The hedgerow has gone over into October, and the light is the flat gray that does not change all day.
Everything is the same three colors. Wet bark, dying leaf, and the dull green of the field behind.
Then the rowan, and the berries on it are too bright for any of it.
Orange-red, in heavy clusters, hanging where the leaves have already started to go thin and rust-colored.
They look painted on. They look like something somebody put there on purpose, in a season that had otherwise given up on color.
People have been noticing that for a very long time, and they built a charm out of it.
Two things, and nothing else. A little wood from this tree, and a length of red thread.
The Rhyme, and Where It Comes From
There is an old Scottish couplet that comes with this charm, and you will meet it in several wordings.
The usual form runs: Rowan tree and red thread, gar the witches tyne their speed.
To gar is to make or compel. To tyne is to lose. The line means the pair together takes the speed out of what is coming at you.
It was written down by collectors in the nineteenth century, which is not the same as saying it began there.
Rhymes of that kind are usually much older in the mouth than on the page, and there is no way to date them properly.
Say it plainly when you say it. It is a working line, not a performance, and it was never spoken by anyone with an audience.
How Far the Belief Traveled
Rowan turns up in protective folklore across Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia, with the same job everywhere.
It was planted beside houses and at the gates of farmyards. Sprigs were fixed over doors and over the byre where the cattle stood.
It has carried a great many local names — mountain ash, quicken, quickbeam, witchwood — and the names travel with the belief.
In the Irish tree alphabet, rowan is the few called Luis, and the alphabet itself is set out in the ogham tree alphabet.
Be careful with anyone who tells you exactly why the tree got this reputation. The honest answer is that nobody knows.
Guesses include the color of the berries, the small five-pointed star at the base of each one, and the tree’s habit of growing in hard high places where little else will.
All three are plausible and none of them is documented. What is documented is that the practice was widespread and stubborn.
Knowing a Rowan When You See One
Identify the tree properly before you cut anything from it. This is not fussiness; it is the difference between a charm and a mistake.
Rowan is a slim tree, often no thicker than a leg, with smooth gray bark that goes shallow-ridged with age.
The leaves are pinnate — a row of small toothed leaflets in pairs along a stem, usually somewhere between nine and seventeen of them, with one at the tip.
In spring it carries flat heads of small cream-white flowers. From late summer it carries dense clusters of orange to scarlet berries.
The common confusion is with true ash, which has a similar pinnate leaf but fatter twigs, sooty black buds in winter, and winged keys rather than berries.
Elder also has pinnate leaves, but its berries hang in dark purple-black heads and its wood is soft and pithy in the middle.
If you are not certain, do not cut. Take a photograph, check it against a field guide, and come back next week. The tree will still be there.
Gathering a Little
Take almost nothing. A charm of this kind needs two pieces of twig about the length of a finger.
Cut from a living tree only with permission from whoever owns the ground, and never from a protected site or a nature reserve.
Fallen wood is better than cut wood in most seasons, and there is usually plenty after a wind.
Cut clean, at a joint, with a sharp blade, and take from a place that will not leave the tree lopsided.
Some accounts say the wood should be taken without iron, and others say nothing about it. Treat that as one variant among several rather than a rule you have broken.
Leave something if that is your habit. Water at the root is the plainest offering there is and it costs nothing.
The general practice of cutting, drying and keeping plant material is in gathering and drying herbs.
The Berries, and the Plain Caution
This is the part to read twice, because rowan berries look far more edible than they are.
Rowan berries are not safe to eat raw. Raw, they can cause stomach upset, and a handful is enough to make someone ill.
Nothing on this page involves eating or drinking anything. There is no tea here, no tincture, no syrup, no infusion.
Rowan jelly is a real traditional food, but it is made by cooking, it is a kitchen matter, and it has nothing to do with this charm.
Keep berries off the floor and off low surfaces. A dog or a cat that chews them can be made sick, and a small child will always try one.
If you have pets or small children in the house, use twigs alone and leave the berries on the tree.
If anyone does eat some, call a doctor or a vet rather than looking for a remedy in a book of spells.
Red Thread: Wool, Cotton and Color
The thread half of the pair is as important as the wood, and it is easier to get right.
Red wool is the traditional choice. It is soft, it takes a knot without slipping, and it holds a dye well.
Cotton thread, embroidery floss, a length of red bootlace or a strip torn from a red cloth will all serve.
Color is doing the work here. Choose a red you would call red without hesitating — not maroon, not pink, not rust.
Red thread appears in protective customs across a great many cultures, some of them closed to outsiders and not yours to borrow.
What is described here is the northern European use, which travels with the rowan and belongs with it.
Buy a small reel and it will outlast every charm you make from it.
What Wearing a Thread Has Meant
A thread tied on a body is one of the oldest and simplest pieces of practical craft there is.
Around a wrist, an ankle, a finger, a cow’s tail, the handle of a churn. Tied on and left to wear away in its own time.
It is small enough to go unremarked and cheap enough to replace, which is exactly why it survived.
Wearing one puts the working where you will feel it, several times a day, without thinking about it.
The thread catches on a sleeve. You touch it when you are anxious. That is the charm working the way charms work.
The idea that it should fall off by itself rather than be cut is common, and it is a good habit whether or not it is old.
Knots, Counts and Length
Knots are how a thread stops being string and becomes a working.
Three is the usual count for a charm this size. Seven and nine both appear, and both are longer to say over.
Cut the thread longer than you think you need. Twelve inches for a bound cross, twice around the wrist plus a hand’s width for a wrist tie.
