Elves hate and fear hawthorn, and they hate and fear the dryads of that shrub even more. Unique among the dryads, hawthorn dryads can chop down their shrub and fashion it into a still-living but functional item.
The woman who ended the Seelie-Unseelie wars turned her tree into a staff and used it to mesmerise and then lead away the Unseelie.
No one knows where she took them, or if they linger under her spell, but the stump of her hawthorn bush lies in the middle of a grove in the Wood that Won the War (38.06).
Human worshippers of the Green Lady often depict her with a wreath of hawthorn leaves.
Hooks:
- Who was the dryad?
- Where did she take the Unseelie, and why?
- Why is the deity of the elves so intimately connected with the one plant that checks them?
- What happened to the hawthorn staff?
- Is there still magic in the hawthorn stump?
- This says that only hawthorn dryads can chop down their trees, but in Skullreach there is a dryad who gave up the heart of her sequoia. What gives?
- Is this a different incident to the exile of the Queen Sinister? Or are these conflicting tales of the same event?
Connections
- Scarecrow nests in the Kingswood each have a single entrance marked with a hawthorn rod. Elves will not pass the rod, though they try to cause strife for those inside in other ways.
- Giant talking beavers often plant hawthorn, which seems to keep elves at bay (39.08.01).
- When the Pacharia discovered Alberon had disguised his identity to learn witchcraft from them, they hung him from a hawthorn tree and the Green Lady would not or could not cut him down (see eleven recognised forms).