'In And Out The Dusty Bluebells' by Karen Maitland

In the last few weeks, people have been flocking to see the wonderful bluebell woods in Devon, where the carpet of flowers spreads beneath the trees like a violet-blue mist. I heard one visitor say, the bluebell wood was ‘an enchanting place’. They thought so too in the Middle Ages, but unlike the 21st century visitor, they did not mean it was beautiful, they regarded bluebell woods as places of sinister and dangerous bewitchment.

Bluebells were harvested as early in the Bronze Age, for the gluey sap which was used to fixed feathers to arrow shafts. During the Tudor period, bluebell sap was used as starch to stiffen muslin and the immense ruffs worn by the Elizabethans. It was used as a glue in bookbinding, because the poisonous sap also discouraged insects from attacking the books. In the Middle Ages, bluebells were thought to be a cure for leprosy, consumption, snake bites and spider bites. Bluebells could prevent nightmares if the flowers were threaded and hung over the bed. But whatever you needed bluebells for, you never went to collect them alone.

Photo: Dr Richard Murray

Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

A child who picked bluebells alone would be spirited away by the fairy folk, never to be seen again. Even an adult who ventured into a bluebell wood by themselves was in mortal danger. They would be pixie-led, and forced to wander round and round, unable to find their way out, until they died of exhaustion, unless someone else entered the wood, thereby breaking the enchantment, and guided the bewildered victim home. Bluebells were known as Deadmen’s bells, because whoever hears them ringing, is listening to their own death knell and will be taken by a malicious spirit within weeks.

Pig trapped by his nightmares of goblins.

From 'The Fairy Caravan.' (1929)

Illustration by Beatrix Potter

The much-loved children’s author, Beatrix Potter, makes great use of these old superstitions in her only full-length novel for older children The Fairy Caravan (1929). In the novel, the circus characters have to travel through a small bluebell wood, Pringle Wood, and are warned not to eat anything they find there because they will never leave if they do. Even though most heed the warning, they still find themselves going round in circles for hours, until the pony pulling the caravan almost collapses with exhaustion. The pig, who naturally disobeys the injunction, is trapped in a hollow tree by his own hallucinations and is only finally rescued by the pony who protects himself with fern seed plaited in his mane, which was a amulet that medieval travellers used to render themselves and their horses invisible to evil spirits. The pony also asks the blacksmith to reverse his horseshoes. Again, people thought that by reversing your clothes and wearing a garment inside out you could break enchantment or a run of bad luck.

Pony searching the bluebell wood for pig.

From 'The Fairy Caravan' (1929)

Illustration by Beatrix Potter

Bluebells are highly poisonous, and when not in flower the bulbs can be easily mistaken for ramsons or wild garlic, which often grows in the same habitat, so the warning that you might never leave the bluebell wood if you ate anything there was probably sound advice.

Whenever I see a bluebell wood, I am reminded me of a circle game we used to play as children in the sixties.

"In and out the dusty bluebells,
In and out the dusty bluebells,
In and out the dusty bluebells,
Who will be my master?

Tipper-ipper-apper on your shoulder
Tipper-ipper-apper on your shoulder
Tipper-ipper-apper on your shoulder
I am your master now."

In some versions, they are called ‘dusky’ bluebells or ‘Scottish’ bluebells. There is much speculation about the age of this song. Some say that it refers to the hiring fairs that took place around April-May, but a group of country children in the 1900’s reported that ‘the master’ in the song was the sinister Fairy King, who like the pied piper, would lead unwary children dancing into the underworld, from which there was no return. This is probably not, of course, the original meaning of the game, but it is interesting that Edwardian children were still aware of the ancient superstition.

Other common beliefs were that if you placed a garland of bluebells on someone you wanted to question, they would be compelled to tell the truth. Perhaps the sweetest one is if you manage to turn one of the flowers inside out without tearing it, you will eventually win the one you love. Again, it is the act of physically reversing an object, which turns or reverse your fortune. The task also requires patience and gentleness, two qualities which might well help a young lad or lass win the heart of any future lover. Either that, or it took so long to master the art, you might well have stopped fancying the person by then, which solved the problem.

Bluebells, Cockleshells Catherine Johnson

Guestling Woods East Sussex

That's what started me off a walk in those woods last week, I couldn't get this skipping rhyme out of my head;

Bluebells, cockleshells,

Evey, Ivy, O-ver,

Did you play this one? You'd need a big group, and a big rope with two enders, or one ender (nobody wanted to be an ender) and then you'd tie the other end to a drainpipe. Anyway on 'Bluebells, cockle shells' the rope would be swayed, not turned all the way over until the word 'over' in the rhyme. At this the next girl, it was always a girl (and there was only Barry Morgan in our school who could skip I may be wrong here) would run into the rope. She'd sing;

I like coffee I like tea 

I like Sheila in with me

And then Sheila would jump in and you'd both skip together and spell out her name as you jumped. But sometimes, and this would be around 1970 in London, I can remember singing;

I like coffee I like tea,

I like sitting on a black man's knee

Which seems completely shocking today - although we didn't think about it then - and did I think I was skipping about my Dad? Not at all, this was the same mythical black man who famously got caught by his toe, best mates, no doubt with the man from China who was forever doing up his flies. Skipping rhymes were always odd and sometimes rude and sometimes completely scatological. Can I just say I am glad those days are gone? I never felt these rhymes were a sign of any kind of innocence.

But that picture, of my walk last week near my new home got me onto the subject of this months' blog and one of my favourite books, Iona and Peter Opie's wonderful book The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. 

I first bought this book in a school fair on a second hand bookstall. Since then I have sought out loads more of their books, collections of rhymes from British playgrounds from the 1950s to the 1980s. These include The Singing Game, and The People In the Playground. If you don't know them and are at all interested in children's play or children's history in general it is so worth seeking them out.

The collected rhymes and songs from all over the country, singing games and clapping games with slight variations depending on north or south. We used to sing (in London);

Under the brown bush

Under the tree

My darling

becomes, in the midlands; 

Under the bram bushes

Down by the sea

And thinking about it I can still do loads of the verses of Under the Brown Bush, which was a clapping, not a skipping song.  As was When Susie was a baby the verse that chronicles Susie's life from baby to skeleton and finally ghost.  The verse for 'teenager' sticks in my mind.

When Susie was a teenager,

A teenager Susie was.

She went 'Ooh, ahh, I lost my bra

I left it in my boyfriend's car

 There were lots of skipping rhymes that involved the word Mississippi for no good reason. My generation was, I think, very in love with America.

But I think this one was my favourite, it's another skipping one;

Bubble car, bubble car,

Number 48

Goes round the co-ooooo-rner (runs out of skipping rope and round the enders)

And slams on the brakes (runs back in and traps rope on the word brake).

What was yours?

Catherine Johnson's next book is The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo out on July 2 published by Random House