Oak Tree. Folklore, mythology and symbolism of the oak tree (Duir)
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2023
- To support my work as a folklorist and storyteller, please consider making a small donation on Patreon: / thestorycrow
Part of a series of videos on the folklore, symbolism and Mythology of various flowers, plants, herbs and trees of Britain, Ireland and Northern Europe.
The Oak tree. The door tree. Tree of Kingship. Tree of Druids; of magic, knowledge and wisdom.
Protection, love and honour.
Tree of Zeus, of Jove of Thor
of the Dagda, of the good gods.
Duir in the Ogham. Door.
The Oak; tree of kings, tree of Fionn, tree of the Green Man waxing.
All hail summers King!
All hail the gates of life and death.
Through the oak portal my friends!
Deeper into the forest.
It’s remarkable how much the symbol for “door” and “knowledge” resembles a key!
That’s very true, I hadn’t thought of that! Although most of the ogham letters are quite key like - but none so much as Duir 🌳
I hadn't thought of that. I'd always been wondering where us "smart" people got our letter forms and shapes from. Time to research.
I'm part of a conservation effort for the longest continuous oak avenue in the souther hemisphere here in my home town of Potchefstroom, Northwest ,South-africa
I spent today cataloging and inspecting 103 oak trees, out of 913
They are really amazing trees
Sounds like really good work, thank you for doing it 🌳♥️🙏
I love trees & saw & pull off ivy plus any holly thats up to no good 💙
Thank you for the lovely stories. In Bulgarian traditions the oak also have significant role. The spelling of the name read backwards means "future", so on summer solstices they cut a piece of wood (log), which they throw in the fire on Charismas (it is not Charismas in Bulgarian traditions) and the way it burns is used the predict what will happen the coming year.
This is cool! Thank you 🙏
I got a very large smile on my face seeing you talk of your friendship with this Oak. It is always a delight to see others who form friendships with the trees.
I would love to see you do the Hawthorn!
I will my friend, probably when the blossom is out in spring. Thank you for your words, and for stopping by here 🌳😊
Grateful to the Oak
All hail the Oak King! Thanks for your educational video. Lovely location. I too have an Oak tree in my yard in tropical Southeast Florida, his name is King Henry the 7th - at least that's what he told me!😊 I always honor the Oak and Holly Kings at Summer Solstice, and the faeries join in the revelry, of course! King Henry has lots of animals that live in his branches and he helps keep my house and yard cool. I truly appreciate him.
Woah! An oak can manage in tropical Florida? That blows my mind. What a regal visitor! Also, what a fantastic name. He seems like quite a character. All hail king Henry the 7th! 🌳 👑
@@TheStoryCrow yes there are many species of Oak. Ours here in sunny Ft Lauderdale is Quercus virginiana, Southern Live Oak. I'm a native landscaper and am lucky enough to be able to play with the plants all the time.
@@janinegriffiths8281 Googling that tree immediately. What a great job you have 👍🌳
@@TheStoryCrow Indeed, there are many species of Oak that thrive all over Florida and the East Coast of the US. As another poster mentioned, the "Live Oak" is the quintessential symbol of the Deep South. They can become absolutely massive and several hundred years old.
The wood is incredibly durable, as well. The USS Constitution was a frigate clad in Live Oak and nicknamed "Old Ironsides" because British cannon balls would literally just bounce off the hull during the War of 1812.
It also grows in twisty/serpentine shapes which has made it prized by wooden boat builders for centuries, dating back to the early Spanish settlers, then later the English. It's also quite rot resistant, as well.
The trouble is that it's very difficult to mill to uniforms sizes and shapes, at an industrial level, which has been its saving grace from being over harvested.
Just found your channel and getting caught up, now. Cheers!
