DASG Blog

An Droigheann agus an Sgitheach

How did it come to be that the Gael would describe the personality of a person according to the trees?

Some of them are pleasant and abundant in spring and summer. Some of them have a connection with the faeries and with good fortune: the rowan, for example.

As we have seen, some were used to satirise and curse people, and thus they were warned against using them for different things; walking crooks, amongst others. I learned this phrase while on the cùrsa Arainneachd Cànain is Dualchais, the Gaelic in the Landscape course:

Oak rod to encourage cattle to breed,
Birch rod for giving birth,
Hazel rod brings death,
Rowan rod causes starvation’.
 
I make reference to the two poems from the blog on the alder, in which the blackthorn (droigheann) was used described as an honourable tree, Alasdair of Glengarry was fortunate in that he was likened to the blackthorn and to the holly.
 
But James MacIntyre made very clear that Samuel Johnston was not at all like the blackthorn but like the hawthorn; an sgitheach. MacIntyre stated of him:
 
“...Nails of hawthorn and alder hands.”
 
Despite how similar the two trees are to eachother, the hawthorn seems to be an undesirable, perhaps unlucky tree, rather than the blackthorn.
 
It took a lot of shifting through the Corpus in an attempt to find references to the blackthorn as being a particularly praised tree. There were plenty of the blackthorn as the thorny tree that they forced Christ to wear on the cross. It was for religious reasons that they were thought of in a negative way.
 
Àirne or àirneag is what is known by the blackthorn berries. These are very bitter, at least, until they are dried out and then immersed again in order to make sloe gin. Perhaps it is this that gives us the following phrase:
 
Is fheàrr an dris na ’n droighinn; is fheàrr an droighinn na ’n Donas.

“The bramble is better than the blackthorn; and the blackthorn is better than the Devil.”
 
The blackthorn is thorny. The following proverb is found in Gaelic Proverbs:

“Am fear a théid ’s an droigheann domh , théid mi ’s an dris da.”
A man who goes through the blackthorn for me, I’ll go through the bramble for him.

They would say dreathan-dubh in the Ross of Mull, and dreathan for the hawthorn, but do not confuse these with the dreathan-donn, which is the wren. In the dictionary of Ewan MacEacharn (1769-1849), Faclair Gailig us Beurla, the definition of dreaghan is ‘thorn.’ Thus we have the literal description of the trees from their thorny appearance. The wren would sometimes nest and forage in the thorny bushes and trees, is this the reason for it having this name? From the information I obtained on the Gaelic in the Landscape course, ‘drean’ was a word we obtained from ‘draoi-eun,’ meaning a bird connected to the druids. However, it seems more likely that a connection would be made with the word in Irish Gaelic ‘drean’ for the wren. ‘Dreanacht’ is the word for wren-lore, as you will on the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language.
 
In Breakish, Skye, the hawthorn is known as a craobh-sgiuchag. An informant in Killin called it a sgitheag. Searmaiche was the word in North Uist. Sgeachagan are what are known by hawthorn hips.   
 
Listen to the rhymes and proverbs featured in this blog here.



And you may hear, and read, what the wren has to say here:

Thig thig, thig a dhiol-dèirce,
Thig thig, thig a ghille-frìde;
Is gillean-frìde na h-eòin uile
Ach mise leam fhìn,
Ach mise leam fhìn,
Gillean-frìde, gillean-frìde.
 
Come, come, come beggar,
Come, come, come mite
And the birds are all mites
But me alone,
But me alone,
Mites, mites!
 
I will conclude, although I do not have a conclusion to make about the blackthorn and hawthorn as being particularly lucky/ unlucky/ magical or mysterious. Please get in touch on Facebook and Twitter.