The bramble is more than just a prickly shrub

The bramble berries were our food, 

The water was our wine, 

And the linnet in the self-same bush, 

Came after us to dine. 

Alexander Mackenzie, Historical Tales and Legends of the Highlands (1878).

Given that most of our experience with briars is either picking their thorns from our fingertips or beating them to death with a slash hook, it might be no harm to remind ourselves that there is a silver lining to their prickly cloud.

One of my first jobs, in the early days of the Covid crisis, was to chop back the briars that had made their way insidiously into my garden. It was a task that took me several days and while my hedges looked neater, the complete absence of any blackberries the following autumn caused me to reflect.

About the plant 

The Bramble (Rubus fructicosus) or Dris in Irish, refers to any rough tangled prickly shrub, specifically the briar or blackberry bush. It is a native shrub and is widespread throughout Ireland. The Irish Wildlife Trust provides the following information on a plant that turns out to be more friend than foe.

The flowers are produced in late spring and early summer, and are about 2–3 cm in diameter with five white or pale pink petals. The flowers attract nectar-feeding butterflies and hoverflies. The black fruit is not a berry in the botanical sense of the word, botanically it is termed an aggregate fruit, composed of small drupelets. Blackberry leaves are food for caterpillars, some grazing mammals, especially deer, they are very fond of the leaves.

In folklore it is told that blackberries should not be picked after Old Michaelmas Day (October 11) as the devil (or a Púca) has made them unfit to eat, by stepping, spitting, or fouling on them. There is some value behind this legend as wetter and cooler weather often allows the fruit to become infected by various moulds which give the fruit an unpleasant look and may be toxic.

Folklore 

Often in our old traditions, troublesome things could also be useful. The most persistent weeds for instance might have a cure for some ailment. The briar or bramble is one such plant. Left unchecked it quickly takes over and yet it has its uses. The following was collected from Dan Mc Laughlin, Glennagiveny, Co Donegal. (Schools’ Folklore Collection. Volume 1118, Page 261).

The people thatched in olden times with briars. They took the "jags" off them and seared them. These briars are called "scolps". They thatched and sewed the houses with this and it lasted for ten years. In later years, the people thatched with flax, oaten straw, barley straw, wheaten straw, and sometimes rushes.

Like ourselves here in the Ox Mountain, Scotland also has the briar in plentiful supply. Wee White Hoose is an interesting platform exploring stories, traditions, and folklore from Scotland. They have this to say about the bramble.

The bramble was a valuable plant, with every part of it being put to use – the fruits for food, the roots and stems for dyeing, and the leaves for medicinal purposes. An infusion of the plant’s astringent leaves was used to treat snake bites, burns, dysentery, and diarrhoea. The constricting quality was said to be so strong that ‘its young shoots, when eaten as a salad, would fasten teeth that were loose’ (Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics by Richard Folkard, 1892).

A group nearer to home, Irish Hedgerows, in an article under the heading, Folklore of the Hedgerow, outlines further information on the fruit of the briar, the blackberry.

The flower of the blackberry was a symbol of beauty to the Gaelic poets. Blackberries were traditionally eaten mashed up with oatmeal to make a tasty porridge and for making jam. The roots were used to make an orange dye. In Ireland, the root of the bramble was used to make the core for hurling balls.

Curative properties 

Medicinal concoctions made from the various parts of the briar include using the leaves in a cure for diarrhoea in both cattle and people. It was also used for a variety of skin complaints such as scalds, burns, boils and shingles.

An arch of bramble, which had rooted at both ends, was believed to have special powers and if you wished to invoke the spirits you could do so by crawling through the arch at Samhain while making your wish. An arch of bramble could also be used to cure a child with whooping cough; by passing it under the arch three times before breakfast for nine consecutive days while saying, “In bramble, out cough, here I leave the whooping cough.” Enough surely to make any child forget about their cough.

A short extract from the book Tales from the West of Ireland by Sean Henry points to further possibilities for the briar’s curative properties.

Some years ago, I called to a well-known County Mayo chemist for a remedy for calf scour. I mentioned to him that in my neighbourhood people of old had great faith in the soup of boiled briar roots for this ailment. The chemist said that tannin was a popular agent for contracting the lower bowel to arrest scour. Briar root, he said, contained a high percentage of tannin.

Bitter experience 

I have personal experience of the briar’s ability to bring healing. At one time in my life, my father tried to coax me into farming. I started off with an in-calf heifer and we both happily sat back and awaited the arrival of the rudiments of my future herd. When the little calf arrived, she was puny and not that well prepared for the sucking life. Worse than that, the calf had a mother that didn’t quite fancy the sucking life either.

Eventually, with a lot of help (three or four times daily), the donny little calf got to fill her belly. This procedure continued for a few days until the calf developed an all-consuming dose of white scour. Whatever strength the poor little thing had gained in the previous few days was now gone and her beaten body lay listless on her straw bed. She seemed in all respects to be a goner. But my father, in his continuing efforts to make me a herd owner, was not to be outdone. In a last-ditch effort to save the day, he went out to the hedge, procured some briar leaves and proceeded to boil them into a bitter-tasting tea.

I was not hopeful. In fact, I was beginning to think that the best possible outcome, for me and my father and the cow and the calf, was for the wretched waif to pass away. Undaunted however, my father, through the conduit of a mineral bottle, dosed the ailing calf with the briar juice. As I remember, he didn’t have to maintain the procedure for very long because the results of his intervention were fast and dramatic. As if by a miracle, the calf came back to life. She began to perk up and was soon thriving again. She was never the same but she did grow to adolescence and was eventually sold in the local mart for a reasonable price.

I never became a farmer. Maybe the miracle powers of the briar also cured me of that notion.