The blackberry bush waits at the edge of ancient hedgerows, its thorny canes guarding clusters of dark fruit. For thousands of years, people have gathered these berries while whispering warnings to each other — about forbidden picking dates and the supernatural beings who claimed ownership of the fruit. Blackberries in folklore carry more weight than almost any other hedgerow plant — a richness that connects them to broader traditions of plant symbolism across cultures.
The Devil’s Curse: Why You Must Never Pick After Michaelmas
Perhaps no blackberry legend is more famous than the Michaelmas prohibition. According to folklore, eating blackberries after September 29th invites terrible misfortune. When Lucifer was cast from heaven, he landed in a thorny bramble patch and cursed it forever. In some versions he spits on the berries; in others he stamps them into the ground. Either way the message is the same: once autumn tips past Michaelmas, the fruit belongs to the devil and not to you.
The superstition contains genuine practical wisdom. By late September, blackberries become flyblown and infected with moulds that produce real gastrointestinal illness. The Devil’s curse proved far more effective at discouraging risky late-season picking than any botanical warning could have done. The same pattern of practical wisdom encoded in supernatural warning appears in poppy folklore across European traditions — danger dressed as the sacred to make the message stick.
Celtic Traditions: Sacred Fruit of Fairies and Goddesses
In Celtic folklore, blackberries were sacred to the goddess Brigid, who governed healing, poetry, and the forge. The bramble bush connected the human world to the realm of supernatural beings — a boundary plant, growing at the edges of cultivated land where the known world gave way to something older. Celtic mythology considered blackberries favoured food of the fairy folk. In the Isle of Man, leaving the first blackberries of the season for the fairies ensured the rest of the harvest remained grub-free and plentiful.
The healing tradition of bramble arches belongs to this same complex of belief. Sufferers crawled through naturally arched bramble canes to transfer their illness to the plant — a ritual documented as early as around 1040 CE and still practised in rural communities well into the twentieth century. Whooping cough was the most common condition treated this way, particularly in children. The bramble arch had to be rooted at both ends and the sufferer had to pass through in a specific direction, usually from east to west, following the path of the sun.
Blackberry Folklore in Scotland and Wales
Scottish tradition treated the blackberry with deep ambivalence. The thorny canes were protective — planted against cottage walls to deter witches and evil spirits, since no malevolent force could pass through the entangled thorns without becoming trapped. At the same time, blackberries in Scotland were associated with the dead, and eating them could be seen as consuming something that belonged to ancestors. In some Highland traditions, blackberries left unharvested at the end of the season were understood as an offering to the spirits of the land rather than forgotten fruit.
Welsh folk medicine used blackberry leaves and roots extensively. A decoction of root bark was one of the most widely used treatments for diarrhoea in pre-pharmaceutical rural communities — a use with genuine pharmacological support, since Rubus fruticosus contains tannins with documented astringent properties. The fruit itself was used in poultices for burns and skin inflammations. Like the flower symbolism traditions running through broader European botanical culture, blackberry lore is layered: spiritual meaning and practical use accumulated together over centuries rather than existing in separate categories.
Blackberries in Art and the Illustrated Tradition
Blackberries have appeared in botanical illustration since the earliest printed herbals. Dioscorides described Rubus species in De Materia Medica, and blackberry branches appear in several of the Vienna Codex illustrations dating to 512 CE. In Tudor England, the bramble appeared repeatedly in decorative embroidery and manuscript borders, its combination of delicate white flowers, developing green fruit, and ripe black clusters making it one of the few subjects that could carry three seasons on a single branch.
John Gerard’s Herball of 1597 gave blackberries a substantial entry, describing both medicinal uses and the specific visual characteristics that distinguish wild blackberry species from dewberries and other Rubus relatives. The difficulty of illustrating blackberries accurately lies in that exact problem: the genus is botanically complex, with hundreds of microspecies that differ in leaf shape, hair density, and fruit structure in ways that matter to botanists and foragers equally. Getting the illustration right demands the kind of sustained observation that separates botanical illustration from decorative plant painting.
What Blackberry Folklore Means for the Work
Drawing the Fiurdelin blackberry, I was working with a subject that carries more accumulated human meaning than almost any other hedgerow plant in the British and Irish tradition. The thorns are not incidental — they are part of the symbolism. A fruit this defended, this abundant, this precisely seasonal was always going to accumulate story. The devil’s curse, the fairy’s portion, the healer’s arch: every layer of folklore is a response to the same plant, observed carefully over generations. That sustained attention is what botanical illustration asks for too. The distance between the medieval herbalist and the watercolour artist is smaller than it looks.
FAQ
Why should you not pick blackberries after Michaelmas?
According to British folklore, picking blackberries after September 29th — Michaelmas Day — invites misfortune because the devil cursed the bramble when he was cast from heaven and landed in a thorny bush. Depending on the regional version, he either spat on the berries or stamped them into the ground on that date. The prohibition contains genuine practical wisdom: by late September, blackberries are commonly flyblown and infected with moulds that cause gastrointestinal illness. The supernatural warning was a more effective deterrent than any botanical caution could have been, and it preserved the health of communities that had no other way to understand why late-season fruit made people sick.
What role did blackberries play in Celtic folklore?
In Celtic tradition, blackberries were sacred to the goddess Brigid and associated with the boundary between the human world and the supernatural. The bramble grew at the edges of cultivated land where the known world gave way to something older, making it a liminal plant in the truest sense. In the Isle of Man, the first blackberries of the season were left for the fairy folk to ensure the rest of the harvest remained undamaged. Blackberries were understood as belonging partly to the spirit world, and harvesting them required acknowledgement of that ownership.
What was the bramble arch healing ritual?
The bramble arch ritual involved crawling through a naturally arched bramble cane — one rooted at both ends — to transfer illness to the plant. It was documented in Britain as early as around 1040 CE and continued in rural communities well into the twentieth century. Whooping cough in children was the most commonly treated condition. The sufferer had to pass through in a specific direction, usually east to west following the path of the sun, and the arch had to be intact and rooted at both ends to be effective. The ritual reflects the wider Celtic belief in the bramble as a threshold plant capable of mediating between the human world and forces beyond it.
Do blackberries have genuine medicinal properties?
Yes. Rubus fruticosus contains tannins with documented astringent properties, and root bark decoctions were widely used in pre-pharmaceutical rural communities across Britain and Wales for treating diarrhoea — a use that has genuine pharmacological support. The leaves and fruit were also applied in poultices for burns and skin inflammation. The pattern throughout blackberry folk medicine is consistent: the practical applications that survived longest tend to be the ones with real biochemical foundations, even when the original explanation was entirely supernatural or spiritual.
Where is this botanical art printed and how is it shipped?
The Fiurdelin blackberry print is available through Redbubble, which manufactures products at the facility nearest to each customer. Orders from the US, UK, EU, and Australia are fulfilled at local production centres, keeping delivery times short and carbon footprint lower than dispatch from a single international source. Available as a digital download or printed and shipped in the US, UK, EU, and Australia.
The Fiurdelin Rubus fruticosus illustration captures the branch at full ripeness, with ripe, unripe, and flowering stages on the same stem. Browse the full Fiurdelin botanical collection for illustrations working in this tradition.
