We were looking at Holly last week and I promised you my theory as to why they are so numerous in our ancient hedgerows. We have to start by looking somewhere else, at word origins.
One of the ‘facts’ fed to me in my schooldays was that the name Holly derives from ‘holy’ and is a reference to the religious traditions associated with it. Sorry, this is wrong. The Old English prefix denoting ‘holy’ is ‘holi’. The Old English name for holly is ‘holegn’ and seems to have come into the language from the Old High German ‘hulis’. The Celtic word for holly is ‘cuillion’ and derives from the Irish ‘culenn’ and the Welsh ‘celyn’. The medieval Latin ‘hussus’ refers to the tree and ‘holma’ seems to be a holly-wood. None of these precursors has any connection with ‘holi’. Sorry kids but I think we have to ditch the holy theory.
The thing that triggered the latest burst of holly information was a reference in Kershaw’s book on the economy of Bolton Priory to cattle being fed holly leaves in a hard winter. This intrigued me because I had never heard of cattle eating holly but then it struck me, why had the Holly tree developed the defence of putting spines on its lower leaves if not to prevent it being grazed to the point of extinction as a young plant? There was something here that needed investigating.
I didn’t have to dig far before I found two brilliant articles on the subject; ‘Holly as a Winter Feed’ by Jeffrey Radley and ‘Holly as a Fodder in England’ by Martin Spray. I’m grateful to both of them for the work they have done, without them I would never have cracked this enquiry. Just to give you a flavour, Martin starts his paper with a lovely quotation: ‘Lyarde es ane olde horse, and may noght wele drawe, He salle be put into the parke holyne for to gnawe. [1440. Mummer’s song in the Sheffield area] This broken down old horse wasn’t worth giving valuable winter feed but was given a chance to survive by being retired to ‘the parke holyne’, the holly wood.
Give this a little bit of thought and remember it, we shall come back to it later, have you ever seen a wood composed entirely of Holly Trees?
The next logical place to look was at place names with a ‘holegn’ component. The obvious one in Barlick is Hollins up Esp Lane. Martin Spray did an enormous amount of work on these names and found that there were hundreds of them and they are far more common in northern England than in the warmer south. The implication of this is that the Holly was far more important to the rural economy in areas which had the harshest winters. Jeffrey Radley found much written evidence on holly as fodder in the Sheffield area and Martin Spray enlarged on this work. The bottom line is that there is no doubt at all that until the mid-eighteenth century feeding holly branches and leaves in hard times was an accepted strategy for getting sheep, cattle, deer and pigs through the winter.
One explanation for why the practice died out when it did is that it was the advent of turnips as a crop that could alleviate the winter fodder problem. However, it looks as though this doesn’t fit both because of the dates and also the fact that turnips weren’t a common crop in grassland areas like Barlick. What is far more likely is the use of lime to improve pastures and give enough growth to increase hay crops and ensure a good winter bite on permanent pasture. This fits in in our area with the opening of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal around 1800 and the availability of imported coal to burn the lime. You only have to look at the number of old kilns in the area to realise that this was an important activity.
There is another place name clue. Remember the word ‘holm’ for a wood? It has another meaning associated with islands but how do we explain a name contain ‘holm’ which is nowhere near an island. Could it refer to holly woods? The old horse Lyarde might not have been the only animal that had access to a parke holyne.
I asked my old farming friends if they had ever come across the practice and none of them had ever heard about it. Billy Parsons remembered sheep browsing on ivy in a hard winter and stripping bark off trees [Still a big problem in managed woodland and particularly young seedlings being gnawed by rabbits, the reason for the protective plastic covers] but no deliberate policy of feeding browse wood. I remember my father telling me that in his younger days in Australia it was common practice in a drought to cut the tops out of Spinefex trees so that the cattle and horses could get to them. Martin Spray gives many references to pollarding trees for fodder and in the Royal Forests Oak, Ash, Elm and even brambles and roses were cut for the deer. I could give you many more examples but I think we’ve reached the stage where we can accept that browse-wood was an important winter fodder.
One thing has just struck me about the history I was taught at school. We were told that farmers used to slaughter most of their animals each winter and salt them down to preserve the meat. Can you remember that lesson as well? I always wondered how they managed to eat a herd of cows every winter and grow another for the following year but it was more than my life was worth to question what I was taught.
Now then, back to my hedges….. The first time I noticed the preponderance of holly was in the hedges on Blacko Hillside and the lanes leading down into the valley. These are south facing slopes and there is abundant evidence of occupation from the earliest times. It’s worth mentioning here that a lot of work has been done on the effects of frost in areas like ours. Cold air flows downhill and the valley bottoms are the coldest places in a frost. The tops of the hills are also cold because of the altitude. The warmest place, and the one that warms up fastest is half-way down the slope. It can be three degrees centigrade warmer. This may have a bearing on work that has been done on the cattle population in medieval times, surprisingly, they were most common in upland areas. It also explains why the most common settlement site was mid-slope.
So, the evidence points to the fact that these slopes would be an ideal location for utilising browse-wood, particularly holly. This is where we have to push the boat out a bit. If holly was so important as a resource it’s doubtful that the farmers would rely solely on the hedgerow trees. It’s far more likely that they would plant stands of trees, the ‘parke holyne’ that Lyarde was put into to ‘gnawe’. Once these holms or haggs were established the birds would spread the seeds and the place they would survive is in the hedgerows where the young seedlings would have protection against grazing. As the holmes became redundant in the mid-eighteenth century they would be rooted out leaving their ancestors to flourish in the hedgerows.
So, the next time you are out for a walk, burning off the Christmas dinner perhaps, spare a thought for the Holly trees in the hedgerow. If they could tell a story it would be far more important and interesting than fairy tales about Druids and Robins, they would tell you about their ancestors and the vital role they had in keeping animals alive through the long northern winters. Mind you, this importance probably explains why holly was so highly regarded and was a natural choice for decoration. ‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly’ takes on an entirely different meaning doesn’t it.
I’ve always told you that all the history I feed you is a work in progress. The story of holly as fodder is a nice example of this. I took them for granted but then found that there was much more to them than meets the eye. I see them now in a totally different light and until I have evidence to the contrary I’m convinced that there were stands of holly on our hillsides that were cultivated specifically for feeding stock in winter. Now all I have to do is try to nail down why the practice died out in the mid eighteenth century. At the moment I’m favouring the advent of lime on grazing land as the tipping point but who knows? It’s all work in progress.
This map shows the distribution of holly names for farms and local areas. The higher the bar the more examples.
SCG/November 12, 2006
1487 words.