Episode 178 - HETTIE NETTLE'S HANDBOOK FOR HEDGEWITCHES

[Music] Hello and welcome to a new episode of the Folklore podcast. I'm Mark Norman, Folklore researcher and author. As I record this, it's been a very busy time. Following on from the release of the book "Devons Forgotten Witches", which you will know about if you listened to my recent episode on the White Witch of Exeter, I've had my second new book come out in two months. Britain's Folklore Year is a book that I was asked to write by the National Trust. It came out in the UK on September 11th and it releases in the US on December 16th. The book takes a look at many of the seasonal events, calendar customs and ritual practices that make up the Folklore Year in Britain. It is beautifully illustrated by Frank Duffy and published by Harper Collins, one of the key publishing houses here in the UK. Other Folklore friends and colleagues had a big part to play in the putting together of this book as well. And I'm very grateful too, notably Willow Winchum for her expert proofreading and Tracy Nicholas of the Folklore podcast, who offered to help to collate and source some of the research. The book has been performing really well on its release, and it's currently sitting in the book charts at just outside the top 1,000 of all the world's books. Now this seems crazy to me, but crucially it shows the importance of folklore and the massive interest in the subject that's currently taking place. On the back of this, October 6th, sees the release on many streaming platforms of a new six-part documentary series called Gatherings. Brainchild of Dave Brouis, Gatherings was filmed over a period of two decades, and it shines a light on ritual practice here in the UK. Now there's no gatekeeping involved, so you won't find a biased commentary or an annoying voiceover, just true representation of the subject matter. I've been lucky enough to be able to access advanced previews of the show and I'll be featuring it in an upcoming episode and hopefully chatting with the creator. So, watch this space for that one. In today's episode, we're looking at the world of the hedge witch, but from a slightly unusual angle. The hedge witch is a term within which craft practices, which is very difficult to pin down. Being a solitary practice, it can mean different things to different people, but generally there's a strong emphasis on working with the natural world, and alongside that, plant and herblor. Some people use the term "kitchen witch" for something similar, and these are not a million miles from what we might have termed "cunning folk" or "wise women" in the past. Cecil Williamson, founder of the Witchcraft Museum, used the term "wayside witches" to mean the same thing. The origin of the term "hedge witch" could come from a couple of different routes. One might allude to the foraging of hedgerows and working with nature for ingredients, but another refers to the way that wise women and witches lived in a community in days gone by. Seen as other, although needed by the community, they would live on the fringes of society, literally and metaphorically on the other side of the hedge. Earlier in this season of the podcast, we met children's writer Claire Barker, author of the Pickle Witch and Knitbone Pepper Ghost Dog books. At the time that I spoke to Claire, she was working on a book which has recently been released and is the focus of today's episode. Hetty Nettles Handbook for Hedge Witches Hetty Nettle has been creating quite a storm for all the right reasons. Not only is the book absolutely beautiful, filled as it is with Claire's artwork, but the content has been meticulously researched and presented. An intriguing mix of true-to-life folklore and Claire's own invention, the content both educates children on ecology, working with nature, and gives practical projects that they can do. But it also offers a safe and profound introduction to the world of the hedge witch and other nature-based witchcraft pathways for younger readers. It is very telling that Hetty Nettles Handbook for Hedge Witches is one of the only children's books to have been selected and placed on sale in the Atlantis bookshop, London's oldest independent occult bookshop. This is testament to the quality of research and writing and the sympathetic approach that Claire has taken in crafting this book. A couple of weeks ago, I met with Claire for coffee in the same cafe that we recorded our previous interview and chatted with her about the book. Enjoy! I am again sat opposite Claire Barker in what has now become known, I think, as our Boston Tea Party office. Other coffee shops are available. There seems to be a new trend for recording my podcast episodes in coffee shops. Six parts of witchcraft with Marion Gibson in a coffee shop in Exeter and now here we are over coffee or green milk in your case. Matcha! Matcha! Green milk. Welcome back. Hi, thanks very much. So why are we here? We're here because we're going to return to the subject of our last discussion which was "Hettie Nettles" and "Book for Hedge Witches" which was the book that you were working on at the time that we last talked and is now the book that is in front of us on the table. Yeah, yeah. This is the question that you're not going to want to answer because we've already been through and we've always started recording this, but can you summarise what this book actually is? Oh, right. Well, it's what it says on the tin, actually. It's "Hettie Nettles" Hamburg for "Hedge Witches". "Hettie Nettles" is eight years old and three and a half at tall and she lives in a caravan in the woods. She lives on her own and she has what she. she goes to bed when she wants and she eats what she wants and she's a guardian of nature. She takes care of the birds and the trees and the plants, but also the magical folk of the wood, the good folk, all the fairies. She's the granddaughter of the great Agatha Walnut, who has a series of best-selling