the way I was taught by my Sicilian grandma was that "Sambuca", the spirit of the elder, does not like fire, and will make you sick if you burn him....but if you honor his wishes he will make good wine from his berries and flowers..and will keep flies and witches away from the house...in Sicily, elder is kept over doorways to keep witches away and bundles are used with holy water to bless / cleanse the home...name was changed to "San Sambuca" after the inquisition. thanks for the video!
Elder is a preferred wood for making firesticks to produce fire by hand (or bow) drilling. Drilling turns the pith into coal dust. I think this is a more likely explanation for the aeld (or ild - as it is called here in Denmark) origin of the treename. Unfortunately it is not called Ildetræ in danish :)
you should put the latin names of the trees you cover in your videos in the description. that way people outside of the uk can find out which tree you are talking about.
I wonder what the elder has that repels flies. It can't be the "bad smell" as such, it would have to be a chemical constituent since 'flies' and 'bad smell' generally go together. At any rate, I'm subbing - I love learning about Nature/Folklore intersections! (And I just found you while viewing the Professor's Braziline video on Periodic Table of Videos).
So that's where the Elderberries come from! One famous line from Monty Python states "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled like Elderberries!" Thank you Nottingham Science!
@biohazard93808 I think you may have something, there. I googled on the constituents of both and yes, there does appear to be some cross-over. Personally, I love the smell of Citronella, but maybe only because it invokes my childhood and catching fireflies in the backyard, while reeking of citronella. :D
I don't think the driuds are a recommendation for anything. They were recent incomers to Britain, not part of the ancient celtic people. They practised dark rituals including sacrifice and they were elitist, not allowing others to write, only them. I'm sure they had a lot of knowledge, but it was already very tainted in their secret societies. Need to go further back in time.
There is no Old English word eldr 'fire'; that is an Old Norse word and has nothing to do with elder the tree; like alder (from OE alor) the [d] is epenthetic in ellern-treow 'elder' which is the Old English form.
Thanks for clarifying (though what does epenthetic mean?). In the thousand-year old Anglo-Saxon charters (legal documents describing the boundary of properties), the elder tree is written as 'ellerbeam' or 'elebeam, ' where 'beam' would mean 'tree' (today the Germans say 'baum.') So I wonder if 'el' just means 'the' and 'der' means 'tree,' ie. 'elder' perhaps simply means 'the tree.' So alder could mean the same. Maple used to be called Mapleder in English, also suggesting that 'der' just means 'tree.'
i thought the UK didn't have flies. I see videos of people hanging meat up to cure in the open air! You couldn't do that here in Australia, it would get eaten by flies.
Well I’ve just spent all afternoon logging up some elders I felled in my garden and it will be a cheap way to heat my house once it has seasoned…. I’ll deal with the devil if he comes calling 😈
Take care, I think elder wood releases some noxious fumes when burnt, and that is why it is said that the devil comes. There's usually truthful information in folklore, I believe, it's about interpretation.
It is a shrub with leaflets of 2-3 pairs of toothed leaves. It bears wide, flat clusters of white, fragrant flowers that later turn into bunches of tiny purple-black berries.
But alder is a different tree to elder. Alder is a tall tree with wind-pollinated catkins and seeds in woody cones. Elder is a shrub with insect-pollinated white flowers and small berries.
@CoolMinty titilaflora [dot] net/gutes-zum-nachkochen/gebackene-hollerbluten-im-bierteig/ deliciousdays [dot] com/archives/2006/06/14/elderflower-bubbly-fried/ I tried them myself several times ;-)
All of it except the flowers, I understand, ie. the leaves and raw (esp. unripe) berries. I think the wood has noxious chemicals too. But if you boil the berries, then you an eat them too.
