Meaning
Hazel is a many-stemmed tree of woods and hedges whose nuts were an important food. The kenning of its letter is "fairest of trees", in Calder's translation, and the Auraicept gives the reason: "Fair wood, that is, hazel, i.e., every one is eating of its nuts".
Our reading takes patiently gathered wisdom from the tree and its stories: people born in this month are read as curious and clear-minded, at their best when they share what they learn. The reading is ours.
The letter
Coll is the fourth letter of the second group: four strokes to the left of the stemline. Its Old Irish name coll genuinely means hazel, one of the few letter names that is a tree, and both medieval tracts and O'Flaherty gloss it so.
The salmon of knowledge
Two medieval Irish stories meet here, and popular retellings join them. In the tale of Finn's boyhood, a poet watches the salmon of Féc's pool on the Boyne for seven years; the boy Finn, cooking it, burns his thumb on the skin and gains its knowledge. That tale, in Kuno Meyer's translation of 1904, has no hazelnuts in it. The hazelnuts are in another text, the verse place-lore of the river Shannon, where nine hazels drop their nuts into Connla's well and the salmon eat them. Both are medieval stories, told here as stories.
In Graves' year
Hazel runs from 5 August to 1 September, the same in every list. Graves pairs the hazel with Mercury among his trees of the week. The gemstones of tree-sign websites are modern, and our own old table even gave Hazel the hawthorn's stone by a copy slip; none is used here.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- The Auraicept's explanation
- "Fair wood, that is, hazel, i.e., every one is eating of its nuts" (Calder 1917, p. 93) sourced
- The Ogam Tract's gloss
- the same tree (Calder 1917, p. 277) sourced
- O'Flaherty's gloss (1685)
- Coll, the hazel sourced
- How the letter is tied to the tree
- The name means the tree sourced
- Colour and bird words for the letter (a medieval curiosity)
- Colour: cron, "brown"; no bird word for C in the Book of Ballymote. Words that begin with the letter, like the tract's lists of churches; not the tree's colour or animal sourced
- Our reading
- A tree whose nuts fed people: curious and clear-minded, at its best when it shares what it learns. our construction
How the schools read it
- The medieval tracts
- The kenning "fairest of trees"; the Auraicept glosses the letter hazel.
- O'Flaherty, 1685
- Coll, the hazel.
- Graves, 1948
- The ninth month, 5 August to 1 September.
- Ogham scholarship
- coll is one of the few letter names that genuinely names a tree.
- Tree-sign websites
- The same dates; a planet, gemstone, animal and personality title, all modern. Not used here.
- EsoTerrier
- A tree whose nuts fed people: curious and clear-minded, at its best when it shares what it learns.
Claims about it
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The Hazel month belongs to an old Celtic calendar that the Druids kept.
falseWhat the record shows: No ancient or medieval source has a tree calendar or a tree for each birthday. The thirteen months are Robert Graves', set out in 1948.
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The hazel's gemstone is topaz.
falseWhat the record shows: A copy slip in our own engine before October 2026, taken from the hawthorn's row. All gemstones were dropped.
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The Hazel month has a traditional personality title.
falseWhat the record shows: The thirteen titles come from one website of the 2000s and were copied widely; nothing in Graves, Paterson or the medieval tracts supports them. We never use them.
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The Hazel month has a traditional planet, element, gemstone and animal.
falseWhat the record shows: Modern additions: the planets are Helena Paterson's (1992), the rest come from later web lists that disagree with one another. None is medieval or in Graves as a set.
