Also called rowan tree and red thread, crosh cuirn, witch-wood cross
Two rowan twigs bound into an equal-armed cross with red thread and placed over doors, byres and cradles to keep witches and fairies out.
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Take care: Rowan berries are mildly toxic raw; do not eat them, and keep berries away from small children. Take only a little from any tree and only with the landowner's permission.
On May Eve Manx families made small crosses of rowan, called crosh cuirn, without using a knife, and fixed them over doors and to the tails of cattle. They were worn by people too, and were meant to hold off the fairy and witch activity believed to peak on the eve of summer.
Highland households used rowan to guard the dairy, stirring milk with a rowan rod or fixing rowan to the churn so the butter would not be stolen by charms. Rowan was also burned or set at the byre threshold on May Day and Hallowmas, the two hinges of the pastoral year.
The charm was common enough that a rowan twig tied with red thread was produced as damning evidence against a woman tried for witchcraft in Ayrshire in 1618. The rhyme survived in several forms that Robert Chambers collected in the nineteenth century, showing the habit outlived the trials.
Rowan, Sorbus aucuparia, grows across upland Scotland and was the classic witch-wood of the north. Its bright red berries each carry a tiny five-pointed star at the base, and red was widely held to be a colour that witches and fairies could not abide. Binding rowan with red thread joined the two strongest protections in one small object. Crosses were fixed over doors and byres, plaited into cows' tails and sewn into clothing.
Robert Chambers printed the rhyme 'rowan tree and red thread' in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, first issued in 1826, alongside variants from the north-east. Alexander Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica, gathered in the Gaelic-speaking Highlands and Islands and published from 1900, records rowan used at the turning points of the year. The custom spread south into northern England and Cornwall, and many families still hang a rowan sprig over the door each spring.
A blue glass eye bead hung in the home or worn on the body so that envious or admiring looks are caught and reflected before they can do harm.
A cross woven from fresh rushes on St Brigid's Eve and hung in the house and byre to guard against fire, hunger and harm for the year ahead.
A used iron horseshoe nailed above a doorway to bring luck into the house and keep the Devil, witches and fairies out.
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