books and "Hettie's" is quite ambitious and one day wants to have her own school, her own hedge school. And so she goes to school one morning a week, but she's part of the community. She's part of the woodland community and it looks at nature and folklore, some facts. It's her world. What does she say? I love the woods and the wood loves me. There's nowhere else I'd rather be. And I guess the ethos of this book really is about connecting children with the world around them in traditional ways. At least that's how it kind of sits with me. Would you agree with that? Yeah, it's the kind of thing, you know, sort of saying. It's the kind of stuff that's normally passed on through families and communities, traditions. You know, most of us know about holding a buttercup underneath your chin, but for how long will that be in the public knowledge? So this is full of little bits of folklore and in that way, in the way that "Hettie and her grandma are connected," hopefully it connects children to, well, like you say, to traditions, but in an interesting, new and fresh way, hopefully. So it is a blend, isn't it? It's a blend of real-world folklore, tradition, custom, practice, and tradition, custom, practice and folklore that comes very firmly from the head of Claude Lowe as well. Yeah. How do you marry those two things together? It just sort of happens, really. I'm thinking about it the other day, you know, when you watch children play, and they're so in the moment of play, and they marry seamlessly, facts and fiction. There's another problem for them. They're not, they can inhabit that space of their imagination when there are real things and not real things, and the two go together and that's just splendid. And they don't question it because it's all part of the play. For me, there comes out my head. This is what my head's like. I'm so excited. Head in little is what my head is like. I don't know if it's because I had my grandparents from like older than other people's grandparents. So my grandparents were born in 1904 and 1906, and my other grandparents, I think, was about 1913. And they talk to me a lot. And I love their stories. And I think it's just, I'm just suffused like a sponge with, or it's very hard to say why, because it's, this is what my inner landscape is. Yeah. So there's a combination of things within Hetty Nettles' hand, but that will engage children in different ways. There are folk stories about how some things came into being, like your little equivalent of creation myths for tiny parts of the word. And yeah, exactly, those sorts of things. There are activities that children might want to do. So there's the head, which is to do less each month, things that you can collect from nature, things that you can do with them. It's a big job. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. There are celebrations that we all enjoy, and how you can get involved with things like that. And say, there are these fictional elements too, but there's so much in here that is engaging children with them while around them. And in my head, as I was reading this, I could visualize children going out and collecting a beach twig and stripping the bark off and writing their wishes on the side of it and burying it in the ground. And all of these things. And I think it's just wonderful to be able to encourage that sort of thing. Well, it's also empowering children, I think, as well. To make them feel that they can affect the world around them, that they can notice thing in all of the seasons, that there are things to celebrate every month of the year, this beauty in every month, even in January. You know, January, nothing is really happening, but it's that's the time when the year is sleeping, that's when the dream of the year is being created. And they can play their part in that. They're very important. Children are very important to the year in the Wildwood, or the world around them, they're not bit players. And what I think is different about this to a lot of similar books, similar in terms of books that encourage children to do activities, is that you approach this in the way that is important for people who follow hedge-witch paths, nature-based pathways, things like that. So for example, we were looking earlier before we started recording at the page about making your own corn dolly, and most books would go, "Here's how you make a corn dolly, take your grass or your corn, weave it in this way, make it look like this." And then they would stop. But then you have a bit at the end that says, "Don't forget to return your corn dolly to the earth next springtime." Well, because it has a purpose. But that's the approach here that's different. So it's going back to those traditional values. Yeah, it's funny, isn't it? Because you're describing to that, it's so interesting. But again, that's how I've always seen things. You make something for something. And again, I think that's something that children do automatically. So there's a little thing in here with an acorn cup. I don't know if it's an illustration. And the acorn cup is filled with honey. And that's to give a gift to the fairy, folks. So it's not just about filling an acorn cup with something or filling it with honey. It's about, it's an offering, it's a gesture, it's an intention. Very often, activities for children don't seem to have an end. They just do it. They just do the thing. But then what? What for? Why? Grants have to do things for things. And I think that's why I think that children should have something to do. It's important. And it's taking those beliefs and values that were so important in society, and which have become lost in many ways over time, and re-instilling their importance to children. Yes, it's sacred, isn't it? That's the word. We sacred things we do throughout the year to demonstrate sincerity and understanding of where we sit in the scheme of things. There's a humbleness to it. You're part of a bigger