The Rowan, Hazel and Lesser




Trees at An Doras

Centered around An Doras lived many people who were usually clients of the Oak, but were more involved in "magical" trade than others. An Doras was at the center of a large observatory and college on the Island of Dreams in the center of the Lake of Oblivion. The waters of this lake were oracular. The lake was surrounded by a maze of twenty trees much like that of the Shields's mansion (see An Doras on the magic pages.) The College and maze were maintained by the Hazel, who oversaw most of the ceremonies and the magical events. They knew the forms and the history of these ceremonies and were very like monks of our modern times. However, very few served at An Doras, most of them lived on the shores of the lakes or along the river in small families or alone.

Like many of the Clans, the Hazel also had their specialty skills and preferences. They were famous for their basket weaving. We Moderns tend to denigrate basket weaving as a simple craft that even the mentally handicapped can perform, yet it is an ancient art and was once universal. Often good ceramic ware was not available and ceramic does not travel well, as most people who have moved their china know. Baskets could be used for cooking because the water seeped out slightly, wetting the grasses that made up the pot, keeping it from burning. But baskets were ubiquitous. People used them for trapping, they used them in ceremonies, they used them for armor, they used them for houses and boats and even roads. Wicker roads have been found in Europe that extend across marshes the ruins of which are thousands of years old. Fences, woven of wicker (willow) and hazel (wattles) are still used in herding and hedging today. There is an ancient skill of interweaving living trees into hedges. The housing technique called "wattle and daub" is a kind of stucco building in northern Europe which is sound and very comfortable. Much more of written of these skills on the Crafts pages, my point being merely that we should not look down upon crafts that persisted for thousands of years.

The Hazel were a strange people, often given to solitary living, for they were extremely long lived, but also enjoyed a much closer relationship with Anieth than most of the Clans. They were often hard to distinguish from the lands in which they lived. Their houses blended into the landscape and many of them were nomadic. They would show up at the great festivals at An Doras, blinking and smiling, as if arrived from some secret world. They spoke their own language among each other, a language that Pete Shields says is very like that spoken among the Anu, an ancient human people that lived along the Bras and Avena before the arrival of the Horse People. It is speculated that the Anu might have been related to the Hazel. Despite being a people who loved lakes and marshes, the Hazel were not part of the Marsh Alliance. They served their patrons, the Oak, at An Doras and nothing more was expected of them. They were often called upon to judge cases and mediate because they had lived so long, knew so much of the lore of Anieth, and were so removed from the passions and politics of the Clans.

The environs of An Doras required an "army" of people dedicated to tending to the trees of the Maze, running the College, and officiating over the many complex festivals surrounding the succession of the Oak kings and Holly champions, and the festivals of season change and commerce. There was a gathering of the Clans every end of summer (around the first week of September) when the woods were dry enough to travel. Clansmen came in from all over Anieth to trade, marry, party and meet others. Discussions of protocol and law and philosophy often continued for days in debates that ended up involving hundreds of spectators and several people arguing finer points. The Clans also judged international cases brought before them as a whole. Each family would send a member to speak or vote at the Convention, very like the Althing in ancient Iceland. It was the hope of the Rowan, Lorg Arinn, that Korutos would be tried before the Convention of the Clans, but instead, he was taken to the Island before the Oracle. Few were allowed to walk the Maze without first being blindfolded. They were led by Hazel boys and girls to the Island.

The Hazel had thousands of tests for people of all the Clans and the humans and half-breeds. They had originated many of the Queen Tests to give during the initiation of the half-breed queens of the Horse People during their year-long trials with their patrons. One of these was the Test of Will. My father claimed that this test shows up in many Fairy Tales with three testers, not four. This may be that the Fairy Tale test is for suitability as a mate, where the Hazel test is a test of humanity. The Hazel often were tattooed by their role in the ceremonies, like these below who were called upon in cases of humanity or spiritual soundness.

The other Clan famous for its service at An Doras, was that of the Rowan. Again, only certain members of the Clan played large roles; however most of the Clan trained their people for they were all gifted with telepathy, foresight, aura reading, clairvoyance, and a host of other "esp" powers. Most of the Rowan were modest people, for their training was designed to "beat the arrogance out of them." Some were no more magical than humans, but most of them needed training to stay the "now" and not act on their insights of the future or their abilities to hear all the thoughts and feelings of others.

Yet there were those whose powers extended beyond the norm and they were often cast in roles they did not want such as serving at An Doras as the Oracle. The Oracle was a Rowan who could see the future almost as clearly as we see the past. They were trained rigorously to act in one capacity only: to judge cases among the Clans that were decided to be beyond the arguments of the Convention. Often, if another Tree judged a problem to be "of the antler, not the tine" a Birch phrase meaning that each of the points might have separate problems, but some affected all; then the case was sent to An Doras for the Convention or the Oracle.

The Oracular powers of most of the Rowan broke down as the years led to the time of the Zelosian Invasion where Anieth was destroyed. The vision of this was called the hunllef or "nightmare." It was a vision of a great maelstrom or vortex where the threads of everyone's lives twirled into a black hole. Few could "see" out the other side, but some could see that a person's life thread would extend into the darkness and possibly come out on the other side. People who were marked by these threads were usually players like the Shields, Bob Gallanis, Thomas Angelini (Korutos), the Abernathys and the Greshenkos. The Rowan knew that all the Stanfords went into the spiral and did not emerge. The Rowan disagreed among each other in how these great players in the hunllef should be treated. The normal policy was to send them through An Doras. Some of the Rowan though this cruel and objected strongly to it.

