A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, I’ve written about gorse before here – I love its coconutty smell, and its cheerful yellow flowers. In ‘Nature’s Calendar’, Rowan Jaines describes the importance of the plant at the festival of Beltane, particularly in Gaelic and Celtic histories. Samhain, now celebrated as Halloween on 31st October, was one end of the season – whilst now it’s largely all about trick  or treating and pumpkin carving, it was (and in some traditions still is) thought to be the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thinnest, a time when supernatural beings could cross the boundary between our world and theirs. However, Beltane, celebrated at the beginning of the season on May Day, had similar traditions.

Celtic scholar John Rhys describes how, at daybreak, the gorse bushes would be set alight to encourage the witches, who took the form of hares, to move on. But the yellow flowers of gorse were also thought to be protective, and to be associated with the Celtic sun god Lugh: the cattle, adorned with the yellow flowers of gorse, would be driven between sacred gorse bushes which had been set alight, in order to offer the herd protection during the summer months.

As often happens, the burning of the gorse also had a practical purpose. In ‘The Battle of the Trees’, the Welsh poet Taliesin described how the gorse ‘is badly behaved until subdued by the fires of Beltane’, which allowed new, succulent growth to emerge.

And here is a poem. The poet, 83 year-old Marcia Cardelús, has been writing for most of her life, but has only just started to submit poems to journals. I rather like this one, and goodness knows we need it…

Gorse by Marcia Cardelús
April 18, 2024 ~ ONE ART

The Northeast corner of
of our local organic food store
Wild by Nature
has that smell.
You know the one.
The one you don’t exactly like
but are attracted to
a kind of witchy brew
of dried herbs,
essential oils, vitamins and incense.

It was there I saw the
“Discover Your Remedy” display,
built of wood, promoting nature.
It was divided into seven sections,
and each of the sections
was divided into subsections
that housed sets of small brown bottles
of labeled remedy.

Only one sub-section was sold out.

Gorse.

I wondered what it was about Gorse
That made it so needed.

I opened the small
drawer of descriptions
in the display,
thumbed down the list
to see.

It said:
The Positive Effect of Gorse is Hope.