whole. Human beings tend to sort of separate themselves off, don't they? You know, we're awful, or we're terribly important, or things can't survive without us. Of course, things have been surviving for always without us. We are as much part of nature as the black birds and the Hawthorne berries. I think, and I don't say this lightly, and I don't say it because you're sat across the table from me, that it's very rare for people to describe children's books as groundbreaking, and those sorts of things. But that's what I think this book is. People say it about adult non-fiction books that have already gone into detail on the subject of what we're in, this groundbreaking expose of whatever. Children's books are just like, "Ah, there's a fun new kid's book that's coming out." "Oh, whatever." People don't describe them in that terms, and they should. But I think it is entirely justified in this case. I do think that that's what this is. Thank you. And I think that because it does all of those things that we've just started discussing where other children's books don't. And we had for a long time a very poor children's book, where it came to anything related to folklore or tradition or beliefs in that way. That's changed over the years, and it's changed significantly. We have an amazing fiction for children and non-fiction for children, which look at traditions and customs and folklore, and that is to be celebrated. But I think this book goes above most of that in what it sets out to do. You were telling me earlier that this is the first book that has been requested by places like at the Lantis bookshop in London as an occult in in inverted commas that people can't see me doing. That they really liked it. And I was so touched that they wanted it, because obviously it has a very special bookshop. But equally, other bookstores that don't specialise, they love it just as much, isn't that wonderful? Yeah, that Hetty appeals to all. But that's because Hetty appeals to the child in everybody, because when you're a child, magic is everywhere. It's not something that's specially belonged to people that are interested in wicker or something. It is everywhere all the time. It just leaves you as you get older. So that's why in the book, Hetty can see things that growing up is can't. She says to children you can see things that growing up is can't. There's an interview in it with a unicorn called Glory. She loves Glory and Glory loves her. Glory says, "Say hello to your grandmother for me, won't you?" She won't remember me anymore. I just went "Hartbreaking!" And Hetty's like, "Oh, I'll always remember you won't I?" And then Glory changes the subject. I take children really seriously, you know? That's important and a lot of people don't. No, but you need to have that approach to be able to resonate with children in that way. And that's what this does. And I think the reason that Geraldine Atlantis and other similar shops are interested in this in the way that they are. Is because it is offering an introduction for children into Hedgewitchery, Wicker if you like, other nature-based pathways, things like that. Is something that children normally get discouraged from exploring? Yes, well that's because I think anything dark is not appropriate for children. And I'm very strict about that. It simply isn't. There's nothing frightening in that book. There's nothing that encourages something that is frightening. Nature is beautiful, it's all around us. And good intentions are all. As Hetty says, "Hetty's motto, what is it again?" My head's gone blank. Be wise, harm none, do good. And the right order, isn't it? Follow that. I mean, obviously that's the wicking read. First you do know harm or something, isn't it? But really what it is, is it's lots of religions across the world. And I was trying to get at the heart of it. That sounds really pompous, doesn't it? It's just those things. Be wise, harm none and do good. I 'lpar undgrull bwyn symud transform el Traiditis y D Aku'n 'gweld', Qiaoig, unnw'r wah huhin bod dod i'r Lung 효ael eraid dar adiol hynod eledwayna, mwy pan f ஒczorwork hwnw lives y leaning sydd i'r mae lengellwymp dewl yanua sonygu gan hynod gan da timing Ond g Lewed 就是 mewn wedi'r electrons o wylael doef doontal, Ni'n bwys Bienfu? Ysgol hyn oes, mae hyn oes, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes, a hyn oes, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes, a hyn oes. What did your research process look like for creating that mix of material? I'n ddoedd yn ffwyr i'n ddoeddwnol. I'n ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol. I'n ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol. I'n ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol, a hyn oes i ddoeddwnol. Children will automatically understand because it's part of the way they play, you know? But I was careful to make sure that I studied books carefully and of course, Moon and Bird of Verking, the wheel of the year, you know, it's important to get that right as well as some, yeah, yeah. So a lot of research. And it shows as well and that I think is why it's had so much traction amongst that community as well as the kind of children's book, traditional community as well. What about illustration? Obviously a very, very big part of this book is the illustration. How did you go about the construction? Because this is a book that blends illustration very heavily on pretty much every page, one way or another. How did you go about deciding how to design and what was important in that process? Well, I suppose what I should first of all say is that I didn't know I was going to illustrate it. When it started out, so I came up with the idea and spoke to Fiona, who was wonderful. All of Moon and Bird have been completely wonderful, but I think I was talking to Fiona, rather than the other day, of the brilliant stonelands. And she was, she described herself as the midwife of the book. She said, "Do you have any