Brambles grow wild across the UK. Their thorny vines bring forth sweet Summer fruit. The berries must never be picked after October 11th. This is when Lucifer fell from Heaven, landing in a blackberry bush. In revenge, he spoiled the fruit by urinating upon them.
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Michaelmas, the Christian Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, falls on the 29th September, but the feast used to fall on the 11th of October. This is because of the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar — brought in (partly) in order to bring the calendar back in sync with astronomical events such as the equinoxes — which occurred in 1751, here in the UK.
Michaelmas is one of four old Quarter Days, the others being Lady Day (the 25th of March), Midsummer or St. John’s Day, and Christmas Day.
The fruit of the blackberry bramble (Rubus timbroms or fruiticosus) is vulgarly known in this district by the name of bumble kite, from its being supposed to cause flatulency when eaten in too great a quantity.
No knowledgeable boy will eat these berries after Michaelmas Day, because the arch-fiend is believed to ride along the hedges on the eve of that great festival and pollute everything that grows in them, except the sloes, by touching them with his club foot. The same notion prevails further north, where the bramble-berries are called lady’s garter berries. [1]
In different regions of the UK, local folklore says that the Devil stamps, spits, vomits, or even urinates on blackberries all along the hedgerows, rendering them inedible after Michaelmas. Why though?
Saint Michael, aka the Archangel Michael, was a warrior. The Book of Revelation, the final book in the Christian New Testament, describes a literal War in Heaven between one group of angels under Archangel Michael’s command and another band of Rebel Angels, led by “The Dragon”, AKA Lucifer.
The War in Heaven was won by Michael and his angelic troops and resulted in the expulsion of Satan from the realm above into this, the lowly mortal plane. The Devil fell… and landed in a bramble bush. Which, apparently, he wasn’t very pleased with. So every year, on the anniversary of his prickly landing, Old Scratch makes sure to ruin the blackberries.
REFERENCES
- Legends & superstitions of the county of Durham, by Brockie, William, (1811-1890) https://archive.org/details/legendssuperstit00broc