Yesterday, I picked blackberries for the first time this year and there will be further occasions as the fruits ripen. This foraging is always something I look forward to and I’ve often thought about why I enjoy the activity so much.
My first memory of brambling comes from childhood, just as in the paintings above by Elizabeth Adela Forbes [(1912) Blackberry Gathering oil on canvas (84x100cm) Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool] and Walter Bonner Gash [(1905/15) Two Girls Picking Blackberries oil on board (18x24cm) Alfred East Art Gallery, Kettering], The hanging branches in the work by Gash are a reminder of the ability of brambles to “strike back” and I was careful when reaching for those really juicy-looking berries that were just beyond my reach, for fear of over-balancing and becoming “entrapped” by thorns. Of course, there will always be scratches and my grandfather had the excellent idea of taking a walking stick with him when we ambled along lanes, so that fruit-bearing branches could be pulled down to allow much easier capture by us children. I don’t carry a walking stick now, but I respect the defence mechanism of the plant – the thorns being also a means of allowing the plant to climb and to extend its growth laterally. They are good at competition.
Those childhood adventures stick in the mind and their joy is described by Seamus Heaney in his poem “Blackberry Picking”:
“Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries
would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple
clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a
knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh
was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood
was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and
lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and
that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins,
jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass
bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and
potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full…”
One of the pleasures of picking blackberries for me is that I am able to linger alone in nature and take a close look at what is around me. From when I was young, I always preferred being on my own; not, I hope, because I am anti-social, more that it was a form of escape from difficult times [1]. In that, I unknowingly copied Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and possibly for similar reasons. Russell Goulbourne writes in his Introduction to Reveries of the Solitary Walker [2]:
“From the demands of corrupt society Rousseau turns to the world of nature. Walking alone in nature guarantees and even intensifies his sense of self.. ..His happiness comes in part from his being at one with nature, which was a refuge for Rousseau from the anxieties of life, providing him with relative solitude and a rich source of distractions, both of which offer him peace of mind.”
I empathise with that statement and there’s an added dimension. Brought up as a Christian, I had some belief that everything was created by God and that country walks gave ample opportunities to see His work. The developing atheism of my early teenage years coincided with my learning much more about nature and showing that there was something deeply impressive in the way that different organisms had evolved to be successful in a range of habitats. In that sense, nature replaced God, inducing an equal sense of wonder, making solitary walks a form of “worship” that was never boring.
Of course, brambles are part of the overall wonder, although that is putting it a bit grandly, as I’m collecting their berries (an excess built-in to the plant’s biology) to then make jelly or crumbles. Bramble jelly is a way of preserving the essence of the fruit for winter months and beyond, and spreading the jelly thickly on toast on a cold day always brings back memories of summer collecting days.
That blackberries have been harvested as food for centuries has resulted in folklore, examples being provided by Steve Roud [3]:
“The most widespread belief about blackberries is that the Devil ruins them on a certain date each year. A few other miscellaneous beliefs have been noted, including several medicinal uses. The only one that seems to have been at all widely known is that horses, cats. and babies are often not well when the blackberries are ripe.”
This negative view of blackberries comes through in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Blackberrying”, perhaps reflecting the pressures of her life:
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; ….”
Quite different in tone to Seamus Heaney’s poem and both are
different again to my own, rather complex, feelings in going out to pick
blackberries.
[1] Roger S Wotton (2020) Walking with Gosse Kindle Edition
[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau (in 2011 translation by Russell
Goulbourne) Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Oxford, Oxford University
Press
[3] Steve Roud (2006) The Penguin Guide to the
Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. London, Penguin Books
