The Hazel Branch

Surprisingly, nobody dies in this story, which is pretty great. It’s a short one, so you’re getting the entire text. It also happens to be the last…THE LAST… story in the Grimm’s anthology.

One afternoon the Christ-child had laid himself in his cradle-bed and had fallen asleep. Then his mother came to him, looked at him full of gladness, and said, “Hast thou laid thyself down to sleep, my child?” Sleep sweetly, and in the meantime I will go into the wood, and fetch thee a handful of strawberries, for I know that thou wilt be pleased with them when thou awakest.” In the wood outside, she found a spot with the most beautiful strawberries; but as she was stooping down to gather one, an adder sprang up out of the grass. She was alarmed, left the strawberries where they were, and hastened away. The adder darted after her; but Our Lady, as you can readily understand, knew what it was best to do. She hid herself behind a hazel-bush, and stood there until the adder had crept away again. Then she gathered the strawberries, and as she set out on her way home she said, “As the hazel-bush has been my protection this time, it shall in future protect others also.” Therefore, from the most remote times, a green hazel-branch has been the safest protection against adders, snakes, and everything else which creeps on the earth.

The End

Observations

I actually have six hazelnut trees in my front yard. I planted them myself. I was never aware of any folklore surrounding the tree. I planted hazelnut trees because they produce hazelnuts, which I happen to really like, and they bush out and a hedge can be created out of them. The end product on my farm would be an edible hedge that blocks my view of the road from my house.

I remember one other mention of the hazelnut tree in the Grimm’s stories. It was in Cinderella. The branch her father brought back for her from his trip was a hazelnut branch.

I don’t think strawberries grow in the Israel/Jordan region. I could be wrong, but I just don’t think that it’s a plant that grows there. I also don’t think they call their vipers “adders,” but I could be wrong. All of this clearly points to this story being more European in origin. Strawberries do grow in Europe. Hazelnut trees do grow in Europe. In Europe various breeds of vipers are called adders, “atter/adder” actually being a word that means poison. So basically they’re calling snakes poison.

I seriously doubt that snakes don’t like hazelnut trees. I mean, I’ve never seen any snakes hanging around my hazelnut trees, but just because I haven’t seen it doesn’t mean that snakes are scared to go around them.

OR

Witch hazel.

Witch hazel is also a plant. It doesn’t grow nuts that we can eat, but it is a medicinal plant. That is often used to treat things like poison ivy and wounds resulting from childbirth. If we look at witch hazel as our plant(I still don’t think it grows in the region Jesus grew up in), we have a little more validity behind this story. Witch hazel is used to treat some poisons. Snakes are considered poison by definition of the word “adder/atter” therefore, using a hazel branch to scare one away, makes a weird kind of sense.

Mary is the mother and mothers bear children. Childbirth involves all kinds of unpleasantness and witch hazel was used as a treatment for some of that unpleasantness, so it does also make a little sense how Mary would choose this plant as her protection.

Themes

This is actually an origin story. It’s an origin story of an antiquated practice. I don’t believe anyone believes that you can carry around a hazelnut branch and snakes won’t bug you. Snakes are often somewhat shy, so maybe if you’re making a lot of noise while carrying around this hazelnut branch snakes will leave you alone.

If you’ve read Genesis, there is a bit of a curse there. I forget the exact wording, but basically it says that woman and snake will be enemies. In this story Mary and the snake are enemies. The story hints that there is some deep-rooted enmity between snakes and women. It’s not true. Women often don’t like snakes, but lots of people don’t like snakes and they’re not all women. The supposed Biblical dislike that is created in Genesis and illustrated in this fairy tale has no basis in reality, but that doesn’t mean people didn’t believe it was true.

Overall

Everyone loves hazelnuts. This story has to be a load of junk. How could a snake dislike hazelnuts? Don’t snakes know about Nutella, the most magical substance made of nuts in the world?



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Grimm’s Fairy Tales
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