Few landscapes in Britain feel as deeply enchanted as North Wales. With its mist-shrouded hills and mountains, ancient woodlands, and windswept coastline, it is a place where the boundary between the everyday and the otherworldly has always seemed thin. It should come as no surprise then that the plants growing in this landscape carry centuries of legend, superstition, and sacred meaning.
The Sacred Grove: Druidic Roots
The Druids, particularly associated with Ynys Môn (Anglesey), off the north-west coast of Wales, were believed to have a deep connection to the natural world and its powers. Among the plants they revered, mistletoe (uchelwydd in Welsh) was especially significant when found growing on an oak tree. In his Naturalis Historia, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder records that Druidic priests would climb the tree and cut the mistletoe with a golden sickle, which was caught in a white cloth so that it never touched the ground. The plant was believed to possess powerful healing properties, to counteract poisons, and to promote fertility in livestock. This ancient reverence may echo to this day in the tradition of hanging mistletoe at Christmas.
Guardians of the Threshold
With so much emphasis on the spirit world in Welsh folk belief, particularly the mischievous and sometimes dangerous Tylwyth Teg – the fairy folk – it is understandable that certain plants came to be valued above all else as guardians of the home.
Of these, the rowan tree (criafolen) was the most powerful. Planted close to homes, it was believed to repel witches and evil spirits. Farmers would twist small crosses from rowan twigs and bind them with red thread, the colour itself having protective power, fixing them above doorways, over cattle stalls, and inside milk churns to prevent bewitchment. This was done with particular urgency on Nos Galan Mai (May Eve – 30th of April), when the veil between worlds was thought to be at its thinnest and witches most active.
Throughout history, the elder tree (ysgawen) has been viewed as kindly and beneficent on one hand, yet spiteful and malevolent on the other. Some traditions held that a witch could take the form of an elder, and its wood was never used for a baby’s cradle, for fear that harm would come to the child. According to Marie Trevelyan’s Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (1909), elders were planted near the door of a cow-shed or stable to protect animals from witchcraft and sorcery. Before cutting any branch, it was customary to ask permission from the spirit believed to dwell within the tree, sometimes referred to in British folklore as the Elder Mother; cut without asking, and misfortune was sure to follow.
Several plants of North Wales were so intimately linked with the Tylwyth Teg that to interfere with them carelessly was to court disaster. The hawthorn (draenen wen, meaning “white thorn”) was perhaps the most significant. Solitary hawthorn trees standing in open fields were understood to be fairy meeting places, and farmers would plough around them rather than disturb them. In days past, hawthorn blossoms were placed before homes and farm buildings on Nos Galan Mai to ward off the fairy folk. Yet bringing the blossoms indoors was widely regarded as an omen of death. Two beliefs reinforced this taboo: the fairy association made it dangerous, as you were in effect inviting the Tylwyth Teg across your threshold – but there was also something more visceral at work. Hawthorn blossom contains trimethylamine, a compound also present in decaying animal tissue, giving the flowers a scent associated with death and decomposition.
Foxglove (bysedd y cŵn – “dogs’ fingers”, or menyg ellyllon – “fairies’ gloves”) was another fairy plant. The tall spotted bells were said to be worn by the fairy folk as gloves, and picking them carelessly was thought to draw the fairies’ attention in unwelcome ways. Welsh legend also held that the flowers bow and sway when the fairy folk pass by. The foxglove has accumulated an extraordinary number of Welsh names over the centuries, among them Ffion, simply meaning “foxglove” and now a popular girl’s name. The English name for the plant has inspired much debate. One explanation suggests it evolved from “folk’s glove”, a reference to the fairy folk, though Old English “foxes glofa” indicate that an association with foxes may be equally ancient. What is certain is that the foxglove, like the rowan, the hawthorn, and the elder, has never quite shed its air of the uncanny.
A Living Heritage
What is striking about North Welsh plant folklore is not simply its age, but its persistence. These traditions have survived the coming of Christianity, the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution, and the profound social changes of the twentieth century and beyond.
Though few people today would openly claim to fear witches in the hawthorn or fairies beneath the rowan, some old customs linger. For generations, the people of North Wales have lived in close relationship with the land around them. Plants and trees were woven into the rhythms of daily life, marking the seasons, healing the sick, protecting the household, providing a practice and a language through which the mysteries of fortune, death, and the unseen world could be understood and, hopefully, dealt with.
The plants themselves remain: hawthorn frothing white along the hedgerows in spring, the heady scent of elder flowers filling the early summer air; foxgloves rising in purple spires along woodland edges and stone walls. And come autumn, the vivid scarlet of the rowan brightens hillside and lane.
Many of the old beliefs may survive only in fragments, yet in every flower, berry, and leaf lies a reminder of a time when the natural world was not separate from the realms of myth and magic. And perhaps that is why these traditions endure. Because, even in an age of science and technology, there remains something irresistible about the idea that the hills, woods, and hedgerows of North Wales may yet hold a little enchantment.