ritual – Anne Whitehead

24 May 202424 May 2024

Remembering a daughter

In a recent post, I observed that some of the trees in the memorial at The Angel have been marked as the ‘plot’ of an individual family, making the site feel increasingly like a more formalised cemetery or graveyard. At the heart of the wooded copse, immediately beneath The Angel, an alder tree has been surrounded by a small wooden fence and a metal plaque has been placed into the ground, inscribed with the name of a family’s daughter. This tree at the centre of the memorial garden, which commemorates a little girl, represents for me the emotional heart of the site.

I do not know the girl’s surname, or her story. I only know her through this memorial tree. Over the few years that I have visited the memorial site at The Angel, the child’s family have decorated the tree each year on her birthday with tokens of the gifts they would have given her, including a birthday balloon which records that she would have been three, and then four, years old. I have found it moving to witness these tributes, both because of the parents’ ongoing ritual of remembrance, and because of the evident care with which the objects have been chosen and placed. The annual decoration of the tree takes place in the winter months, and the bare branches of the alders mean that The Angel is clearly visible above.

This tree raises questions for me about how I represent the memorials at The Angel, which are at once both public and private. The tree is so central to the memorial site – both physically and emotionally – that I do not feel I can tell the story of the grassroots memorial without documenting it. At the same time, there is a sensitivity in relation to it, because of the nature of the grief that it represents.

In an earlier post, I wrote of artist Miriam de Burca, whose work records the cillini: memorial sites in Ireland, which were burial grounds for those deemed unworthy of an official grave, including babies and children who had died before baptism. De Burca makes meticulous and detailed drawings of clods of earth from these remote and hidden sites, which she digs up, draws in her studio, and then returns to the site once the drawing has been made. De Burca’s drawing represents not only an act of recording, but also a quality of attention. The drawing takes time – it is not the instant image of the photograph – and it requires a sustained and careful process of observation.

Following de Burca’s lead, I have chosen to draw the tributes on this tree, with each pencil sketch taking several hours to complete. I hope that these works, which record just a selection of the many objects left on the tree, both recognise and honour a family’s acts of love and remembrance.

I have pointed out in a previous post that, while objects that are left on The Angel sculpture tend to be moved, the tributes left in the trees usually remain in place, disturbed only by the wind. This is true of the objects suspended from this tree, which visitors will often hang from its branches again if they are blown to the ground. On a recent visit, a toy monkey, which had been left at the side of the path leading out of the trees and which was getting muddy in the rain, had been placed in the fork made by two branches of the tree. This gesture protected the toy, and its positioning suggested that other visitors had also been moved by the memorial, wishing to leave their own gift for the little girl alongside those of her family.

In a moving piece of writing, Marcus Weaver-Hightower – the father of a stillborn baby, Matilda – reflects on the importance of things to parents who experience baby loss. He writes that material objects connected to the baby can help parents to resist ‘a pressure from others to forget (get over it)’, as well as offering a focus when there is ‘a lack of adequate quantities of memories and few people who share these memories’ (476). Weaver-Hightower adds that some parents actively create memories by buying new toys and other baby things, which can ‘provoke memory’, and which ‘might be kept in private or publicly displayed’ (476). His words chime with the memorial rituals that I have observed at the tree beneath The Angel, and my drawings of some of the tributes that have been left there seek to register their affective power, not only for the family but also for those who visit the site and encounter them.

References

Marcus Weaver-Hightower, ‘Waltzing Matilda: An Ethnography of a Father’s Stillbirth’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 41.4 (2012), 462-91.

23 November 202323 November 2023

Bottled Up

Rose petals in water in three jam jars — Photo credit: Kate Sweeney, 2022.

