woodland, but the birch is the princess, the heroine of our woodland fairy stories.
Much of this, of course, is of necessity imaginative speculation, because the dissemination of fairy stories is at least as complicated as the dissemination of tree species. Oliver Rackham says that we cannot even imagine how the wildwood (the wood before any human interventions) may have looked, and we cannot reproduce or recreate it. I believe the same is true of the fairy stories. By the very nature of an oral ‘text’ you can only know how it was this time, the time you heard it. Field anthropologists have become sensitive to the fact that asking someone in an oral culture to tell you a traditional story will distort the story; the teller will mould the story to the listener’s expectations – at least as far as such expectations are understood. This is not deliberate deceit or secrecy; it is the job of a story teller to do so.
A written text is fixed from the moment of its inscription. Because it is a physical object, we can usually date it with some accuracy, both by the language and often, too, by its physical manifestations – its graphology and the actual materials it is made of (for example, is it carved in stone, pressed into clay, written on parchment or paper?). Because it was written into an immediately fixed form, we can also often know who wrote it and, in some cases, learn about the text through what we know about the author, and vice versa. None of these ways of de-coding the history of a written text
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