I enjoy these videos so much. Oak was one of the first trees I learned about as a kid. Intereating fact about oak. You can use older oak leaves to dye fabric. I made my neice a deer doll using them with alittle bit of alum ( I found it in the spice section of the grocery store.) if you were to add nails to it, You get a pretty dark color. Also, you can make bread from the acorns. You just have let them soak in water until the tannins wash away. Some will put them in the river, Some will even put them in the back of their toilet tanks for a few weeks😅. When they lose their color, you can process it into a flour. Thank you for the video. ❤
I’m so glad to hear this. I love that you dyed a deer with oak bark tannin. I meant to talk about oak bread. Probably the most important foodstuff in Europe before farming. Not sure about putting it in the toilet tank though 😅
It makes me happy to hear you tell the story of an oak. ❤ i have a huge beautiful oak in my yard here in alabama, us!😀
13:35 Pole here, and yes, oak is the world tree in slavic mythologies. Also it's the tree of Perun, who is a god of thunder and in many cases is considered the king of the gods.
Ah, great, thanks for confirming that 👍
So nice following many your stories elsewhere .. its good that English Irish Scots etc. can share without strife and nod to your being Pagan.. takes one to know one :) Bother na coillte Molaim duit
The way of the woods. I like that. Thank you for your comments my friend. I’ve always found there so much more to connect the people of these islands than divides them. The similarity of so many of the old ways being just one example. Humour probably being another.
What took the algorithm so long!?!?! You are amazing!!! I'm systematically watching it all. I had been looking at equinox and solstice traditions and having a hard time pinning down the history and folklore. I really appreciate your eclectic storytelling style as it gives me many different avenues to research for more connections. I'm a botany nerd so love hearing about the plant histories.
Botany nerds of the world unite! 🌳🌲😀 honestly that means a lot. Thanks for watching 😊
I am so enjoying your videos! Of particular interest are the folklore and myth talks about plants and trees. I have shared your videos with friends here in Canada.
Thank you for spreading the word. I’m very fond of Canadians. Such a beautiful country. I’ll keep making more videos about tree and plant lore alongside myth and story. ☺️🌳🌲🙏
Wonderful. Thank you so much! England is also very beautiful and the people are so friendly and welcoming.
I really enjoyed that thank you so much
Glad you enjoyed it ☺️
hearts of oak
🌳
Loving the nightingale's contribution as well.
🐦☺️
What a beautiful and noble tree that you have in your life. I appreciated everything you shared. Thank you
You are so welcome my friend 🌳🙏
For a beautiful song and video about the oak tree, I humbly suggest the Latvian folk song Ozolini as performed by Auli. The video is beautiful.
I know it! Beautiful. 🙏
Lovin these tree tales 💚
Plenty more to come ☺️
There’s a lotta trees 🌳😅
I didn’t know my birthday is the same day as the oak day, how wonderful to find out😊😊
Great video, like always! Also, I'm a little jealous that you got to grow up in such an amazing place. An iron age settlement? Wow! I'm thousands of miles away and that fires up my imagination all the way over here. I can't imagine how fantastic it would be to grow up right there!
The archaeologists are returning this year. Can’t wait to see what they uncover. I’m hoping for a roundhouse 😃
Very magical connection for me personally which is a brand new journey! Old world and new together now .I appreciate you
I’m very glad to hear it ☺️🌳 thanks for watching 🙏
I enjoy all your stories
🙏
wow, good stuff.
Thank you - exactly what I was looking for! Off to see my local oaks.
Go well to thy grove 🌳 🚪 🧙♂️✨
Absolutely beautiful, thank you, love and light from Cornwall 🌱
Right back at you, from Scotland ✨ 🙏
Haha inadvertently watchd this today!!!🎉🌳
Thank you, for making this video.
My pleasure 🌳🙏✨
He is truly magnificent 🌳👑
Oh my goodness, i am learning so much from your videos. You have really given me food for thought. Thank you 🙏 😀
Glad to hear it Ellie 😊
Great thanks. Oak I"m sure is the Christ mas Tree. I thought he represented the Sun but Jupiter sounds good 💙
Very interesting,alot i never heard before. Keep it up, you are fasinating
Thank you, I will. Glad you’re enjoying the content 🙏
The Greek "Dryads" also lived in Oak trees. I suspect the name may be related to this "Duir' variant, as well.
Probably. Thanks for bringing that up 🙏☺️🌳
I love this story telling its great ❤
Charles III recent coronation invite included symbolism of the green man.
