THE FOLKLORE OF PLANTS: Blackberry

Lisa Karen Miller

          In England, Michaelmas (September 29^th) is the day the devil does something unprintable on the blackberries. Thereafter they are not good to eat. 

          This was the day the archangel Michael kicked him out of heaven. He landed on one of these prickly bramble bushes, so he takes his nasty revenge on each anniversary. This date changes with location, but in general the beginning of fall is when blackberries become prey to a fungus that makes them bitter.

          In Kentucky, you want to enjoy them before the end of August. They have the best flavor when picked in the afternoon of a warm day. One of my fondest memories is picking blackberries in the afternoon and having them in a cobbler that same evening. There is simply nothing tastier.

          If you suddenly have blackberries in your yard or hedgerow where you’ve never had any before, it’s likely that a bird has eaten some elsewhere, then lit on your fence and “planted” them for you.  Tiny seeds pass through a bird’s digestive system virtually unchanged. This is a very common way they are spread in the countryside.

          In some parts of England, blackberry season coincided with the time babies, cats, and livestock were prone to illness.  If a child had the whooping cough, he was passed seven times through a bramble bush.  It was thought the disease would be passed to the plant:

“In bramble, out cough;

Here I leave

The whooping cough.”

          The Celts regarded the blackberry as a fey (belonging to the fairies) fruit, and therefore not to be eaten.  Blackberry wine, however, was heartily approved of. On the Isle of Man, wise people left the first (and sometimes also the last) berries to the fairy folk; this was called the pixie or the fairy harvest.  Anyone who didn’t follow this advice was liable to be left only with grub-infested berries.

          Conversely, in Cornwall, the first blackberries of the season were said to cure warts, and we have already seen how many folk cures existed for those unsightly growths. Warts must have plagued our ancestors for centuries.

           It has been documented that temporary truces were put into effect during the American Civil War so that soldiers from both sides could pick blackberries.  These were used by medics to brew teas to cure the dysentery and other illnesses that were common in military camps.  Union and Confederate soldiers would often forage from the same bush.

          If you should be picking blackberries, mind out for Old Nick.   

© Copyright 2023 Lisa Karen Miller