Some of the cooking juices spattered the apprentice’s thumb so he put his thumb into his mouth. He tasked his apprentice with cooking the salmon, but he wasn’t to eat any. A Druid envied the salmon’s wisdom and caught it. According to the Trees for Life website, a salmon ate the hazelnuts from these trees. Those who are the nuts became seers and poets (Baker 2011 : 71). The nuts fell into the water, creating “bubbles of mystic inspiration”. In Ireland nine hazel trees surrounded the well of life. Boys in Wales might signify they’d changed their mind, or wanted to break an engagement, by giving a girl a hazel stick (Mac Coitir 2003). Yet there is a darker side to the link between love and hazel trees. The Romans even burned hazel torches on the wedding night to bring happiness to the new couple (Baker 2011 : 72). Whichever nut gave the loudest pop or brightest flame indicated the best prospect (Baker 2011 : 71). They assigned the names of potential partners to different hazelnuts and tossed the nuts into the fire. Girls might even use hazelnuts to identify their future husband. Bear in mind that ‘going nutting’ and ‘gathering nuts’ were euphemisms for lovemaking (Simpson 2007: 170). According to one belief, if girls collected nuts on Sunday, they would ‘meet the Devil’ and be pregnant on their wedding day (Baker 2011 : 71). This isn’t so surprising when you learn hazelnuts were linked with love, fertility, birth, knowledge, and poetry (Baker 2011 : 71).Ī Somerset belief noted that “Plenty of catkins, plenty of prams”, linking the tree with population booms (Baker 2011 : 71). In Devon, this job fell to an old woman who waited outside the church to greet the bride with a basket of hazelnuts (Baker 2011 : 71). It was once a tradition to give brides hazelnuts on their wedding day to pass on wisdom, fertility, and good fortune (Dietz 2020: 66). If they burned steadily, it meant the relationship would fare well, but if the nuts flew apart, it spelled doom (2021). Yet note that Nutcrack Night was actually Halloween, the night on which young couples roasted hazelnuts over the fire. Nutcrack Night in November marked the day when people opened their stored nuts (Trees for Life 2021). Children got the day off school to collect nuts, though this custom died out with the First World War (Trees for Life 2021). In one old custom, 14 September was Holy Cross Day. ![]() The current Glastonbury Abbey, by Charalampos Koniaris
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