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SACRED TREES
Throughout the world, trees have excited feelings of wonder and reverence, and in many mythologies, woods are peopled by a variety of divine, semi-divine or fairy beings. That said, the veneration of trees among Celtic-speaking peoples seems specifically prominent. Numerous historical observers refer to Celtic cultures, such as the Galicians in northern Spain, conducting rituals at a drunemeton, which appears to mean ‘oak-sanctuary’ or ‘sacred oak grove’. It is connected to the Old Irish adjective nemed (‘a sacred thing, place or person’). Nemeta (the plural of nemeton, ‘sacred grove’) may once have been common in Ireland and were likely chosen by early missionaries as sites for churches and monasteries following St Patrick’s arrival in the fifth century.
This idea of trees being sacred appears to be clearly demonstrated in the ancient legal system of early and medieval Ireland known as Brehon Law, which categorised all trees into groups. The Bretha Comaithchesa (Judgements of Neighbourhood) law tract outlines a hierarchy of trees, at the top of which were the airig fedo (‘nobles of the wood’), consisting of the most sacred and valuable trees, such as oak, ash, yew and hazel. Beneath them were the aithig fedo (‘commoners of the wood’), which included willow and birch. After these came the fodla fedo (‘lower divisions of the wood’) – trees and shrubs with limited utility, like elder, aspen, blackthorn and buckthorn. The lowest category of all was losa fedo (‘bushes of the wood’), such as briars, heather and ivy.
Academics have tended to present these categorisations as based on the economic or practical value of each species. The notion that the energy or spiritual potency of the trees may also have been considered has been hardly countenanced. Over time, we came to forget our ancestral understanding of the spiritual dimension of trees; that beyond their provision – of food in the form of nuts and fruit; of medicinal products from their fruits, roots, flowers, bark and leaves; of shelter through shade and building materials; and of timber for cooking, warmth and carving tools and ornaments – they also had a sovereignty of their own. They are living entities, with an ecological importance beyond their own existence. Some might still scoff at such an interpretation, and yet the fact that trees were regarded with a reverence that went beyond their value as arboreal resources will be made clear in the following pages.
For one, there is the fact that the Brehon Laws were based on the principle that trees had status, akin to members of the community. The compensation for damaging a noble tree was five séts (equivalent to two and a half milk cows), while severing someone’s thumb incurred a fine of twenty-one séts. Additional compensations were added, depending on the severity of the damage. If the tree belonged to the aithig fedo (‘commoners of the wood’), debarking a tree or cutting it at its base necessitated payment of a further milk cow, while cutting it at a major fork required a yearling heifer.
Even lopping a branch or harming heather or ivy could entail a fine of one sheep. Few of us today would ever stop to think before cutting a branch off a tree, though, conversely, few Indigenous people still connected to their traditional culture would cut a branch without first seeking permission from the tree and its environment.
Extracted from Seeing What’s Hidden by Manchán Magan, out 17 September