Tie each knot slowly. One breath, one knot, one line spoken. Fast knots make a fast charm and a fast charm is a poor one.
Pull each one properly tight so the wood cannot shift inside the binding.
The wrist tie needs a knot you can make one-handed, or somebody willing to hold the other end.
The Rite: The Cross and Thread in One Sitting
This is made in a single sitting, start to finish, and it takes about a quarter of an hour.
What you need
- Two pieces of rowan twig, each about the length of your index finger
- A length of red wool or thread, roughly twelve inches
- A sharp knife or a pair of pruning shears, and a steady surface
- A cloth to work on, so nothing rolls off the table
- A few minutes when nobody will need you
The steps
- Trim both twigs to the same length. Strip off any leaves and any berries, and put the berries straight in the trash rather than on the table.
- Lay one across the other at the middle, at a right angle, making an equal-armed cross.
- Hold the crossing point between finger and thumb. Take up the thread and lay its middle against the back of the join.
- Wind the two ends across the front of the cross in opposite diagonals, then back behind, then across again — the same wrap you would use to lash two sticks together.
- Keep winding until the join is covered and the arms no longer move against each other.
- Tie the first knot at the back. Say the line as you pull it tight.
- Tie the second and the third the same way, one breath each.
- Trim the ends short, or leave them long enough to hang the charm by.
- Hold the finished cross in a closed hand until it has taken your warmth. Then it is made.
The line to say is the old one, or your own. Rowan tree and red thread is enough on its own if you want no more than that.
Where the Charm Goes
Above a door is the traditional place, on the inside, out of the weather.
Over the back door as well as the front, if you are making two, because the back door is the one people forget.
A car, a bag, a toolbox, the inside of a closet, the frame of a bed. Anywhere it will not be handled every day.
Hang it or lay it flat. It does not need a shelf of its own or anything arranged around it.
Keep it out of reach of pets and small children, for the same reason as the berries.
Do not hang it where it will get rained on. Wet wood goes soft, thread rots, and the charm looks sorry for itself by February.
Afterward: The Hour After Making
Sweep the offcuts and any berries into the trash, and wipe the table down.
Wash your hands before you eat anything or touch a pet, which is ordinary care rather than ceremony.
Put the knife away. Put the reel of thread back where it lives.
Then leave the room for a while and do something with no meaning attached to it at all.
Write down what you did, and the date, and what tree it came from, in whatever book you keep.
You will want that note in a year, when the charm has gone brown and you are deciding what to do with it.
Charms like this have long stood alongside the older ideas about turning aside ill will, which are gathered in the evil eye.
When There Is No Rowan
Rowan does not grow everywhere, and a charm you cannot make is no charm at all.
Do not order twigs from the other side of the world to satisfy a rhyme. The point of this working was always that the tree stood nearby.
Substitute without apology. The craft has always used what the ground offered.
What matters is that you chose the wood, cut or gathered it yourself, and know which tree it came from.
A charm made from a tree at the end of your own street will do more for you than one made from imported rowan.
If you want rowan in the long run, plant one. It is a small, hardy, undemanding tree and it will outlive the charm considerably.
Other Woods That Will Serve
Any of these makes a sound cross, and none of them requires you to identify a berry.
- Ash — straight, strong, splits cleanly, and carries protective folklore of its own
- Birch — pale, light, associated with beginnings and with sweeping a place clean
- Hazel — flexible, easy to cut, and traditionally tied to protection and finding
- Oak — heavy, slow, and about as durable as a small charm can be
- Plain untreated wood from a kindling bag, if no tree is available at all
Avoid anything painted, varnished, pressure-treated or salvaged from a building site.
Avoid yew altogether for a charm that will be handled, since the plant is poisonous and there is no reason to invite the question.
Two lengths of dowel from a hardware store, cut to size and bound with red thread, is an honest charm. Nobody has to know but you.
Keeping It Through the Year
Look at it once a season. That is enough attention for a charm of this kind.
The thread will fade where the light hits it, and the wood will go from green to gray-brown and lose a little weight.
Dust it with a dry cloth. Do not wash it, and do not oil it.
If the thread breaks, you can rebind the same wood rather than starting over. Use fresh thread and the same count of knots.
If the wood cracks through, the charm has finished its year early, and that is all it means.
Make the next one. There is no shortage of twigs.
Burning or Burying It at Year’s End
A charm made of plant matter has a natural term, and a year is the usual one.
Take it down at the turn of the year, or at the season when you made it, whichever you will actually remember.
Burning is the common ending. A stove, a fire pit, a garden brazier — outdoors or in a proper hearth, never in a dish on a table.
Cut the thread off first if it is synthetic, since synthetic thread makes a smoke you do not want to stand in.
Burying is the quieter ending. Wood and wool both rot down without harming anything, and a hedge base or a plant pot will take them.
Say one line as you do it. You held the year. The year is done.
Then make the new one, if the new year wants one, and hang it where the old one was.
What the Charm Does Not Do
It is not aimed at a person. Not a neighbor, not an ex, not the name that came to mind while you were reading.
It does not cure anything, and it does not stand in for a lock, a smoke alarm or a difficult conversation.
What it reliably does is put you at a table in October with two twigs and a length of red wool, doing something deliberate with your hands.
You come away with an object above a door that you made yourself, from a tree you found and identified.
Every time you go under it you will remember that. That is the whole mechanism, and it is not a small one.
The rhyme is generations of people doing exactly this, at the same time of year, in the same flat gray light.
You are only the most recent of them, and the tree is still standing in the hedgerow.