Making inks was at the core of the film that we co-created with parents who had experienced the loss of one twin from a multiple pregnancy. Workshop sessions were structured around the three stages of the ink-making process, as outlined by Jason Logan in Make Ink: (1) find ink (gathering the materials); (2) make ink (creating and bottling the inks); and (3) test ink (drawing and writing with the inks). The natural materials collected either on the walks or in other meaningful places – bilberries, buttercups, rose petals, an empty crab shell – were distilled into inks, which were in turn transformed into drawings and film animations. The memories of the lost babies permeated these activities, and ink making became its own ritual of commemoration.

The parents spoke often during the making of the film about the bottling up or repression of a grief that could not easily be articulated, because it is not well understood. Outside the family, the loss often went unspoken and even within the family it was hard to share, particularly across the generations. The inks gave a new and different resonance to what it meant to bottle up feelings associated with the loss. One parent observed: ‘having those gorgeous little bottles – bottled up feelings and emotions and places – it’s a really nice thing to have at the end of the project. The bottles are sitting on the shelf so we know that any time we want to we can go back and use those again and we know that if we see other things that we like we can make more inks. Even for anniversaries or things like that we know we can do that.’ The ‘bottling up’ of the feelings and places associated with the walks as inks created new memories, and grief was experienced not as internal, but as an object on the shelf that could be picked up and put down, used and remade.

The parents talked about the beneficial process of gathering materials on the walks, which gave dedicated time as a family to remember, and provided them with an activity on which to focus: ‘I think as an actual process, it’s a wonderful therapy tool – I’m not sure if that’s the right phrase – just to be able to spend some time somewhere that you like thinking about the loss and then having something practical to do. We are going somewhere that we enjoy being and we want to collect these materials and we are going to turn them into something completely different. It might have started out as buttercups or crab shells, but it ends up being this beautiful film.’ The transformation of the materials into something different – and something beautiful – is key to the project’s meaning for the parents.

Kate made inks in her studio from the materials gathered on the walks, and she also gave kits and instructions to the parents so that they could make their own inks, either between sessions or once the sessions had ended. One parent commented of this aspect of the project: ‘It was easy to make the inks and we did our own from the instructions and equipment that Kate gave us. I think this was something that could be given to all sorts of families and not just families that have lost a child but anybody who has lost anyone.’ While the families appreciated the creativity of what could be done with the inks – the drawing and writing that they enabled – the ink making itself seemed to be particularly helpful for navigating grief as a family, and the bottled ink was treasured in and of itself.

Babs Behan, founder of Botanical Inks, has written of ink making from natural materials:

There is something simple and beautiful about walking out onto the land and picking up fallen leaves, harvesting flowers and berries, and digging up muddy roots and then soaking them in water to extract their colour. I have seen people falling in love over and over again with these old-new ways of creating something – they love the fact that bringing more beauty into the world needn’t be harmful to the environment or to their own personal health. (p. 10)

In the context of our project, making inks transformed the bottling up of feelings about a difficult form of grief into a positive meaning and activity, and provided beautiful objects that the parents could keep once the project had finished. Like Behan, we also watched the parents fall in love with the techniques and processes of ink making that Kate introduced to them in the workshop sessions.

References

Babs Behan, Botanical Inks: Plant-to-Print Dyes, Techniques and Projects (London: Quadrille, 2018).

Jason Logan, Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking (New York: Abrams, 2018).

15 November 202313 May 2024

Clootie or rag trees

Following the article in The Guardian about the memorial objects at The Angel of the North, a number of people kindly emailed me about clootie or rag trees, wondering whether there might be a connection with the memorial activity at The Angel. Clootie means cloth in Scots and the trees, usually hawthorn or ash, are located close to sacred wells or springs. A rag or cloth would be dipped into the holy water and tied to the tree in order to cure a sickness or ailment. The cloth would often be from a garment associated with the body part affected by the illness, and it was believed that the sickness would fade even as the material disintegrated over time. Holy wells were visited by people from across the area on special days, such as Beltane, the May Day festival marking the beginning of summer.