idea how your character should look?" And I said, "Oh, yeah, here's a quick sketch I did of Larkin." And I sent it over and she was like, "Oh, you do pictures, and would you like to illustrate the book?" And I thought, "Yes, I really would." I've been painting for years and years and years, but then when you become a writer very often, that's the thing that you do, and you get paired up with illustrators. So when I started doing the illustrations for this, everything comes out of the Devon hedgerows, everything's from my garden, it's all very local. And I painted, as the months went by, so it's all very, very immediate. It's been such a joy because I've been able to execute my own full vision on a book, which I, in ordinarily, when I work with illustrators, it's wonderful what they bring to it, but I'm not able to be entirely myself. And that's what I think this book. I've been honestly so blown away by the lovely things people have said about the pictures, about the illustrations. I've always had this theory that illustrators draw themselves, and that's me drawing myself, and I get to write about myself. Not deliberately, I don't think this is me when I'm doing it. It's more just sort of manifest, doesn't it? And that's how many people get to do something like this. I'm so lucky. So, so lucky. I am unsurprised that this book has had the traction that it's been getting for a variety of reasons. We were talking earlier about the fact that, you know, I publicise a lot of books on social media because I interview a lot of authors and work with a lot of publishers. And never have I had a social media post where so many people have come back and just said, "I've bought this for whoever." That's just amazing. It's been in like about 10 or 15 minutes of me posting it. You know, I've just. Books that I featured tend to generate sales. That's how this works. That's why we did it. But this was something, again, a little bit different. And there's something about this book and its entirety. This is just that. It's just a little bit different. I suspect that all the spells and charms and magic that you have infused in this book are leaking out of the edges and influencing the world around us. It does seem. She flies alone without me in a way. You know, the book reps who have been taking to bookshops are just saying, you know, she's such a joy to take. Because people just go, "Oh!" They say, "Oh, I love that." And I think it's because it's almost like holding up a mirror to them as a child. Because all children. You know, you give a child an A-corn cup and it is never just an A-corn cup. You've given an adult an A-corn cup and they'll go, "Oh, it's an A-corn cup." This takes people back to a time when everything is possible. That's why I love working with children because to them everything is possible. In Hetty's world. Everybody is welcome and they can be part of it all again. Because childhood is a place, isn't it? Yes. It's a beautiful thing, Claire, it really is. It's a beautiful book. It's a beautiful concept. It's beautifully executed. And what it is doing in the world around us is a beautiful thing. That's the only way that I can really summarise it. Thank you. Does that mean that Hetty returns in the future in another form, though? I don't know. Or is she just confined to the pages of this book doing her work? Well, I've been talking to me and I'm birds about it. And maybe that's something that will come in the future. You see, the thing with children's books and stories now is the series. It's a big concept, isn't it? You know, it's always a series of everything. I've written two series myself. And all authors should be going, "Yes, absolutely. I'll write the next one, or that I'll be. " But in this, I'm looking through her eyes. I think it'd have to be quite extraordinary for that to happen again in that way. I quite like the idea of doing a Hetty nettles gardening book. Or a Hetty nettles in psych. When that be going, the Hetty nettles in psychlepidia are fairies. That would be quite lovely. But I don't know at the moment what I want is I want to see the impact she has on. Not just children, but grown-ups too, and librarians, and booksellers, and grandparents, and carers, and teachers. I believe that writing for children is the most revolutionary thing you can do. People often say to me, "Do you ever think about writing for adults?" No. I don't. Children, with children, you can impact their imaginary landscape, because I think I told you last time. And if children read this and think, "Right, well, I want to go out." And I thought, "What's that affair I saw?" I know what happens in this month. I love the winter. I, you know, grandparents are always going, "Oh, God, the winter, the winter, oh, the drudge of it." No, every season is beautiful. And for children just to love the world there, in which they do so naturally given half a chance, I think. Which is, you know, we were talking about the whisper names as well. Yes. So each of the months has a whisper name, which essentially describes the concept of that month that it's fair to say. Yeah. Because I think I say in the book that that's the fairies have the old whisper names for months because June doesn't make any sense. What's a June? What's it? Surely that's interesting. It's actually connected to what you said about the Corn Dolly thing where you make a Corn Dolly and leave it at that, whereas in this book you make the Corn Dolly and then you bury it, it has a reason. The months, they just don't just have names. The months mean something. It's about meaning, isn't it? I think. So examples, then for example, May is called Brightling because it's Bright. And things are happening. And November is called Darkling because that's when the dark is coming. The dark is not bad. Yeah. Yeah. They've all got different, um, December's star brights. When's your birthday month? October. October are your Copacot. It has been said. Yeah. So, um, that