Sheffield Eller tree, world-wide memories inspired in Loughborough

In Sheffield, Yorkshire, The Eller Tree game is still played. Young men and women, stand in a line, a tall girl at the end to represent the tree ... they begin to wrap round her, chanting 'The old Eller tree growns thicker and thicker'. When they have completely wrapped round, they all jump together calling out 'A bunch of rags, a bunch of rags' and try to tread on each others' toes.

Eller relates to Alder, and in the Sheffield area where this tree is common, it is held in great respect. 

On Tree Dressing Day in 1993 in Loughborough, Kevin Ryan of the Charnwood Arts Trust, reported that their own 'rag tree' marking the entrance to the new National Forest led to much comment. A seventy five year old Canadian woman said "Oh this is just like back home, the Indians are always doing things like this." A Welshman said people in the hills where he grew up dressed trees when he was a lad, and that even coal miners were known to dress trees. An Asian gentleman remembered dressing trees with fruit in India when he was a lad. An Irishman remembered dressing the May Mulberry Bush. 

"Jeannie was absolutely delighted" said Kevin Ryan, "We got talking about clootie trees and she remembered a visit to a tree near a spring which had associations with the Battle of Culloden. She told us how the women she was with had all taken bits from their petticoats or ripped their tights to hang near the water and how they all said a prayer as they tied the bits on. She then tied something to our gateway trees and promptly burst into tears as she said a prayer for a friend who had died this time last year, but she left feeling good!"

Picture:
Common Ground dressed a tree in Shaftesbury Avenue, London, with illuminated numbers to launch Tree Dressing Day in 1990 and show that "every tree counts"