Pagan Studies ~ The Bawming Ceremony of Appleton Thorn

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Appleton Thorn village isthe only village in Englandwhere the ‘Bawming of the Thorn’ ceremony takes place in June each year. Thethorn tree which stands beside the church is believed to be an offshoot of the Glastonbury thorn whichgrew from the staff of Joseph of Arimathea. It was brought to Appleton by Adam de Dutton, a knight of theCrusades and local landowner. Bawming, which means decorating the tree withflowers and ribbons, takes place each year whilst local children dance and singthe Bawming song:

“Up with freshgarlands, this midsummer morn,

Up with the redribbons on AppletonThorn.

Come lasses andlads to the Thorn Tree today,

To bawm it andshout as ye bawm it ‘hooray’!”

The Hawthorn tree(Crataegus oxacantha) is one of the sacred trees of Wicca/Witchcraft and isassociated with the spring celebrations.  The main spring celebration isthat of May Day which honors the sun god Belenus.  His festival commencedon the first day the hawthorn blossoms opened, but today it is now celebratedon the 1st of May.

In Irish folklorethe hawthorn, or whitethorn, is also sometimes referred to as the fairy bush,and it was considered bad luck to cut it in fear of offending the fairies thatinhabit the tree.  However, during the May Day celebrations the collectingof the sprigs and flowers was allowed for use in the festivities, after whichthey were place in the home to banish all evil influences.  In Teutoniclore, the hawthorn had an entirely different meaning, to them the hawthorn wasa symbol of death and its wood was used for funeral pyres.

In ancient Greece,crowns of hawthorn blossoms were made for wedding couples, and the weddingparty all carried burning torches of hawthorn.  The Roman Goddess Cardea,who presided over marriage and childbirth, was associated with thehawthorn.   She was also known as the "White Goddess" andwas the mistress of Janus who guarded all doorways and portals, as such Cardeabecame known as the “hinge of the door of the year”.  Her primary symbolwas the hawthorn branch and her festival was celebrated in May.  InItalian iconography she is depicted carrying a bough of hawthorn as aprotective emblem.  This led to the practice of placing hawthorn leaves inthe cradles of newborn children for protection.

The hawthorn isoften referred to in verse by the phase “by oak, ash, and thorn” (the “thorn”referring to that of the hawthorn tree) and is used as a blessing duringritual, or to affirm a charge of power in spellcraft.  In folklore theoak, ash, and thorn have all been associated with portals into the realm of thefairies.  In this regard, the hawthorn in its connection with Cardea asthe “hinge on the door” into the fairy realm became the guardian and protectorof the entrances to the oak and ash portals, and unless the hawthorn allowedaccess to the doorways, the fairy realm remained unseen.  Of old, it wasthe practice to plant hawthorn around oak and ash tree groves in order toprotect them from damage by storms or grazing cattle.

From GrannyMoon’s Morning Feast Archives