Fine-art print →
Blackberries in folklore come with a deadline, and my own plate shows why one was needed. I drew the branch with open flowers, hard red fruit and ripe black clusters on the same stem. That is how a bramble behaves in late summer: it keeps flowering while the first berries soften. So a hedge never tells you clearly that the picking is over. The last fruit ripens into cold, wet weather, and folklore had to draw the line for it.
TL;DRBlackberries in folklore belong to the devil after Michaelmas: 29 September, or 10 to 11 October by the old calendar. The rule kept people off late, mouldy fruit. Brambles also carried a whooping cough cure, recorded by John Aubrey in the 1680s.
Key Facts
Blackberry Folklore and the Devil’s Michaelmas Deadline
The best-known piece of blackberry folklore is the Michaelmas rule. Michaelmas, on 29 September, is the feast of St Michael, the archangel who threw Lucifer out of heaven. The devil landed in a bramble and took it personally. Depending on who tells it, he spat on the fruit, stamped on it, scorched it with his breath, or worse. After that date, the berries are his.
The date is less fixed than the story. Britain dropped eleven days when it adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752. Many rural communities kept the old feast anyway, so Old Michaelmas fell on 10 or 11 October. Traditions from Sussex and Hertfordshire give the devil the 10th, while Worcestershire and Norfolk hold out for the 11th. The earliest written trace comes from Ireland. In 1727 the botanist Caleb Threlkeld noted that the devil casts his club over the berries after Michaelmas. He was careful to call it a fable.
Blackberry folklore still circulates, and people still disagree about the date. The folklorist Roy Vickery’s Plant-Lore archive holds remembered versions that stop at 15 September. Others run to the end of October. The botany behind all of them is the same. Late fruit ripens in cool, damp weather, so it is often mouldy, split or full of insects. A curse is easier to remember than that. Folklore does the same with the poppy, dressing a real danger as the supernatural so the warning sticks.
The Michaelmas Curse, Retold
For the liveliest telling of the Michaelmas curse I’ve read, go to Nicola Blackwell’s autumn issue of Lost in Folklore. The devil’s full list of offences against the bramble gets exactly the comic timing it deserves. From there it wanders through fairy rings in Shakespeare and Yeats, rosehips, and the corn dollies of Frazer’s Golden Bough. It wears its sources lightly and never loses them. Funny and carefully researched in equal measure, it makes a lovely read for an autumn evening. Her blackberry section is illustrated with this plate, and I can’t think of better company for it.
Blackberries in Irish Folklore: The Púca at Samhain
Move west to Ireland and blackberries in folklore change owner. The devil often hands the job to the púca, a shape-shifting spirit of the countryside. There the berries last until Samhain, the turn of winter at the start of November. After that, the púca spits on them. Some English versions drift towards the same night. One collected in London says the devil kisses the blackberries on Hallowe’en. Another, collected in Kent, calls them witches’ food after October.
The bramble invites this kind of owner. It grows at the ragged edge of fields, where cultivated land gives way to scrub. Folklore tends to populate those margins, and a hedge full of thorns makes a convincing door to somewhere else.
The Bramble Arch: Crawling Through a Cure
Not all blackberries in folklore bring trouble. A bramble cane that arches over and roots its tip in the soil forms a hoop anchored at both ends. For centuries people crawled through those hoops to leave an illness behind. The first record of bramble arches in medicine dates from about 1040. It is a remedy for dysentery that called for the bramble’s “new root”. Passing through the arch was first written down in 1607, to cure a horse thought to be paralysed by a shrew.
Whooping cough became the classic case. John Aubrey recorded the cure in 1686–87, and it was still being noted in Monmouthshire in 1937. Local versions multiplied. Around Zennor in Cornwall, crawling around a bramble nine times was said to clear blackheads. In Somerset the arch treated hernias. In County Kerry in the late 1930s, card players crawled under one for luck before a big game. Vickery’s account of bramble arches traces each record to its source. Cures like these sit at the folk end of a tradition that also produced medicinal plant illustration.
