Elderberry ink: purple berries, bottle green ink
Elderberries are so purple that I expected purple ink, and you do get purples and pinks. What I didn't expect was a beautiful bottle green. It seems like such an odd colour to get from something that purple.
Colours from the morning, all from the same berries.
I picked these from the hedgerows along the fields near Southwell in August and froze them, ready for Tree to Ink at my studio on Home Farm in Screveton, near Bingham. It's a morning where we make ink from whatever the hedges have that week, then paint with it.
If you came along and want the story again, it's further down.
Can you make ink from elderberries?
Yes. This is the basic method:
- Simmer the elderberries in a little water until they're soft.
- Mash them and strain the juice through a sieve.
- Stir in a little gum arabic. It's the binder, so the ink sits on the paper instead of sinking straight in. Cherry tree sap was the traditional one.
- Add a few drops of clove oil so it doesn't go off. A whole clove in the bottle or a splash of vodka works too.
On its own that gives you a pink. With a few more things added it moves to a brighter pink, a deep purple, or that bottle green. That's the part we play with at the workshop.
Keep the ink in a closed jar somewhere cool and dark. Berry inks are living colours, so they soften and shift in daylight over the months.
People have been getting colour from elder for a long time. The Woodland Trust says the berries give blue and purple dyes.
Experiments in Elderberry, one of my own pieces in elderberry ink.
Are elderberries poisonous?
Raw ones are. The Woodland Trust says the flowers and cooked berries are edible, but uncooked berries and other parts of the plant are poisonous. Ink isn't for eating anyway, but it's worth knowing before you go picking.
At the studio
We started with tea, snacks and a story. Then everyone made their inks and spent the rest of the morning painting with them, with music on and lots of chatting.
People did really different things with the same colours. Some stamped circles and filled them in. Others did wispy spirals that ended up looking like fireworks.
"It's a calm and inviting atmosphere," Nicole wrote afterwards. "Louise is very knowledgeable and encouraging in our exploration and play."
Elder folklore
Elder has a lot of stories attached to it. An elder planted by your house was meant to keep the Devil away, but burning elder wood was thought to bring him out. It's also called the Judas tree, from a story that Judas hanged himself on one.
In England the tree had a keeper, the Elder Mother, and you were meant to ask before you took any wood. In Lincolnshire people said:
Old girl, give me some of thy wood,
And I will give thee some of mine
When I grow into a tree.
Elder was also a witches' tree. Some stories say witches could turn themselves into elders, which is where the story I read at the workshop comes in.
The story I read over tea
It comes from the Rollright Stones, on the ridge where Oxfordshire meets Warwickshire.
Up on that ridge there is a ring of old grey stones. Across the lane stands one stone on its own, bent over like an old man. In the field beyond, a few more stones lean in together. People call them the King's Men, the King Stone and the Whispering Knights. This is how they got there.
Long ago a king set out to take the whole of England. He had his army behind him and his knights about him, and so far he had won every fight. He marched them up onto that ridge, and at the top of the hill he met an old woman.
The land he was walking on was hers. She did not step out of his way. She looked at him, and at his army, and she said:
Seven long strides shalt thou take,
And if Long Compton thou canst see,
King of England thou shalt be.
Long Compton is the village in the valley on the far side of the hill. From the top of that ridge you ought to see it easily. The king thought it was the easiest bargain anyone had ever offered him. He laughed, and shouted back:
Stick, stock, stone,
As King of England I shall be known.
And he started walking. One stride. Two. Three. His men watched him go. Four. Five. Six.
On the seventh stride the ground in front of him swelled. A long mound of earth rose up out of the hill, just high enough to hide the valley. The king stretched up on his toes. All he could see was grass.
Then the old woman spoke again:
As Long Compton thou canst not see,
King of England thou shalt not be.
Rise up stick, and stand still stone,
For King of England thou shalt be none.
Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be,
And I myself an eldern tree.
The king went still where he stood. Then grey. Then hard. He has been standing there, bent over, ever since. His men, waiting in a ring behind him for the word to march, turned to stone in their ring.
She was not finished. Walking back along the ridge, she came on a few of the king's knights who had hung back from the others. They had their heads together and were whispering, plotting against their own king. She turned them to stone too, still leaning in, still whispering.
Then she found a place in the hedge where she could keep an eye on all of them. She put her feet into the ground, and she became an elder tree.
She is still up there, they say. Nobody agrees which elder she is, because there are plenty along that hedge. But you would know her if you cut her. She bleeds.
And if you ever go and try to count the King's Men, you will get a different number every time.
Come and make ink
There's no elderberry left now, so the next Tree to Ink will probably be sloes or hawthorn, once I've tested them. Each morning starts with tea and a story while we prepare the berries. Then we make the ink together, gather things from the farm to make marks with, and leave plenty of time to play with the ink you've just made.
There are three mornings in November, 10am to 1pm, at the studio in Screveton. It's £95, with four places each morning. Book a place on Tree to Ink
Not ready to book? Join the list on the studio page and you'll hear about new dates two days before they go anywhere else.
There's also a post about the first workshop: rowan berry ink and the tree of protection.
Where the stories come from
The Rollright legend is traditional, and this retelling is new. Arthur Evans wrote the story down in The Rollright Stones and Their Folk-Lore (1895).
