Summer Holiday Blaeberries

After a long and unpredictable summer I have stories a plenty to share. The first focuses on the blaeberry, a humble berry that grows amongst the pine woodlands of Scotland (I’m sure they would grow in Cornwall too but there aren’t many pine trees here). They’re smaller than the more familiar blueberry and tastier for it.

Summer always includes a family gathering on the Moray coast and this year we fitted in an afternoon of blaeberry picking. Blessed with good weather I can honetly say that this is one of my favourite hobbies. Doesn’t have to be blaeberry’s, I’m just as happy picking wild plums, brambles or sloes. The thing is that this hobby can only happen in good weather, you just wouldn’t choose to forage on a dull or rainy day. So, all my memories are of sunny times spent in fields of gold or amongst tall pine trees with rays of sunshine filtering down through the boughs. The satisfaction of helping yourself to nature’s larder is enhanced by jars of jam, pies and tipples! And as we all know, getting out in nature is a wonderful thing. This year’s venture into the woods meant encounters with hares, rabbits, butterflies, birds, bright purple heather and the odd roe deer. Food for the heart, soul and stomach!

This is all very well but what has it do with making automata and jewellery? Well, there’s a story…

An auntie once gave me a book entitled ‘Northern Lights. Fairy Tales of the Peoples of the North’. I loved it as a child and hung on to it as an adult. I recently read the stories to my youngest daughter only to be reminded how wild the stories are. My little girl couldn’t understand why such outrageous things happened in the tales - girls hiding in sticks, boys turning into ducks - so we talked about the context of the tales. They’d have been shared around a campfire on cold winter nights, no telly, no smart phones just whistling winds and howling wolves for company so an outrageous tale to capture the imagination and help the dark nights go by would have been crucial. A particular favourite of these tales is ‘The Blueberry’, a fable from the Nenets people:

A tiny girl lived alone and spent all her days sewing. She was disturbed by 3 men who decided she must marry one of them. They stole her away in a little iron box. As they made off through the forest the tiny girl made her escape through the keyhole of the box. Alas, she was lost in the woods and in her despair sat on a nearby branch and wept. She wept till she was blue in the face and inadvertently turned herself into a tiny blueberry. No matter how hard the men looked for her they couldn’t find her. And that explains why you have to look hard when picking blueberries, they are tiny and hide behind their leaves!

Food for thought. One day I will figure out an automata for this tale, until then I hope you enjoyed the story.