For whom the harebell tolls

Frail and delicate, this graceful blue flower alarmed our superstitious ancestors for centuries until it became a symbol of love, innocence and humility

- Ian Morton

POISED and elegant on slender stems, their delicate flowers blue as summer skies, harebells are ever a pleasure to encounter. They nod in meadows, but are equally happy on high hills and sand dunes, in poor, dry soil on chalky grasslands and acid heaths and even in cracks in walls and cliff faces. They are more resilient than their modest beauty might suggest. But they troubled our forefathers.

It was supposed that harebells chimed, unheard by mere humans, to summon fairies to gatherings. The fairies of medieval times were not the frivolous little gossamer beings of Victorian children’s tales. They were moody, inclined to mischief when upset and, at their worst, agents of the Devil himself. Therefore, the pretty flowers with which they were associated were regarded with some trepidation and best left untouched. Even walking carelessly among harebells could incur a life-changing spell. There was more. Harebells were so called because they grew in fields that were frequented by hares, which were of sinister repute, as it was widely thought that witches and hares were one and the same.

Such a belief was not the preserve of ignorant folk, either. The educated upper echelons were assured of it by Gerald of Wales, otherwise Gerald de Barri, aristocratic Cambro-Norman priest and historian, clerk to Henry II and to two archbishops. His authoritative Topographia Hibernica of 1188 informed his readers that ‘it has been a frequent complaint, from old times as well as in the pre- sent, that certain hags in Wales, as well as in Ireland and Scotland, changed themselves into the shape of hares, that sucking teats in this counterfeit form they might stealthily rob other people’s milk’. Gerald, whose statue graces a niche in St Davids Cathedral in west Wales, was not to be ignored.