Mistletoe myths
The Druid ancestors of the British Islands revered European Mistletoe (Viscum album), which is common throughout much of northern Europe. The Druids viewed Mistletoe which grew on oaks to be the most sacred, imbued with special spiritual significance.
A Druid priest, cloaked in a white robe, sought out Mistletoe that grew on oaks, then harvested it with a golden sickle. In Scandinavian tradition mistletoe was hung over doorways as a talisman. If an adversary entered beneath the mistletoe, they became friends as long as they were in the house, welcomed with an embrace or a kiss.
Mistletoe was largely forgotten in the early modern era until resurrected in 1820 in the pages of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. “The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.”
Misseltoe, or Mistletoe, is itself derived from a Saxon word, signifying “birdlime shrub.” Both the white berries and the inner bark of Mistletoe contain a sticky substance. The genus name Viscum honors this glue-like quality, and our word “viscous” shares the same word roots.
The sticky substance was extracted by various indigenous groups and used in a variety of ways. In South America, for example, the sticky substance was applied to limbs before a splint was placed on a broken bone to help hold the splint in place.
There are upwards of 1000 species of mistletoe around the world—photosynthetic hemi-parasitic brittle shrub-like plants that produce their own chlorophyll but derive nutrients and water from a host tree. Noting its dependence upon trees, the Cherokee name signifies “it is married.”
Here in Arkansas, we have Phoradendron leucarpum. For reasons unknown to me it is uncommon in Western Carroll County, though common in much of Northwest Arkansas.
Often growing high in the oak treetops, the established Ozark means of harvesting mistletoe is simply to take careful aim with a shotgun. If a kiss under the mistletoe leads to too much intimacy, the same shotgun may also be used to secure the subsequent marriage.