One Irish-American Farmer’s Exploration

By: Connor Burbridge (he/they)

I’d like to imagine her as a little girl harvesting hazelnuts. Filling up an old skirt or cloth with hundreds of tiny nuts, running back from the forest, excitedly returning to an earthen hut. She would be anticipating the sweet roasted nutty flavor before her parents even had a chance to start a fire in the hearth. I’d like to imagine this was her life in Ireland before. Before the great hunger, famine, hollow eyes. Before mines, smoke, and pain in unfamiliar lands. I want to remember her happy, picking hazelnuts.

My great-great-great grandmother, Bridget Maloney-Smith, emigrated from Ireland to America in the 1850’s. Growing up, I visited her old house, now a small museum in rural North Jersey, where some members of her family still live in the same 1 square mile radius since she moved there all those years ago. She was from a farming family in County Tipperary, Ireland. She left among the waves escaping the Great Hunger that was caused by the land theft and greed of British landlords, with her county losing close to 50% of it’s population due to death or migration. She moved to NYC as a young adult, she came on crowded ‘coffin’ ships where the mortality rate was between 10 to 40%. Later in life, her husband John died in the North Jersey mines, mining iron for the factories in the city. The mining company gave her ownership of the house she was renting from them, where she was left to take care of her 2 kids alone. She would die in that same house in 1907. She never returned to Ireland in her life.

I got to return to where she was born for the first time in 2022. On my trip, I found a park outside Tipperary town. In the park was a wooden plaque next to a tall hazel tree. It read “The Hazel (Corylus Avellana) was once found bountifully across Ireland. It was an important food source and was used to make furniture and fencing. It was also important in Irish Mythology, being heavily associated with seeking wisdom. The Irish word for Hazel is Coll.” I remembered when I was little my dad had showed me an old hazel tree outside the museum that was her house; it was old, diseased, and dying. He didn’t know anything about the tree but thought maybe the state should cut it down. As a part-time farmer for the last 4 years, I’ve propagated and distributed hundreds of baby hazel trees. And yet, until that moment in that park, I hadn’t even known hazels had grown in Ireland. It felt like a thread that had long been severed was being hastily tied back together. I kept searching through Ireland for answers.

On the River Boyne (An Bhóinn in Irish) time and time ago, a little boy and a poet fished together on a bank of the river surrounded by a small hazel grove, in the shadow of a 4,000-year-old earthen temple know to the druids as Newgrange. The little boy, named Demne, had come to learn from the old poet, while helping the poet on his quest to catch a fish. The poet, Finnéigas, had been fishing in the same spot everyday for the last 5 years when the boy had shown up seeking knowledge and stories. Finnéigas was looking for the salmon of wisdom. The salmon of wisdom, the boy was told, swam up and down the river, and back to the river’s source, the Well of Segais. The well was the sacred source of all 5 of the major rivers in Ireland (or the 5 Srotha Éicsi, streams of wisdom). 9 magical hazel trees surrounded the well. The trees roots stretched deep, past the well and into the mystical otherworld, where the fairies and spirits lived. The hazelnuts that fell from the tree where the Cuill Crinmoid Aiúsa, or the hazels of poetic composition. Eating one of these hazels would allow a being to access all of the knowledge of the ancestors from the otherworld. Each year, the hazels would drop their nuts at the same time in mast, and the salmon would return to the well to eat the nuts and gain their knowledge. The salmon would then swim back up their sacred river, bringing fresh life and vitality to the land.

After a year of sharing stories and experiences with the young Demne, the old poet Finnéigas finally caught the fish, a giant salmon with dark spotted belly. While Finnéigas gathered special herbs in the forest, he instructed Demne to cook the fish. Demne worked to cook it perfectly over their small campfire. When a bubble appeared on the skin of the fish, Demne popped it with his thumb, but fish oil burst from the fish and burned his thumb. The little Demne instinctively put his thumb in his mouth, sucking it caringly. When Finnéigas came back, he saw the boy’s eyes glowing and he knew what happened. “Go eat the rest of the fish and absorb the knowledge. From this day, you’ll no longer be known as Demne but as Fionn.” This was the beginning of the legend of the mythical hero, Fionn Mac Cumaill, or Finn McCool.

Many other stories from Irish Mythology talk about the importance of the Hazel tree. I Irish Trees: Myths, Legends, & Folklore, Niall Mac Coitir describes how the Irish had sacred trees in each region known as Bile in Irish. Many bile were told to be hazel trees, including one which was dedicated to Saint Patrick. The Tuatha De Danann, the pre-Christian gods and later fairy spirits of Ireland, put the plough, the sun, and the hazel tree above all other things. This triad might be a metaphor for the 3 major functions in Irish society, the plough representing peasants, the sun representing community leaders, and the hazel representing poets and mystics. The ancient goddess Brigid (anglicized as Bridget, and connected to Irish Saint Brigid) was a member of the Tuatha De Danann and also associated with poetry and the River Boyne. She may have been worshipped within hazel groves. The hazel’s heavy association with poetry throughout Irish myth came from the well-known metaphor of the Cuill Crinmoid Aiusa. These hazels were a metaphor for acquiring knowledge and inspiration, where the hard shell of the hazel is broken to acquire the nourishment and enrichment inside. Hazel’s association with wisdom and truth also tied it to leadership. The English name hazel is taken from the Anglo-Saxon word for authority or leadership and the Irish word Coll also translates to chieftain or leader. There are still many more myths and stories from Ireland that include the hazel within them. I’m still working to learn them and keep their memory alive but it is a lifetime of learning. Or at least a full year of camping on the side of the river with an old poet, waiting for sacred wisdom to float down the stream.

After my journey in Ireland, whenever I tend to the hazels on our small farm in Rhode Island, I hear the baby trees ask me to remember. They want me to remember my ancestors, the hunger, their forced migration, the beauty of the land they left behind. They ask me to remember the indigenous people of this land that our family now calls home. And they ask me to never forget the magic in the world around us, the whispers of the otherworld hidden in every forest and river. This year, when I return to Bidget’s old New Jersey home, I’ll bring two small hazel trees and plant them in the backyard near where the old one had been. I’ll whisper things I would have said to her if I had ever gotten to meet her alive. I’ll pray that these trees survive; that their roots make it deep into the otherworld, and that whoever eats the nuts will gain some of the wisdom from the past.

Nuts & Bolts Farm Hazelnut Harvest Fall 2023

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