The Rowan were divided into two great camps of semi-nomadic peoples. The Black Rowan occupied the territories high in Ash country like the heights around Coombe Charria and the heights near the Riaffaccii and Nava. (See map on the Thorn page.) The Lake Rowan occupied the lands that overlapped the Red Holly and some of the Oak and Pine territories. Some of them were clients to the Holly, others to the Thorn and Ash. Each generation they elected a king, who not only served to interface with the humans, but also was a "lucky" Tree. People would make wishes and hang tiny items on the king. When he took root, the tree he became was often covered with bits of rag, shells, beads and other bric a brac. Lugh Adarach here, a good friend of the Red Holly, was one such Tree. He was also known by the Rowan tattooed on his chest. A peaceful people, the Rowan were not adverse to defending themselves when it was necessary. Some of them, like Lugh here, were notorious tricksters, taking after the Thorn, their cousins. The were famous workers in stone, and fought with a tri-fold stone shuriken or disk that was sharp enough on the edges to cut through tree trunks. However, despite the occasional prankster, they were called the "laughing people" and usually were left alone. Their carving skills were sought after, their magical abilities coveted and prized, and their temperaments such that even the Holly desired their company.

They quickly made friends, and just as quickly joined into alliances with those they thought showed moderation toward the law and outsiders. Tolerant to a fault, they often could not see problems in others, despite their magical abilities. Often they would see the entire thought process of an enemy and have such compassion for their position that they were thought to be too soft in their opinions of others, especially the humans. They knew that the humans were preoccupied with death and the issues of mortals and tried to ease their passage in and out of this life. Their king rituals with the Riaffaccii were benign and frowned upon as being so generous that no terror was inspired in the humans at all. Yet the Riaffaccii were very like the Rowan and there was little if no abuse of the Rowan tolerance as their might be among the Druaccii or the Gwaranaccii.

Many of the more restless Rowan hunted and ran with the Holly and others joined in the endless nomadic party of the Thorn. Yet mostly they kept to their ancient patterns of living high in the mountains in the summer, going to An Doras at the start of autumn and moving down to the lakes for the winter where they fished for salmon, the only meat they would consider eating. They dried berries and stored nuts, but loved a dried salmon pemican that they ate almost year round. They wore no leather, like the Holly, but bartered with the Holly and Ash for nettle cloth. They lived in no houses of stone, wood, or wattle, but in tents made of linen painted with birch tar for waterproofing.

The Elder and the Alder and Blackthorn were the darkest of the Trees. The Alder and Thorn had wider faces and looked almost like Zelosians. Yet the Elder had a more southern look to them like the peoples of North Africa. In our anthropological studies, my father knew from his colleges that the peoples of Europe and Africa had done much north and south trade, for the long head type was dominant and is north-south along the Atlantic. However, it was an ancient migration. Our studies in Anieth made us think that the interaction north and south may have happened before the rise of empires, about 4000 BCE. Those who had the darker skin in Europe died as children of rickets, a disease that happens when the skin does not absorb enough vitamin D. This had not yet happened in Anieth, for we saw a wide spread in coloration as well as physical type. The Lappid eye shape was also very clear in Anieth as it is in Europe showing a circumpolar spread of the "almond" eye that is so common in Asia. The same thing is evident in the older peoples of the Americas, huge skin variation, noses running from hawk to flat, and the Lappid eye and broader face being circumpolar. It is interesting to me how certain traits will blend and others tend to "stick" out. Skin color "blends" very quickly, head shape does not. It is clear to me that the Atlantic people were a migration from Africa that was "oversown" with migrations out of Romania and Southern Russia with a bit of trade and migration down out of the North East. There was another long-headed type that went into Europe again at a much later date, but it was extant in Europe and migrated West with the rise of hostiles in the Steppe.

Nonetheless, it startled Peter the first time he came across the Elder. It was fortunate for him he never came across the Alder, who would have killed him. The Elder were a benign race, so benign that it freed them from all fear of attack. They were not cowards or a slave race, but rather removed and set apart because of their powerful magical abilities of healing augmented with centuries of experimentation with herbs and study of the body. They were a people of medium height. Here shown is Dubh Daracha. His mother, Rúnda was of the Elder, his father of the Oak. Dubh was famous for his ability to take on traits of his father. As a child, he was dressed as the Elder dressed, in the dreads and headcloths, dyed purple. Dubh had his father's height and bony look, but his mother darker coloration. He was accepted among the Elder, despite his mixed heritage, but Donn took him into his household at An Doras for love of his mother. Dubh, which means "dark" was shunned by the Oak as a "lesser" Tree, but left alone for the most part. He was expected to be a famous healer as his mother had been.

The Elder were relatively few in number, for most of them dedicated their lives to their crafts rather than to raising families. They lived in small communities, but often liven in separate houses among the other Clans as resident healers. Most of them kept low profiles, not as flashy in their magic as the Rowan, nor as indispensable to An Doras as the Hazel; they led quiet lives and their groves, although small, were well visited by any number of grateful people from other Clans. It was a sign of fortune to have adopted an Elder tree and to have your family's ribbons tied in its branches. Most of the Elder loved to wear the head cloths famous also among the Alder, their close relatives. They did not cut their hair, but twisted it into dreads. They had man crafts of healing, but people like Rúnda who had healing hands, had them tattooed to mark her as a master.