She Sells Slip Shells
When the summer’s glare finally softens the knobbly-knuckled dyers set off from Alder Copse in the direction of Slip Shell Woods propelled by purpose and song. It's an arduous nine-mile hike across the moorland for this group
of women and children laden with nut hooks and large baskets. Their steady pace and melodic chanting is scarcely hindered by the wild gusts that whistle in and around them like invisible dervishes.
There’s yield a-plenty beyond the moss-soaked bog
that draws us nut-pickers from all around
we pick and hatch and ground and weigh
- yours for just 6d a pound!
They finally reach Slip Shell Woods where their journey ends. Under the dense canopy of copper, bronze and gold, they drink from the stream and feast on mix of nuts and berries before resting a while. Once revived they get to work filling their large willow baskets with leaves, twigs, bark and heaps of hazelnuts which will - they pray to Lugh - will see them through the cold season ahead. It's dawn-to-dusk hard graft come rain or shine. They return across the moor laden with heavy loads, stopping now and again to dab their bramble wounds with honey and witch hazel balm.
There’s yield a-plenty across the moss-soaked bog
that draws us nut-pickers from all around
we pick and hatch and ground and weigh
- yours for just 6d a pound!
Some everyday uses of hazel nuts and hazel wood courtesy of the hazel nut pickers:
red, yellow, brown, and black dye
agricultural fodder
fuel
food
divining rods
magic wands
fencing
jam stirrers
good luck charms
toothache deterrent
druid staffs
adder bite salve
warding tool against evil spirits
ideal offering to placate the ancestors of the Otherworld
At first light on May Day cut a hazel wand and draw a circle around yourself. This will protect you against evil spirits and adder bites over the year ahead.
Never gather nuts on September 21st as it is Devil’s Nutting Day. On this day mortals who enter the woods might encounter the Devil himself or suffer harm inflicted by the Devil.
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14th September came to be known as Nutting Day
Before mass industrialisation and the effects of the Parliamentary Enclosure Acts which steadily deprived commoners of the right to roam and forage which they had been doing over generations. Storing and selling nuts in fairs and markets had been an economic necessity for impoverished families. In later times this seasonal activity was framed as a somewhat quaint festival of harvest and merriment - even Eton College got in on the act
and sent the boys out to collect nuts on Nutting Day - but in reality the original practice of seasonal foraging was arduous dawn-to-dusk graft for those whose survival depended on collecting nuts in September.
Woodlands that had been easily accessible for community foraging over generations were suddenly privatised. Foraging for nuts on enclosed land was reclassified as trespassing or poaching
"Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 enclosure Bills were enacted by Parliament which related to just over a fifth of the total area of England, amounting to some 6.8 million acres" www.parliament.uk
More info:
https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10768/enclosure-commissioners-introduced
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