Did it? That’s fascinating. I really like that. Always quite liked that man’s appreciation of folklore and ecology.
Oaks are magnificent! I love learning about this stuff, as my ancestry is mostly Irish with some English
Glad you enjoyed it. Plenty of Irish and English myth and folklore on this channel 🙏✨☺️🌳
have always loved the oak tree, partly because it makes up my surname found this fascinating really enjoyed it.
Everyone loves a good oak 🌳✨🙏⚡️
Fantastic video
Thanks! 😃
Just found your channel, loving it. Thank you for all the research and knowledge 🙏
Glad you enjoy it!
Good stuff.
Glad you enjoyed it
Fab love oak trees I planted one with my daughter when she was 3. She is now 7 it’s in a big pot. I’ve tried to give it to local forests but no reply. 😢 so for now it’s my duty to care for it and I love it x
Bonsai it! 🌳👍
Ok I will do that!
You can not keep it and plant it?
I live in a built up area where the roots would cause havoc! I would love to though x
Story Crow. When you studied at bristol university did you ever get to see the jack in the green march? It starts near bristol universities main campus outside of a pub called the green man its utterly delightful
Yes! 🌳
@@TheStoryCrow yay, I'm really happy to hear that, did you go to balloon festival or/and harbour festival? Im bristolian if its not obvious xD
Bristol I treat as my home city, even if I’m not a proper brizzle babber, love the place and the people. Plus I’ve generations of west county seamen standing behind me, so it feels like coming home whenever I visit. When I lived there though I was in my early twenties, so preferred space hacking to balloon festivals (lovely though that spectacle that is). I was probably a bit of a prat really. Exploring the tunnels under the docks was fun. Once I climbed up wills memorial building (when it was scaffolded) and crossed a plank onto the museum, and sat on one of the statues shoulders, so next time your walking by there imagine me sat on the middle one. Stupid thing to do really. It was 4 in the morning and I was intoxicated. 😂
Cromwell let you guys off easy.☘️😥☘️
Can’t argue with that I suppose. I mean. He burned quite a lot of people to death in England for .. being catholic, or female, or gobby, or wearing too extravagant a hat, but Ireland definitely came off worse…
Hi, anyone can recommend a book that collects the legends, myths and stories about world folklore or European about oak trees? Thanks
Hi Somesh. World folklore is a pretty big subject, but Alan Garner is a brilliant compiler and editor of European and world folklore. I don’t know a book specifically dedicated to the oak, but Max Adam’s ‘the wisdom of trees’ is a great book about European tree folklore, including oak. Good luck! 🌳
@@TheStoryCrowthanks I appreciate the tip. Do you know also a good book about Runes? Thanks
I do actually! He’s not for everyone, and takes very much a pragmatic (and chaos) approach to the runes - Jan fries’ Helrunar is excellent if you want to work with runes practically. If you’re after something more academic on Viking age mind and magic generally then ‘the Viking way’ by Neil price is dynamite.
( excellent, oak )
🌳✨
A little note on the origin of Duir, as in Irish and Derw, as in Welsh: Proto Indo-European (PIE) suggests the word Daru as meaning ‘tree’. In Slavic languages we see this morpheme; derevo in Russian, dereva in Ukrainian etc. We know from history the Druids had a taboo on writing and looking at many of the words for the flora and fauna in Welsh I might suggest that an underlying and related belief informed their style of nomenclature as well. Names of flora and fauna are far less a label on a thing rather a description of them. Often quite poetic. A good example here is glöyn byw, meaning butterfly, translated word-for-word is ‘living light’ or ‘living ember’. They seemed to not want to merely label things. So my guess here is that the oak was so important and significant to them it’s name actually had the meaning of ‘the tree’; the tree of trees what have you.
