VLVL2(8) Thickets of Alders I

[pfm2]

>From "The White Goddess"

F FOR FEARN

The fourth tree is the Alder, the tree of Bran. In the battle of the
trees the alder fought in the front line, which is an allusion to the
letter F being one of the first five consonants of the Beth-Luis-Nion
and the Boible-Loth; and in the Irish Ossianic "Song of the Forrest
Trees" it is described as "the very battle witch of all woods, tree that
is hottest in the fight. Though a poor fuel-tree, like the willow,
poplar and chestnut, it is prized by charcoal-burners as yielding the
best charcoal; its connection with fire is shown in the Romance of
Branwen when 'Gwern' (alder), Bran's sister's son, is burned in a
bonfire; and in country districts of Ireland the crime of felling a
sacred alder is held to be visited with the burning down of one's house.


"The alder is also proof against the corruptive power of water: its
slightly gummy leaves resist the winter rains longer than those of any
other deciduous trees and its timber resists decay indefinitely when
used for water-conduits or piles. The Rialto at Venice is founded on
alder piles, and so are several medieval cathedrals. The Roman architect
Vitruvius mentions that alders were used as causeway piles in the
Ravenna marshes.

"The connection of Bran with the alder in this sense is clearly brought
out in the Romance of Branwen where the swineherds (oracular priests) of
King Matholwch of Ireland see a forest in the sea and cannot guess what
it is. Branwen tells them that it is the fleet of Bran the Blessed come
to avenge her. The ships are anchored off-shore and Bran wades through
the shallows and brings his goods and people to land; afterwards he
bridges the River Linon, though it has been protected with a magic
charm, by lying down across the river and having hurdles laid over him.
In other words, first a jetty, then a bridge was built on alder piles.
It was said of Bran, 'No house could contain him.' The riddle 'What can
no house ever contain?' has a simple answer: 'The piles upon which it is
built.' For the earliest European houses were built on alder piles at
the edge of lakes. In one sense the 'singing head' of Bran was the
mummified, oracular head of a sacred king; in another it was the 'head'
of the alder tree - namely the topmost branch. Green alder-branches make
good whistles and, according to my friend Ricardo Sicre y Cerda, the
boys of Cerdana in the Pyrenees have a traditional prayer in Catalan:

	Berng, Berng, come out of your skin
	And I will make you whistle sweetly.

Which is repeated while the bark is tapped with a piece of willow to
loosen it from the wood. (Berng (or Verng in the allied Majorcan
language) is Bran again. The summons to Berng is made on behalf of the
Goddess of the Willow. The use of the Willow for tapping, instead of
another piece of alder, suggests that such whistles were used by witches
to conjure up destructive winds - especially from the North. But musical
pipes with several stops can be made in the same way as the whistles,
and the singing head of Bran in this sense will have been an alder pipe.
At Harlech, where the head sang for seven years, there is a mill-stream
running past the Castle rock, a likely place for a sacred alder-grove.
It is possible that the legend of Apollo's flaying of Marsyas the piper
is reminiscent of the removal of the alder-bark from the wood in
pipe-making. 

The alder was also used in ancient Ireland for making milk pails and
other dairy vessels: hence its poetical name in "The Book of Ballymote",
"Comet Lachta" - 'guarding of milk'. The connection of Bran-Cronos. The
alder, with Rhea-Io, the white moon-cow is of importance. In Ireland, Io
was called 'Glas Gabnach', 'the green stripper', because though she
yielded milk in rivers she never had a calf. She had been stolen out of
Spain by Gavida, the flying dwarf-smith, made the circuit of all Ireland
in one day, guarded by his seven sons (who presumably stood for the days
of the week); and gave the name 'Bothar-bo-finne', "Track of the white
Cow", to the Galaxy. According to "The Proceedings of the Grand Bardic
Acadamy", she was killed by Guaire at the request of Seanchan Torpest's
wife, and according to Keating's "History of Ireland", was avenged in
528 AD. King Diarmuid of All Ireland was killed by his eldest son for
having murdered another sacred cow.

Bran's connection with the Western Ocean is proved by Caer Bran, the
name of the most westerly hill in Britain, overlooking Land's End.