Blackberries in the Herbal Tradition
Blackberry folklore and blackberry medicine grew up side by side. Dioscorides described the bramble in De materia medica in the first century. His text was copied, translated and redrawn for well over a thousand years, through the medieval herbals and into print. John Gerard gave the plant its own chapter in his Herball of 1597, “Of the Bramble or Blackberry bush”. He listed the young tops, flowers, leaves and unripe fruit as strongly binding, useful against fluxes and bleeding. The astringency he described is real, because bramble leaves are rich in tannins.
Most of the pictures in Gerard’s first edition were not new. His printer, John Norton, bought woodblocks that had already illustrated Tabernaemontanus’s Eicones of 1590. That habit of borrowing runs through the history of botanical illustration, and the bramble shows its limits. Britain and Ireland hold more than 330 bramble microspecies. They differ in leaf shape, prickles and hairs. Most botanists record them simply as an aggregate and leave the naming to a few specialists.
Drawing the Blackberry
A blackberry is not a single berry. It is a cluster of small drupelets, and each one catches the light separately. Give every highlight the same weight and a ripe cluster flattens into a black shape. The label on my plate reads Rubus sp., the genus only. With hundreds of microspecies that specialists still argue over, the genus is the honest place for a drawing to stop. Fiurdelin is a botanical illustration studio, and the blackberry is one of its 53 published plates.
Styling Blackberry Art at Home
Fine-art print →
A blackberry plate belongs in a kitchen with some depth to it. In the mockup above it hangs between a sweet cherry and a juniper, framed against sage green. The three read as a woodland larder: hedgerow fruit, orchard fruit, and the berry that flavours gin. Dark fruit wants a mid-tone wall. On bright white the black clusters read as holes, while sage, olive or warm grey lets them read as fruit. If the wall must stay white, a wide warm-cream mount gives the fruit a mid-tone of its own. I’d keep the frames thin and dark, and hang the plate away from the hob, where steam and grease settle. If two frames suit the wall better than three, the juniper guide pairs juniper with blackberry at the same height. The blackberry is available as a fine-art print in sizes from small prints to over 150 cm (60 inches).
FAQ
Why does folklore forbid picking blackberries after Michaelmas?
The story says the devil fell into a bramble when he was thrown out of heaven. He spoils the fruit again every year on the anniversary, 29 September. The practical reason is simpler. Berries that ripen after late September do so in cool, damp weather. They are often mouldy or damaged by insects.
Is the blackberry deadline 29 September or 11 October?
Blackberry folklore gives both dates. Michaelmas is 29 September, but Britain dropped eleven days from its calendar in 1752. Many rural areas kept Old Michaelmas instead. That puts the deadline on 10 October in Sussex and Hertfordshire, and on 11 October in Worcestershire and Norfolk. In Ireland the limit is often Samhain, at the start of November.
What was the bramble arch cure?
A bramble cane that roots at its tip forms an arch anchored at both ends. People crawled under it, or passed a sick child or animal through it, to leave the illness behind. John Aubrey recorded it as a whooping cough cure in 1686–87. The practice was still being noted in Monmouthshire in 1937.
Why is it so hard to name a blackberry species?
Rubus fruticosus is an aggregate, not a single species. Most brambles set seed without fertilisation, so each line breeds true and small differences become fixed. Britain and Ireland have more than 330 of these microspecies, told apart by leaves, prickles and hairs. Most botanists record them simply as Rubus fruticosus agg.
How is this botanical art printed and shipped?
The blackberry plate is produced and shipped through the studio’s own print rail at prints.botanical.art. It comes as an archival fine-art giclée on paper or canvas, framed or unframed. Sizes run from small prints to over 150 cm (60 inches).
Bringing the Blackberry Home
This is a plate for anyone who knows their blackberry folklore and knows when to stop picking. I’d hang it where the jam gets made, with the devil’s date somewhere in mind. On the print rail it sits in the Mediterranean Table collection, a group chosen for the kitchen and the table. Prefer to print it yourself? The digital file of this blackberry plate is also on Etsy.
