Enchanted Elder
One's delight in an elderberry bush overhanging the confused leafage of a hedgerow bank as a more gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia spreading itself on the softest undulating turf. . .
(George Eliot, Mill in the Floss)
The elder has long been considered a magical tree, though there seems to be some confusion over whether its charms are good or evil! Piers Plowman wrote that "Judas japed (cheated) with Jewish siller,/ And sithen on an elder tree/ Hanged himselve."
We Americans, who know the plant as more of a large shrub than a tree, may find this tradition unlikely. But the Old World elder, sambucus nigra, can grow to twenty feet.
Another ancient--and accusing--chant goes, "Bour tree--Bour tree: crooked, rong/ Never straight and never strong;/ Ever bush and never tree/ Since our Lord was nailed on thee."
Elder was known as bore or pipe tree because the ancients removed the pith from its branches to make flutes. The Latin Sambucus is believed to be adapted from the Greek, Sambuca, a musical instrument.
Children also shaped the bores into pop-guns. "That's a perilous shot out of an elder gun," one of Shakespeare's characters comments. Finally, those lighting fires would puff through the hollow rods to stoke the flames. So the plant's common name derives from the Saxon "aeld" or "fire." In this country, Indians fashioned arrows, tapped maple trees, or called elk with elder pipes.
Despite the unhappy traditions associated with it, elder gained a reputation as a protector. In the 1600's William Coles reported that "the common people formerly gathered the leaves of Elder upon the last day of Aprill, which to disappoint the charms of Witches they had affixed to their Doores and Windowes." Cottagers planted elders in their dooryards for the same reason.
A coachman driving a hearse commonly carried a whip of elder, and mourners tossed the tree's green branches into the open grave to preserve the deceased's body from evil. They also planted an elder tree on the new grave, pruning it into the shape of a cross. If it bloomed, they could happily assume that their late loved one was enjoying paradise.
On Christmas Eve, the superstitious cut elder pith into discs, soaked those discs with oil, and floated them in a bowl of water--where they were set afire. By that flickering light, the fearful hoped to be able to identify all of the secret witches in the neighborhood.
Part of the belief in elder's magic must be attributed to pagan myth. According to Danish legend, the tree is inhabited by a wood nymph called the Elder Mother. In Hans Christian Anderson's story, supposedly told to a little boy with a cold who was drinking elderflower tea, "The Little Elder-Tree Mother" is benevolent.
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