Even before the first frost, ash trees along the Teifi gorge are taking on the pale autumn tints that are prelude to their fall. The river here roils darkly down to salt-marshes round Cardigan, its depths brown and turbid with slurry run-off, tide-lines blanched by agrochemical pollutant along each bank, dippers and wagtails gone, birds silent in the woods, the life departed. Salmon, sewin (sea trout) and brown trout, which once drew anglers and coracle-fishers to this place, raise scarcely a ripple now on the smooth and dying flow.
I’ve come to look for ash-keys, which vary so much from year to year. I think back to my childhood, when bright lime-green bunches clustered heavy on each branch, spinning down with the equinoctial gales or hanging as grim, dry, umber swags throughout the winter until late black buds of spring opened into leaf to hide them from view.
I like ash trees: Yggdrasil, the world-tree of Norse mythology; the maypole-tree; the husbandry-tree of folk-craft, its timber springy and strong-jointing; the best clean-cleaving wood, wet or dry, for scented fires of winter – “fit for a queen to warm herself by”, flaking away to fine grey ash.
In DH Lawrence’s novella St Mawr, the Welsh groom Morgan Lewis tells Mrs Witt of how he ate ash-seeds as a child; how folk-memory held that they gave the ancient people of the land ability to hear how the trees felt and lived; and how, in these ill-mannered times, when we cut them down without propitiatory ceremony, ash trees have come to dislike people.
I find no ash-keys here; but later, a few miles upriver, encounter one tree on the river-bank with green clumps of keys weighing down the branches. It glows in the low sunlight. I pick a few keys, peel back the winged seed-case, ease out the slender nuts within.
They’re gritty and bitter, as I remember from childhood, the aftertaste long lingering. I shall plant them round my home, in the hope that squirrels of future years may play there, owls nest, and blackcaps sing.
The Birds of North Wales, this year’s memorial lecture in honour of the late Country diary writer William Condry (thecondrylecture.co.uk), given by Jonathan Elphick, is at Tabernacle/MoMA, Machynlleth, 1 October, 7pm for 7.30
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