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Updated: June 3, 2025
Both blackbirds and thrushes began to devour the pale-red bunches hanging on the mountain-ashes as early as the 4th of September last year. Starlings are fond of elder-berries: a flock alighting on a bush black with ripe berries will clear the bunches in a very short time. Haws, or peggles, which often quite cover the hawthorn bushes, are not so general a food as the fruit of the briar.
Turnips, Carrots, Cabbages, Caulyflowers, Artichokes, Melons, Cucumbers, and such like, are in prime; Sallary and Endive, Nasturtium Indicum Flowers, Cabbage Lettice, and blanch'd sweet Fennel is now good for Sallads. Now Elder-berries are ripe and fit for making of Wine, as well the white as the red sort: these are both very good, if they are rightly managed.
Hence the tree was extremely obnoxious to witches, a fact which probably accounts for its having been so often planted near cottages. As a safeguard, persons are recommended to make a magic circle, in the centre of which they should stand with elder-berries gathered on St. John's Night. By so doing the mystic fern seed may be obtained, which possesses the strength of thirty or forty men.
The starlings, too, would gobble down the elder-berries, and sometimes the greenfinches used to go to see how the radish seeds were getting on, and taking tight hold of the thread-like shoots, pull them out of the ground, and leave them upon the top of the bed, fast asleep, for they never grew any more.
Take twenty Pounds of Malaga Raisins pick'd and rubb'd clean, but not wash'd; shred them small, and steep them in five Gallons of Spring Water, putting the Water cold to them, and stirring them every day; then pass the Liquor thro' a Hair Sieve, pressing the Raisins with your Hands, and have in readiness six Pints of the Juice of Elder-Berries that have been first pick'd from the Stalks, and then drawn by boiling the Berries in a glaz'd Earthen Pot, set in a Pan of Water over the Fire.
Tart are they to the taste, like the crab-apples which abound in the hedges. These fruits are picked by the poor people and made into wine. Crab-apples may be seen on the trees as late as January. Blackberries are found in extraordinary numbers on this limestone soil, and the hedges are full of elder-berries, as well as the little black fruit of the privet.
If you would keep Fish long, kill them as soon as they are out of the Water, and take out their Gills; then fill their Heads as much as may be, with Pepper, and wipe them very dry, and pack them in dry Wheat-Straw. To make Wine of White Elder-berries, like Cyprus Wine from Mrs. Warburton of Cheshire.
To make Ebulum: To a hogshead of strong ale, take a heap'd bushel of elder-berries, and half a pound of juniper-berries beaten; put in all the berries when you put in the hops, and let them boil together till the berries brake in pieces, then work it up as you do ale; when it has done working, add to it half a pound of ginger, half an ounce of cloves, as much mace, an ounce of nutmegs, and as much cinamon grosly beaten, half a pound of citron, as much eringo-root, and likewise of candied orange-peel; let the sweetmeats be cut in pieces very thin, and put with the spice into a bag and hang it in the vessel when you stop it up.
The Lady Thornburghs Syrup of Elders. Take Elder-berries when they be red, bruise them in a stone Mortar, strain the juyce, and boil it to a consumption of almost half, scum it very clear, take it off the fire whilest it is hot, put in sugar to the thickness of a syrup; put it no more on the fire, when it is cold, put it into Glasses, not filling them to the top, for it will work like Beer.
To make it Elder Ale: Take ten bushels of malt to a hogshead, then put two bushels of elder-berries pickt from the stalks into a pot or earthen pan, and set it in a pot of boiling water till the berries swell, then strain it out and put the juice into the guile-fat, and beat it often in, and so order it as the common way of brewing.
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