Note, which refers to her childhood in Ireland in the 1990s,  kindly contributed by a participant on a Plant Folklore walk at the Chiltern Open Air Museum, near Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, 30 May 2026:

‘My great grandmother in Quitly, a small fishing village in Clare would warn us to stay away from brambles [Rubus fruticosus agg.], because the small folk (faeries) would touch you.  The whole village believed this, and you were shunned if you were ”touched”.

There was a family in the village who had been ”touched” when my grandmother was a child, and two generations later people still considered them unlucky!’

Image, brambles, Chiltern Open Air Museum, May 2026.

31 May 2026.