THE FOLKLORE OF PLANTS: Briar

Lisa Karen Miller

          Little Briar Rose was the original name of that most famous of slumber party girls, Sleeping Beauty. The oldest known version of the story, written between 1330 and 1344, appears in the Perceforest narrative. Although we are familiar with the version of the story where she pricks her finger on a spindle, in the original, it is a splinter of flax.

          Either way, she is saved from the drudgery of being a spinster her entire life by her overprotective parents, who banish all spinning wheels from the palace.

          The term spinster originally meant a woman who spun or carded wool. Those jobs were on the lower end of the textile manufacturing spectrum.  Higher-paying positions went to married ladies. Eventually it came to be a synonym for an unmarried woman.

          It’s clear from many of our local place names – Briarfield, Greenbriar, Briarwood, etc. – that the genus Smilax has very much made itself at home here in Kentucky.

          Found in hedgerows and thickets (and my landscaping), briars provide protective shelter for rabbits, birds, and other small animals. They discourage foxes, coyotes, snakes, and other predators from devouring their young.

          On April 21, 1972, astronaut John Young became the ninth person to step onto the moon, and in his first words he stated, “I’m sure glad they got ol’ Brer Rabbit, here, back in the briar patch where he belongs.”

          Brer (Brother) Rabbit features in many folktales of the south. His exploits are recorded in Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories. Rabbits are quite used to briar patches, so they are adept at finding a way out of prickly situations.  This makes them the perfect trickster character in folklore.

          After Brer Fox tricks him into getting tangled up with the tar baby, he is surprised to find Rabbit calmly combing the tar out of his fur.

          “I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox,” he called.

          “Smoking a briar” meant smoking a pipe, as they were often made from briarwood. The story goes that when Napoleon broke his favorite meerschaum, a local pipe maker grabbed a hunk of briar wood and carved him a new one, starting the fashion.

          If you have a good sturdy pair of thorn-proof gloves, an effective rabbit fence can be woven around your precious veggie patch using long green briar stems.  You can even plant a living briar fence, much as people do with prickly pears in the Southwest to keep burglars out.

          Just don’t forget to leave yourself a way out.

© Copyright 2023 Lisa Karen Miller