Alder:
Ogham letter: F
Ogham name: Fearn
Celtic tree month: mar18th to ap14th.
Appearance:
The alder grows to a height of approximately sixty to seventy feet with a girth of twelve to fifteen feet. Juvenile trees are conical in shape rather like fir trees but as it matures its crown becomes more open and straggly. The leaves of the Alder are roughly round in shape, pointed where they meet the stem and slightly flattened at the other. In colour the leaves are a dark glossy green. There is no autumnal colour so to speak, the leaves just get darker and darker till they fall as, sometimes as late as December.
The Alder has male and female catkins on the same tree, the female catkins look like small cones which stay on the tree all winter.
Medicine:
The leaves of the Alder make an excellent poultice for all sorts of swellings and inflammations. This could be because the Alder is reputed to be able to balance fire (inflammations) and water (swellings) it is said placing Alder leaves in work boots and socks helps tired and aching feet, I wonder about this as I would think this to be jolly uncomfortable. Alder bark made into pills was said to have been beneficial in the treatment of general digestive weakness and enteritis. A decoction of the bark was once used to try and stem internal bleeding. The same decoction could be used as a gargle.
Folklore:
There are several possible meanings to the name Alder. One being that it is derived from the Anglo-Saxon root Alor or Aler meaning reddish brown. This could be from the fact that the wood of the Alder which is a pale colour turns red when cut leading the wood cutters of old to think that the tree was bleeding.
Another possibility is that in Scandinavian myth the first women was created from the Alder, and in Irish myth the first man so possibly Alder simply means Elder.
The Alder is closely associated in mythology with all forms of resurrection. The alder is closely associated with the yearly cycle of the Sun in fact the spring equinox falls within the month of Alder, a time when the power of the Sun is restored to us.
The Alder is known as a tree which is the King of the Fairies and as such carried people of into the otherworld. This other world thought pattern is carried on in that the bird most associated with the Alder is the Raven. As white birds such as the Stork became synonymous with birth so the Raven was associated with death and the otherworld. It is interesting then to find that the Deities most thought of in respect of the Alder, such as Saturn, Chronos and Bran for the Gods, and the Morrigan for the Goddess are also Raven deities.
Pangur-ban
Very interesting!
ReplyDeleteLet me comment that in celtic myth and lore... teh "raven" motif is asociated to the "alder" because of it's deity "Bran", but actually the corresponding bird is the "seagull"
The character of Bran retains the quality and significance of ‘Strength’and "Power"
At this point it is quite accepted that these qualities are related "war" and "battle" and thus the raven motif appears.
But curiously, in the alfabet pertaining to the trees and considered of druidical origin, the
letter ‘F’, related to Bran keeps the fourth place, being the Alder tree referred to it. The bird in this case is the "seagull" (faoileán).
Sacred for the belief of its ‘bleeding’ when cut down, the wood of this tree was used by ‘Bran the Blessed’ for the piles of a bridge he
constructed across the Irish Sea in order to rescue his sister Branwen. Because of its underwater durability it was used for such practicall things as watermill-wheels, canal lock-gates and milk pails.
In the calendary derived from this "oracular alfabet" the Alder is related to
the month March 18th through April 14th, this fourth month comprises the period
on which the sun of Spring dries the floods of Winter; we must note that some
celtic houses were raised over alder piles to prevent their insides from the
floods.
The Alder was also honoured because of the variety of dyes obtained from this
tree: red from its bark; green from its flowers; and brown from its twigs. On
Welsh Triads, those ‘crimson stained heroes’ used alder dyes since it was also
refered to as ‘ro-eim’ which means ‘that which redens the face’.
Also mentioned in the ossianic ‘Song of the Forest Trees’ as the ‘most fiery in battle’,we may associate the alder as ‘the tree of fire’, due to the power of fire to free the earth from water, and the branch of alder was related to Bran in the welsh poem Cad Godew -The Battle of the Trees- included in the Book of Taliesin, as a signal of resurrection since their sprouts are of spiral form.
Keep on shining!
Peace and light ☼