Good insights, thank you. I’ve heard heard various etymologies for the word, and this one does make a lot of sense for precisely those reasons 🌳🙏 also, didn’t know the Welsh for butterfly, that is beautiful …
@@TheStoryCrow as a Welsh speaker my biggest motivation in the survival of the language is that it is born of a people who venerated nature. The explanation you give about the etymology of the word Druid is true, although it goes deeper still. The -uid element does indeed mean knowledge in Celtic languages, but is also means presence. We can easily see how there may be a double meaning here, as something of presence is something known, perhaps. Gwyddoniaeth (gwydd=knowledge) is the Welsh word for science. However when this morpheme or element is seen in place names it’s translates to meaning something present or obvious. The Welsh word for Snowdon is yr Wyddfa which would mean the present place translated directly. It’s un mutated form would be Gwyddfa (the G is dropped when you had yr=the before the name itself) So another etymology to consider as well as one who ‘knows the oak’ might be one who is ‘present with the tree’. Just a thought. This absolute reverence the people of Britain once had for their environment and nature is written into the dna of the Welsh language. A reminder our ancestors lived in an oak covered Eden
Please do Rowan!! Cheers!
Either Ash or Roman are next on my list 👍🌳 Thanks for watching 🙏☺️
Rowan 😅
Professor oak
🌳✨🧙♂️
Im sorry did you mention how old your oak tree is? Its pretty big!
I’m curious myself
I did measure it’s girth once to get an estimate of its age. It came in at a little under 200 years. I thought it would have been older tbh - but then I could have done it wrong, and it’s not an exact science 🌳
"Sacred Oak Groves" abound all throughout Indo-European myths, and were still in regular use by the Native Peoples of Europe into the 8th century, at least. Boniface's destruction of the Anglo-Saxon, sacred oaks was seen as a formal end to Paganism in that part of Europe.
How did someone with such a silly name do so much wrong 🌳🔥😥
My last name means oak 💚🌰🌳⚡️
The Irish oak is a different species from the English oak Quercus Robur and probably hardier and tolerates poorer soils.
Probably. A bit like how the English oak is tougher and stouter then the French oak. I hear the shillelagh was traditionally made from Irish oak, given its toughness, but due to its scarcity, blackthorn is used most commonly. I certainly didn’t see much oak last time I was in Ireland. But then I practically live in an oak forest 🌳
Apart from Ireland it grows from Wester Ross down the west coast. Warwickshire so Shakespeares oak?
Leafage beats the English oak. The iron works in NW Scotland greatly depleted the Highland woods burnt for charcoal. Saved by the switch to coal/coke.
So is willow oak included?
I don’t see why not, it’s more of an oak then a willow I think 😊
Holly King
Holly king.
Was the word "Druid" derived from "Duir"?
Lots of etymological labyrinths here, but possibly yes, meaning ‘oak’ (daur) or ‘tree’ or ‘door’ knowledge’ or ‘seeing’ - dru - wid ?? Who knows 😅
@@TheStoryCrow Jordan Maxwell had said in a late interview he had an original bible which had "King Druid" in the place of "King David". Tells you a lot.
The Bur Oak of eastern North America rivals the English Oak.
So the Puritans [Christians] were whipped with nettles for not showing loyalty to Saturn/Green Man/Odin/Charles over and above the true Oak King Zeus/Thor...
😂 well technically they were all Christians. It was the 1700s. The non puritanical variety still had a lot of the old ways running through it, that’s all. Like a wild garden. The puritans did a hell of a lot of weeding. And burning.
@@TheStoryCrow Weeding and burning nettles so they couldn't be used to whip Puritans with?
@@scottphillips7108 not nettles, no my friend. Humans. 🧙🔥😔
@@TheStoryCrow Oh I see now you mean like the pagans who take/took lives of humans in their rituals... Thanks for clarifying... Appreciated...
@@scottphillips7108 Well, that was a tad earlier… not really the same practices and beliefs in Iron Age Europe 😅
But yeah. Humans do some strange things in the name of God(s) don’t they? And the wounds can run deep. Generation deep. And we all feel the repercussion don’t we?
To be honest mate, I sit here reading your comments and I have nothing but love to you brother, wherever you are. Let’s heal old wounds. Swords into ploughs. Go well on on your path. It would be lovely to meet you someday.
Peace 🙏 ✨
My last name means oak 💚🌰🌳⚡️