What does “Hyldyr” mean?

Hyldyr (which we pronounce like hill-der) is a Middle English word for the elder tree (Sambucus nigra, family Adoxaceae). Readers familiar with the plant may know its many flowers in the spring and the dark berries it produces in summer. You may have also encountered a beverage or food made from its flowers and/or berries, particularly in Northern Europe.

The word hyldyr occurs in the Promptorium parvulorum, a manuscript dated to around 1440 (OED 2021). Due to the forms it contains, the Promptorium parvulorum is an English-Latin dictionary of particular importance to historical linguists focused on the development of the English language.

In northwestern Europe, a tremendous amount of folk belief has long surrounded the plant. As scholar Della Hooke notes, in Anglo-Saxon England, “the elder, Sambucus nigra (O[old] E[nglish] ellen), is the tree that is especially noted in the early Christian edicts against tree-worship - the tree of witches. It is the tree singled out by Wulfstan in the Canons of Edgar, c. 1005-8 ... as a place for the carrying out of ‘the devil’s craft’”. Hooke adds that, “the tree was, in popular folklore, traditionally treated with awesome respect.” (Hooke 2010: 232)

The full passage from Wulfstan reads as follows:

16. And we enjoin, that every priest zealously promote Christianity, and totally extinguish every heathenism; and forbid well-worshipings, and necromancies, and divinations, and enchantments, and man-worshipings, and the vain practices which are carried on with various spells, and with ‘frith-splots,’ and with elders, and also with various other trees, and with stones, and with many delusions, with which men do much of what they should not. (Thorpe 1840: 396)

Among a wide variety of other beliefs surrounding it, the elder tree is personified as a goddess-like entity in the folklore of Scandinavia, England, and northern Germany. (Ibid.) In a late 17th century text from antiquarian and Lutheran pastor Troels (Trogillus) Arnkiel, Arnkiel records a charm about the Elder Lady (Frau Ellhorn) from the southern Denmark/northern Germany area that was to be recited on one’s knees with a bare head and folded hands before cutting wood from the plant:

Frau Ellhorn,
gib mir was von deinem Holz;
dann will ich dir von meinem auch was geben,
wann es wächst im Walde. (Arnkiel 1691: 243)

Which translates into English as:

Lady Elder,
give me some of your wood,
then I will give you some of mine,
when it grows in the forest. (Hopkins 2023)

Arnkiel describes this practice as something he witnessed as a child and describes the Elder-Lady as a ‘goddess’. Compare this to the following English language account of folk customs witnessed by English travel writer Horace Marryat (d. 1887) during a visit to Jutland, the westernmost region of Denmark:

We just distinguished the winding of Juul Lake and a little promontory jutting out into its waters, terminated by a sepulchral mound—the Scandinavian who chose this site must have been a poet—when, as we arrive at the hill before arriving at Linaa, concerning which place I have a story to relate, down comes again a torrent plump upon our heads. We take refuge under railway wrappers, and may have passed through paradise for what we know. When we again peep forth from our shelter, the postboy points to a branch of elder flowers the maid-servant bears in her hand, shakes his head, and then points to the clouds fleeting through the air. Mademoiselle Thérèse, in her ignorance, had plucked during our halt at Tulstrup a branch of these flowers, preservatives, if steeped in water, against tan and freckles, without first addressing her in the following words:—"O, Hildi, our mother; O', Hildi, our mother! let me take some of thy elder." These words thrice repeated, she grants permission willingly enough, but, according to the post-boy's theory, it was the neglect of this observance which caused this pelting hail, this inhospitable reception to the Highlands of Jutland.

Dark is the superstition of the peasant as regarding the elder-queen, and woe to the child who sleeps in a cradle of elder-wood. No sooner does the mother quit the room than the Hyldemoir appears; vampire-like, she sucks its life-blood from its breasts, she pulls it by the legs, and torments the helpless infant in every possible manner. Still the elder-tree has been revered from the earliest times, and the peasant as well as the artizan [sic] loves to plant it near his dwelling; it brings good luck to the baker and to the gardener; leave it alone, and Hyldemoer will do you no injury. (Marryat 1860: 23-24)

Folklorist R. M. Heanley records witnessing very similar material in England. One notable difference between the accounts of Marryat and Heanley is the manner in which Heanley’s informant says one may ask permission from the Elder Mother (who the informant refers to as “Old Gal”, in other words, ‘Elder Lady’):

"Oh, them's slape enuff. You just says, 'Owd Gal, give me of thy uood, An' Oi will give some of moine, When I graws inter a tree.'" And he added, with a grin, " It's saafe enuff to saay, I reckun, for thou seas thou'Il hev to be i' thy coffin a goodish piece afore thou growest inter a tree." (Heanley 1908: 55-57)

“Oh, that’s easy enough. You just say, ‘Old Girl, give me of your wood, and I will give you some of mine, when I grow into a tree.’ And he added, with a grin, ‘It’s safe enough to say, I reckon, for you see you’ll have to be in your coffin a long while before you grow into a tree.’ (Standard American English)

For discussion from modern scholars on this topic, see comparatively recent discussion from English folklorist Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud (Simpson & Roud 2000) and D. C. Watts (Watts 2007: 129-133).

Comparable to modern practices of maintaining sacred trees and groves in locations such as India, Nigeria, and Japan, speakers of Germanic languages—such as the linguistic ancestors of speakers of modern English and Danish—once placed great emphasis on individual sacred trees, groups of trees (sacred groves), and even saw themselves as descending from trees. For more information on this particularly rich and fascinating topic, see this article over at Mimisbrunnr.info.

With the name Hyldyr, we invoke the rich folklore surrounding the tree and in particular the concept of the Elder Mother, which we believe to be appropriate for Hyldyr's focus on the intersection of folklore, ecology, and art. Hyldyr’s logo depicts the Elder Mother, here represented as a woman wearing a crown of elder flowers and elder berries.