In April 2018, I found myself on the Isle of Wight, it was a long weekend with my mum and our first visit to the island. On the second day we went on a long and not particularly planned ramble. Our wanderings took us along the coast passed Ventnor, until we finally turned inland and arrived in the late afternoon at the village of Godshill. After scones and tea at a tiny café we decided to walk back to our accommodation by taking a public footpath through a wood known as Beech Copse.
It turned out to be the most bluebell filled wood I had ever walked through. The flowers were a vibrant blue against the deep green of the woodland floor, everywhere you looked all you could see were bluebells. The sweet smell filled your senses and we wandered slowly along the path, drinking in the sights and scents around us. It was as if you had stepped into some long-forgotten past, a moment out of time where bluebells swayed in ancient woodland.
What is it that makes woods so mysterious?
Nowhere gives such a sense of mystery and magic as a good wood. Writers and poets have often taken inspiration from the mystery of a wood, Lucy enters a snowbound wood in C. S. Lewis’, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. While fleeing the Nazgul, Merry leads Frodo, Sam and Pippin into the Old Forest, a last bastion of an ancient wood, in Tolkien’s, The Lord of the Rings. In Robert Holdstock’s, Mythago Wood, Stephen Huxley lives by a wood where the archetypes of myths and legends lurk beneath the trees. Wind in the Willows has the wild wood, Harry Potter has the Forbidden Forest, the list is endless.
It all comes down to the same thing, woods are places of magic, there is a sense of the timeless when you walk in a wood. The trees rustle in the wind, sunlight creates a dappled haze through the leafy canopy, shadows deepen, and beneath the foliage of the woodland floor unseen creatures scurry and scamper past you.
In Britain there is a type of woodland known as ancient woodland, these are places that have been wooded for more than 400 years. It is here that the bluebell thrives, and as it grows so to do the myths and legends that surround the delicate blue, bell-like flower.
How does the bluebell fit into folklore?
In many tales’ bluebells have a close association with the Folk, also known as the Fae or Fairies. These are not the kind of fairies from a Disney film, the Fae are often malicious and tricksy, they will lead human’s astray as often as they help them. It is said that if you pick a wild bluebell in the woods then you will wander lost forever, led astray by a fairy. Legend tells us that hearing the ring of a bluebell, that is calling to all Fae within the wood, will lead to your death.
In Scotland the name Harebell, often known as the Scottish bluebell, but a different species to the common bluebell, comes from the belief that witches could turn into hares and used to hide among the flowers.
I do not find it hard to see how these tales came about, walking through a sea of blue flowers with spring sunshine casting a green light across my path, and the trees whispering to each other in a gentle breeze, where better place to meet one of the Folk.
Is there more than one type of bluebell?
There are three types of bluebell found in Britain, the native Common bluebell, the Spanish bluebell and the Hybrid bluebell (which is a mix of the Common and Spanish bluebell). The difference between the Common and Spanish bluebell can be told in how the flowers hang. Common bluebells have drooping stems with flowers all on one side, and a sweet scent; Spanish bluebells have upright stems with flowers clustered about the stem, and no scent.
The Common bluebell is currently at threat from hybridisation with the Spanish bluebell, so if you are thinking about planting them in your garden perhaps go for the native bluebell. Its sweet scent will help encourage bees, and maybe even the Fae, to your garden. Though bees are probably the safer type of visitor.
As for me I will continue my walks through the sunlit glades, keeping a lookout for the Fae, and enjoying the sight and scent of the bluebell woods in spring.
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