seems to impact on people. When you start to describe the months of their birthday. Yes. As some things. Yeah. Um, that you can imagine rather than, it's just a name. It tells you what happens in it. It's all about meaning, isn't it? Yeah. Folk lore is about meaning. It's about our identity, our sense of place. Yes. This book is about meaning. Identity. Identity. That we are all important parts of a whole that, um, you know, we're talking about the, you know, the Green Heart of England or wherever this book comes out that you are part of that Green Heart just by being alive. Yeah. Not having to do anything amazing or special or be rich or powerful or a child is part of the Green Heart just by being alive. And everything is to be celebrated. Everything is to be said or not, not mean people. Um, but, um, within the context of it. That's, yeah, so throughout the year, you know, there are birthdays and parties and weddings and feasts and, um, you know, I think that came from knowing that traditionally there would be more celebrations in winter than in summer because you needed more celebrations in winter than in summer. Yeah. Because that's when it's, that's the time when you need to jolly everybody along. rather than just sitting our dark boxes. I like her cheeks. I like her cheeks interview with the May Queen and Jack in the green. And that green of the May. When she talks about the importance of their wedding and they talk about how in love they are. They're like, "But then in a couple of months time we go off again and do our separate things" "But then we get remarried next year because we're so in love." It's kind of whole cycle going through the process. It's that thing that never ends. It never ends. We do that, don't we? We're always looking towards the end of something, the end of the world, the end. But in the wheel of the year it keeps going on and you never have to worry about missing out on something because it's coming around again. It's this endless carousel of celebration, participation and belonging. But yeah, there's celebrity interviews. I did celebrity interviews because we're so celebrity focused now, are we? But when I think of celebrities, I think, well, you know, like the moon, or the sun, or mother oak, or Jack Frost. Those are true celebrities and so, you know, she. So much of this is kind of her school project as well, so she interviews them and they are always willing to give her time because she's important. She plays an important part and she listens. Claire, you've done an amazing and important thing in bringing this book out to people in a way that you have. I have no doubt that the magic that is contained within it is going to infuse it as a way into every person whose hand touches it one way or another. And I hope that it does that for a long time to come. So thank you. Thank you, Mark. That's a really, really nice thing to say. How much of it is to do with me at this point? I'm not sure. I think she probably takes all the credit. Yeti has her own. well, like the character, she's there. She has her own plans. But you are, Yeti. Yeah, I might be. I couldn't possibly say. You can find Yeti Nettles' handbook for hedgwiches wherever books are sold and it really is a beautiful gift for any younger readers in your life and some older ones too. As I said at the top of this episode, it has been an extremely busy time. Outside of the publication and promotion of my own books, I've been working extremely hard on the folklore library and archive, the charity that I founded a couple of years ago, to focus on the collection and preservation of at-risk folklore and heritage materials. The library and archive has just secured new premises, and for the first time, we're on the verge of being able to open our doors properly to the public and for visiting researchers to come and work with our materials. At the same time, the reputation of the organisation has been leading to its growth at a rate that we could not have predicted. The folklore library and archive is one of only a few organisations offering public access to these kinds of folklore materials. As such, we are being asked to take on materials for safe storage and public accessibility frequently. Most recently we've had a bequest of materials from a storyteller numbering some 1,000 books and several boxes of artefacts, puppets and other ephemera. We were also recently contacted by one of the country's most eminent academic folklorists, John Widowson. Amongst other achievements over his long career, he's now in his 90s, John founded the Centre for English Traditional Heritage. Their holdings and his own personal collection are vast and wide-ranging. Many of these items have been passed on to Sheffield Hallerm University, but there's a lot more, which John wants to pass to the care of the folklore library and archive. All of this is not without its challenges, both in terms of space, funding and staffing. You can help the charity in many ways. We have an ongoing major fundraiser to pay for our building rental and other costs, and you can read the full story and help with that on the internet at bit.ly/flafundraising. You can also visit the website at folklorelibrary.com and sign up as a friend of the folklore library and archive. That costs just £10 a year, and it brings you various benefits alongside a newsletter. Any contributions of course will help the charity to continue its work. You can also volunteer both in person and remotely, and there's a season of online lectures just beginning which you can attend too. There is always so much to do and so much folklore work going on. I bring as much as I can to you through the podcast and through my social media channels, and I'm friendically trying to get the folklore podcast newsletter back up and running to get even more news out to you as well. It really is a full-time job on part-time hours and with no pay. 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