Oak and Holly - what’s the best time for a dust up?

I am entranced by the seamless handover of nature’s plants, shrubs and trees throughout the year. We place dates and templates around our eight celebrations, but nature has no clocks or calendars to insist on a cut-off point; late and early flowers of every variety blur the boundaries and seasonal variations and positioning affects nature year on year. But subtly, almost imperceptibly, sentient green life burgeons then fades, expressing the forms most appropriate to the season.

This is why I have never subscribed to the Solstice Holly King/Oak King battle. I respect every Grove, Coven or group who chooses to act out a big tree battle in Midsummer/ Winter ritual. Both are traditionally times of coming together, celebration and wild games and visually a fight echoes a true change-about – not in the forest, but in the whole cosmos: the Sun appears to change course: what a wonder!

The idea of the semiannual battle originated with The White Goddess, pub. 1948 and authored by Robert Graves, who has been credited with the dissemination of more misinformation in this field than almost any other writer. That may be true, but the implication is unfair; he was not sloppy in scholarship or malicious. He was a poet, and he stated clearly that The White Goddess was a poetic work so he’s hardly to blame if lesser mortals forming a modern structure for Paganism took it all literally and ran with it… But we are left with the results, so back to the Holly and the Oak.

 According to what is actually happening with the trees at Midsummer, the timing for a Solstice battle/handover is right out. We observe through the year a fluid living relationship that allows both Holly and Oak to obtain its full status, prominence and glory at its own time – but not at Solstice, and neither one to the detriment of the other.

Disentangling imaginative myth making from what the trees are doing we see that the Holly is flowering in June (unusually some already has berries this year) and the Oak which has flowered at least a month earlier is in full leaf with tiny growths just distinguishable as the acorns to come.

That seems pretty evenly balanced to me. So perpetuating the idea that Oak and Holly change places in some way at this time, makes us guilty, as Granny Weatherwax would say, of headology. If we root our Druidry not in the head but in a heartfelt response to what’s happening in nature we start from an undisputable fact. Spoiler alert - every year, summer undoubtedly does take over from winter and vice versa! And Early English records show that the agricultural year in the UK was divided into those two seasons. But not divided at the Solstices. When we relied on growing all our food, the natural divisions fell as growing – warm -  and fallow -cold - times.

 So let’s consider our next contender for the handover: the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes. As times of balance when the hours of light and dark are equal, then visibly the days become longer or shorter, that would seem logical. Unfortunately, it works neither for the spring or autumn. In March the oak, late to leaf, usually looks dead whilst early trees such as the elder are already putting on their green. In September, deciduous trees still rule the forest with huge canopies of green foliage, with only a hint of the autumnal colours to come.

What time is left for our two season changeover? Beltane/Samhain; magical times which our ancestors respected – especially Beltane, with myriad warning tales of the thinning of the veils. A child disappears; a monster steals a foal away to the Otherworld, and if we must have a battle – and why not celebrate the new warmth and accelerated growing season with some rumbunctuous Druid fun? - we have a provenance for it in the old tales.

For we have mythic winter and summer king battles. Gwyn ap Nudd – ‘White, son of Mist’ and Gwythyr ap Greidawl - ‘Anger/Victor, son of Fierce’ fight every year on May Day for Creiddylad - ‘Flood tide’ who may be the lady of summer. Her myth is likened to Persephone’s: the abducted one whose return brings the summer. There is no date put on the battle for the Kingship of Annwyn in the first branch of the Mabinogion but one of the combatants’ names indicate that it might be seasonal: Pwyll ‘Prudent’ battles Hafgan ‘Summer Song’. There are also battles between the Midwinter-born Arthur and the many abductors of Gwynevere, one of whom was Melwas of the Summer Country, who took her at Beltane when she was out a-Maying.

Myth and legend seem to support this as a time to celebrate a changeover in the energies of nature. The Oak, waking late, has by Beltane produced enough greenery to cause the evergreens to step back into the forest. By Samhain, the autumn gales have blown down a considerable bulk of its dull leaves which, unlike the red maple and golden birch, are beige, brown and friable. The evergreens then step forward – and Holly is pre-eminent amongst these. Its green shine and reddening berries call out for our notice. It is a seamless, dynamic forest movement, guided by local conditions: it is the dance of ongoing life interacted with grace and skill. It reminds us to respect the proper place of every living being and its right – including our own - to its own time and rhythm.

Two kings - but no battle! As a natural guidebook for how a Druid should live, I think these lessons really hit the mark.
I want to end by returning to where I began, for my head is full of the small changes that so often pass unnoticed. Specific common weeds take turns to call ‘look at me!’ with flowers or foliage demanding attention and then fading back into the landscape: and we respond with photos and FB messages to share the joy. Loving the warming earth, I find a space where I can lie in primroses or bluebells each year in late spring. Then comes the explosion of buttercups that line field-tracks with gold and glow under my chin, reaffirming each year that I love butter. With daisies they make a mille fleurs tapestry on the grass of our parks. They are followed clover and walking barefoot (watch out for bees!)  echoing the legend of Olwen in whose footprints four white flowers sprang.

I saw their time was passing as I strolled through scrubby land in June and lady’s bedstraw, clover and teasels began to claim all of my attention.

Elderflowers were very early this year, dropping as I went on holiday: just over a week later I returned to bushes green with berries forming. For another Druid it will be different flowers or shrubs or birds or insects; the quiet round of nature as it is lived in your locality, your county, your country, your continent.

So, I am content: no green battles in nature. But loving also the joy and immediacy of ceremony and creativity, I would still be glad to witness an Oak/Holly battle and would cheer with the best for the grunting, sweating pantomime that expressed the energy of the season.

 In the absence of such an invitation this year, I woke at Alban Hefin dawn and went outside to greet the sun. And when I’d re-awoken at a reasonable time, the swaying elder and willows outside the open window and the invitation of the jackdaws called me out again to take my place in the dance of the World. 

And in my garden, Holly and Oak watched on, companionably side by side.

Blessings of High Summer to all! /|\