Quezi

Scottish clootie well, with rags tied on trees for good luck and healing, and water nearby. (Photo by conner395 - CC-BY)

Rag trees, clootie wells, and raggedy bushes are English, Scottish, and Irish names for special places with a mystical reputation. People visit in the hope of healing and good fortune and tie a piece of cloth on a particular tree or bush near a well or source of water. Often the tree is a hawthorn (aka whitethorn or maytree).

There are many, many places in the world with a tradition of attaching cloth to special trees as a ritual for good luck, good health, or as a votive offering. Wishing wells and sacred springs of water are widespread too.

Once you start looking for variations, you will find plenty. You may read that Persian trees used to be hung with flower garlands as well as rags, or that red-coloured fabric was favoured for rag-trees in parts of central Europe.  People across Asia and Europe and beyond explain their motives and habits a little differently from place to place – but the overall impression is of a very widespread custom.

In English-speaking countries hanging cloth near holy water sources is seen as a Celtic tradition belonging to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall. Now it’s given extra strength by New Age visitors and others who are interested in Celtic folklore. Yet in the 19th century there were rag wells in parts of northern England – not considered Celtic at all. (See Google book search for info about rag wells in Cleveland and Northumberland.)

Whatever ancient beliefs are expressed through rag trees have been partly taken over by the Church. In Ireland raggedy bushes may be near holy wells associated with particular saints. In Scotland some of the clootie tree and well locations are known by a saint’s name. There are also stories of clergymen trying to discourage their parishioners from continuing with “superstitious” rag-tying customs.

Travellers from Victorian England sometimes recognised rag trees in the Middle East as close relatives of the ones they’d seen in rural parts of Britain. The tradition is still alive in that part of the world. The Tibetan prayer flag tradition is a good fit with Scotland’s clootie (rag) tree custom, and at a Buddhist monastery set up in southern Scotland – Samye Ling – there is quite a new “cloutie tree”.

Some of the better-known rag tree and magical well customs from Britain and Ireland are:

• Tear a strip from the clothing of someone sick, tie it to the tree, and healing will come. Perhaps the illness will be magically “absorbed” by the tree. Sometimes the healing is dependent on the colour fading.
• Tie a fresh rag or ribbon onto the tree for good luck, make a wish, or say a prayer.
• Throw coins or pins into the water and wish.
• Hammer a coin, pin, or nail into the tree bark to cure illness or get rid of bad luck.

How are these traditions surviving? In the 1960s and 1970s raggedy trees and clootie wells were often considered eyesores in need of cleaning up. Perhaps some of the current interest is from people in search of a tradition, rather than from people who actually grew up in a community where that tradition had stayed alive?