The Dictionary of English Folklore records that rag trees had become rare by the nineteenth century, although a few remained in Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Cornwall. In 2003, it records three active wells in England: two in Yorkshire (St. Helen’s Well at Walton and St. Helen’s Well at Eshton) as well as an unnamed well at Madron in Cornwall. As the name clootie suggests, a number of trees in Scotland are also associated with this ritual: the best known and still much visited are the Munlochy Clootie Well on the Black Isle peninsula, and St. Mary’s Well in the woods near the battlefield of Culloden. Scotland passed an Act of Parliament in 1581 banishing pilgrimages to holy wells and those which lasted became associated with Christian saints: the well at Munlochy is dedicated to Saint Boniface Curitan. The ritual of the clootie tree nevertheless remained popular in Scotland, and Alexander Crow has observed:

The Clootie Well is mentioned by several historical writers and collectors of folklore and tradition. Writing in his 1869 Book of Days, Robert Chambers mentioned a well to the east of the current Munlochy site, called Craigach Well, in Avoch. He describes the scene on the first Sunday of May as ‘like a fair’, with English, Scots and Gaelic all spoken as the pilgrims made their offerings, also noting that each person drank from the well. Thomas Pennant made two famous journeys around Scotland and in 1769 recorded that he saw many such places ‘tapestried with rags’.

Poignantly, Crow records that the well in Culloden Woods was decorated with coloured ribbons and rags when the 51^st Highland Division was lost during the Dunkirk evacuations in 1940. He observes that this revival demonstrates ‘how an ancient practice still had meaning in recent times’. This example also suggests that the traditional association with hanging ribbons on the clootie tree has merged more recently with the memorialisation of the dead.

There are many holy wells scattered across Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: 187 are recorded by the Northern Ireland Sites and Monuments Record, while 2,996 have been officially recorded in the Republic of Ireland. Many more have not been documented because they are small, unnamed springs of local significance, and in 2021 a research project at Queens University Belfast, Hidden Heritage of Holy Wells, set out to map these sites county by county. Examples of rag trees in Ireland include St. Brigid’s Well in Kildare, the Well of St. Lasair in Roscommon, the Holy Well at Tobernalt, and St. Feichin’s Well in Westmeath.

The clootie tree at Munlochy has recently brought into focus some of the sensitivities around these sites. Traditionally, the cloths tied to the trees were scraps of cotton or woven wool that would disintegrate over time. With man-made and synthetic fibres now more commonly used in clothing, some of the cloths that are left do not deteriorate, meaning that the sites can become crowded. Forestry and Land Scotland, who manage the Munlochy well, have teamed up with local community groups to clean up the site periodically, leaving in place those items which are biodegradable and environmentally friendly, and removing only plastics, polyesters and other items that won’t disintegrate. A major clean-up in 2019 responded to the concerns of locals about the deteriorating condition of the area. In 2022, there was community concern when a visitor decided to clean the site without permission from Forestry and Land Scotland, following a build-up of offerings during the Covid-19 pandemic and tree damage by Storm Arwen.

There are undoubtedly correspondences between the clootie or rag trees and the memorial at The Angel, most obviously the tying of ribbons and pieces of cloth around the branches of trees, or hanging items of clothing from the branches. Some of the emails I received speculated about whether The Angel served a similar function to the holy wells, prompting a feeling that the nearby copse of trees was a place of spiritual significance or power. Unlike at the holy wells, however, the ribbons and cloths tied to the trees seem to be items of remembrance rather than placed there in the hope of healing. This prompts the question of whether the rag tree tradition is adapting and merging with grassroots memorialisation, as the example of the tree in Culloden Woods would suggest. It also raises the question of whether cloth tied to a tree as a memorial would be more likely to be made of fibres that will last, so that the memory is preserved. Or would the disintegration of the cloth over time be experienced as the lost person gradually merging into the surrounding landscape? To what extent, too, does the healing function of the rag tree carry over to the memorial at The Angel, so that tying a cloth or ribbon to the branches not only commemorates a person who has died but also represents a healing ritual for those who have been left behind?

