In Fiction
In some fantasy stories, rowan is considered to have magical properties. Susan Cooper makes use of the rowan's alleged supernatural properties in some of her novels in her The Dark Is Rising series. In Greenwitch (1974), the Greenwitch is part of a fictional spring ceremony, held at night, in the fictional coastal town of Trewissick, in Cornwall. The Greenwitch is made of rowan for the head, hazel for the framework, hawthorn boughs and blossoms for the body. After the women of the town build it, the Greenwitch is approached, mainly by young women and girls, to touch it and make wishes, then it is cast out to sea. In at least one case, a wish does come true, which is of climactic importance in the novel.
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