In the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, the threatened Princess Aurora was renamed Rose Briar by the good fairies to protect her from the foul Maleficent.
The Old English word brer, hence ’brier’ or now more commonly ‘briar,’ meant a prickly or thorny shrub. More often briars were the wild roses that grew in hedgerows or at the edges of woods.
In rural England, country folk might call a tangle of blackberry brambles a briar patch. It took an urban wit, however, to opine that the country was “headed for the brambles and we are all in our bare feet.” This was said on 1st September 1939. Doubtless the English felt the same way as they headed at a much earlier date into the most unfortunately named Wars of the Roses (1455-85).
Like Aurora, one rose in particular captured almost every heart. While some hoity-toity folk dignified it as the eglantine rose, the simple rural dwellers called it the sweetbriar. The deepest of pink blooms burst forth all summer long. They are followed in the fall by brilliant red hips.
Later, botanists determined that it was Rosa rubiginosa, one of about 150 wild roses found across the temperate Northern Hemisphere. R. rubiginosa is native to Europe and western Asia, even extending across the Mediterranean into northern Africa.
Incidentally, the hero who battles Maleficent to save Rose Briar and wakens her with a kiss is one Prince Phillip. Was it a mere coincidence that while Walt Disney was weaving his magic in retelling the classic tale that our own Queen Elizabeth, like Aurora then a princess, had married her Prince Phillip, also a warrior returned from fighting evil. The Disney version is still worth watching, if only for a nifty piece of horticulture near the ending. A fearsome thorny barrier springs to life to block the valiant prince.
There is a similarity. Rosa rubiginosa has been suggested as a fast-growing barrier, vigorous enough to prevent incursions by livestock in rural areas or malefactors in urban ones. Don’t be misled. A limited planting, perhaps one or two shrubs are welcome. Proceed with mass plantings and you will believe you too have confronted Prince Philip’s evil foe who has metamorphosed into a dragon. Fight you way out of that one!
As Ronald Coleman proclaimed in the movie Kismet (1944), “Let no man make hash of fairy tales, my rosebud.”