The mapping of the holy wells in Ireland and Northern Ireland raises a further question about the delicate balance to be observed between recording and preserving a site and interfering with it. The same sensitivities about removing objects are felt at The Angel and the holy wells, and when I visit the memorial I am careful to disturb the site as little as possible. Like the memorial at The Angel, the holy wells are important to local communities, and the offerings are private and personal to those who leave them. At the same time, it is precisely this grassroots and localised memorial activity that is often overlooked and undocumented; it represents what Professor Keith Lilley from the Hidden Heritage of Holy Wells research team has called ‘small heritage’. By recording the site through sound, our hope is that this project can document the memorial at The Angel of the North, and capture what it means to those who leave objects and tokens there, whilst also respecting the site and the sensitivity of what is being remembered.

References

Alexander Crow, ‘Why Do Celts Hang Rags on Trees?’, Culture Trip, 23 February 2017, Why do Celts Hang Rags on Trees | Culture Trip (theculturetrip.com)

‘Eerie tradition or eyesore? The Clootie Well Clean-Up Row’, 25 January 2002, Eerie tradition or eyesore? The Clootie Well clean-up row – BBC News

Forestry and Land Scotland, ‘Cleaning up the Clootie Well at Munlochy’, Monday 28 October 2019, https://forestryandland.gov.scot/blog/clootie-well-cleanup/

‘Holy wells: mapping Ireland’s hidden heritage’, 7 March 2021, Holy wells: Mapping Ireland’s hidden heritage – BBC News

Jacqueline Simpson and Steven Roud (eds.), A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)

10 October 202310 May 2024

Trees

Although the weather is still warm, there is a definite feel of autumn when I visit The Angel today. Leaves have started to fall in the copse of trees, and it is noticeably lighter and less shaded than in the summer months, though there is not yet the open, exposed feeling of the winter season. The horse chestnut tree that stands behind the fence marking the western perimeter of the site is dropping conkers and their prickly cases litter the ground.

The copse was planted at the same time as The Angel was erected and it has now grown to maturity. The main planting is of alder trees, and it is around their slender trunks that many of the ribbons and tokens are tied. Alders thrive in wet ground, which strengthens their wood, and they improve soil fertility on former industrial wasteland. This makes the tree an ideal choice for planting at The Angel site, which was formerly used for mining. Rainwater drains from the mound on which The Angel stands, meaning that the path through the copse is often muddy underfoot. Recent rain has made the ground waterlogged today, and I pick my way carefully where the feet of others have already churned the ground.

An alder wood was traditionally known as a carr and was thought to have a mysterious atmosphere, with the green dye from the tree’s flowers believed to colour the clothes of fairies. When the pale wood of the alder is cut, it turns a deep orange as if the tree is bleeding, which caused the alder to be associated with pain. I think of the resonances of the memorial with these traditional beliefs: children often refer to the copse as a fairy garden, and the bark of some of the trees has been incised with the marks of people’s grief.

The tree at the entrance to the copse is an oak, and its acorns are turning from green to brown. The branches of this tree are always filled with tokens and many objects are placed around its base. Today, a gathering of stones of different sizes is placed nearby, although there is nothing to indicate the significance of this memorial. The tree acts as a portal to the copse and is visible from The Angel, which helps explain why it is the focus for so many of the tributes and messages that are left. Like the alder, the oak also has traditional associations with the sacred, and pagan rituals were commonly practised in oak groves.

A plum cherry tree stands nearest The Angel, marking the head of the steep and often-slippery incline that leads out of the copse. In early spring, the tree is a dazzle of white blossom against blue skies. In winter, baubles and wire butterflies hang suspended from its bare branches. I often think of this tree as a sign of hope, associating its flowers with the end of winter and its decorations with the festivities of the Christmas season.

Angel of the North and tree with decorations — Photo credit: © Anne Whitehead, 2022.

References

‘A-Z of British Trees’, Woodland Trust, https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/a-to-z-of-british-trees/