Meaning
Willow grows by water, bends in wind and flood, and roots again from a cut branch. The kenning of its letter is "hue of the lifeless", in Calder's translation, and the Auraicept explains it by the pale colour of the tree: "The colour of a lifeless one … owing to the resemblance of its hue to a dead person".
Our reading takes receptiveness and recovery from the tree: people born in this month are read as sensitive and adaptable, with deep feelings and the ability to recover after hard seasons, and yielding is read as a kind of strength. The reading is ours.
The letter
Sail is the fourth letter of the stones: four strokes to the right of the stemline. Its Old Irish name sail genuinely means willow, and both medieval tracts gloss it so, as O'Flaherty did in 1685. Graves spells it Saille, a spelling many websites keep; the Irish name is Sail.
The willow and the Moon
Many pages call the willow the Moon's tree in Celtic tradition. The link is real, but it is not Irish. Nicholas Culpeper's herbal of 1652 puts the willow under the Moon as English plant lore, Graves pairs the willow with Monday among his trees of the week, and Paterson gives the Willow month the Moon as its planet. No medieval Irish source does. We give no planet to any month.
In Graves' year
Willow runs from 15 April to 12 May, the same in every list of the tree months. The gemstone, animal and personality title that tree-sign websites give it are modern, after Paterson (1992) and later lists, and are not 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
- "The colour of a lifeless one ... owing to the resemblance of its hue to a dead person" (Calder 1917, p. 91) sourced
- The Ogam Tract's gloss
- the same tree (Calder 1917, p. 277) sourced
- O'Flaherty's gloss (1685)
- Sail, the willow 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: sodath, "fine-coloured"; bird: seg, "hawk". 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 that bends in flood and roots again from a cut branch: sensitive and adaptable, with yielding read as strength. our construction
How the schools read it
- The medieval tracts
- The kenning "hue of the lifeless"; the Auraicept glosses the letter willow.
- O'Flaherty, 1685
- Sail, the willow.
- Graves, 1948
- The fifth month, 15 April to 12 May.
- Ogham scholarship
- sail 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 that bends in flood and roots again from a cut branch: sensitive and adaptable, with yielding read as strength.
Claims about it
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The willow is the Moon's tree in Celtic tradition.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A modern Pagan motif. Culpeper's herbal of 1652 puts the willow under the Moon as English plant lore, and Graves pairs it with Monday; no Irish source does.
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The Willow 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 Willow 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 Willow 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.
