A Hawthorn Hedge

Hawthorn hedge on an embankment above an old track

Above Torver Beck we followed a track below an embankment topped with a hedge of hawthorn. A sheltering hedge, old trees gone to wild,  sculpted by age, by wind and weather.  Men  walked this way to quarry the green and black slate about Coniston back in the 13th century.  A hedge is liminal, the boundary where we venture forth  from  the safety of  farm and pastoral for the open fell and the unknown. 
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Once, coming off Shap Fell, we picked up a green lane bordered with remnants of a hawthorn hedge.  I spied  fruit hidden between the roots,  A heap of haws- the fruit of hawthorn.  A field mouse or a vole  had gathered the red fruit  for its winter larder.   
Watching fieldfare, redwing and mistlethrush, I  find them feeding on the red haws of hawthorn. Haws are a source of food for wildlife in winter.  Birds feed on the fruit  and disperse the seed in their droppings. On a gloomy day you can hear winter thrush hidden in hawthorn.  especially when ivy cloaks the shrub and provides shelter and a safe roost.  So a love of winter thrush brings me to hawthorn ways.  A history and a natural history of England is written into the hawthorn hedge. 

Hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna.   Its dark red fruit is named a haw. Botanically, it is not a berry but a pome containing a single seed - Monogyna.  Pome, named for Pomona, goddess of the orchard, of the harvest. 
In spring its flowers, May blossom, are important for nectaring insects.  Look in churches for sculptures of the Green Man and you may find the foliage-motif  about the head is leaves of hawthorn.  The shrub is deeply embedded in our culture as it is rooted in the English hedgerow. Hawthorn or quickthorn is fast-growing, resilient and tough.  A well-tended hawthorn hedge  is dense and impenetrable.  Hawthorn is the tree most frequently found in Anglo-Saxon boundary charters.  It is synonymous with the English hedgerow. Etymologically the words Hedge, haw and hawthorn are close-kin. 

From the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (a selective focus)
HAW    (sb. a noun.  From the Old English.)
             A hedge or encompassing fence, an enclosure

HAW  (sb. noun.   Old English.   Haga hedge. OE  haguthorn-}
                               hawthorn .  hedge thorn 

HAW  ( sb. OE haga.  identical in form with haga hedge. )
1. the fruit of the hawthorn
2. the hawthorn 

HAG  (sb (derived from Old English, Danish, Old High German, Dutch)  
1 An evil spirit in female form, a repulsive sometimes malevolent old woman

HAG  ( Old Norse, Old English haga)
 an enclosed field, a hedge 


Rose and hawthorn are shrubs of an English hedgerow.  So, hips and haws, the fruit of rose and hawthorn. 
 stores of haws and heps do commonly portend cold winters. Francis Bacon. 

Chambers 21 century dictionary

HAW   noun 
1 a hawthorn berry ( botanically it's a pome not a berry) 
2  the hawthorn     Anglo-Saxon  haga 

In medieval England the hedge is liminal.  A  barrier that shelters a settlement from threats known and unknown.  The presiding deity is the hag, the cunning woman, the white witch who gathers medicinal herbs for healing.  The hag, descendant of Celtic goddess.   So haw, hag, and hawthorn coalesce in meaning.  

In 21st century the importance of the English hedgerow is rediscovered.   A resurrection, liminality redefined.   Underlying myth and tradition there is  a wealth of knowledge, an innate understanding of ecology thrown away when rooting out hedges was in vogue.  The hedgerow and field-margin is a  soft boundary between farmland crop and habitat for wildlife.   Plant hawthorn, rose and blackthorn for pollinating insects essential to crops.  In autumn their fruits will attract birds lost from monoculture.   Hedges are essential wildlife corridors for small mammals.