When I was a kid, I picked a leaf from the fig tree at St Newlyn East church. My mum knew the warning attached to it and reacted with considerable alarm. For a while, she did not even want to get back in the car with me.
I did get home. At the time of writing, I am still here.
That is inconvenient for the curse, but useful for the article.
The memory is of a real local tradition attached to a real tree. Historic England’s church listing records the fig growing from the south wall and its reputed magical properties. The difficult question is how old the particular stories about it are.
A staff puts down roots
One version connects the tree with St Newlina. The saint arrives, plants her staff and establishes a sacred place; the staff takes root as the fig. Later warnings make picking a leaf dangerous, sometimes fatally so.
It is an exceptionally effective arrangement for a story. The church supplies antiquity. The unusual tree supplies something you can point at. The curse gives children a reason to remember both.
None of that dates the tradition. A story can be well known locally without having survived unchanged from the early Middle Ages.
A twentieth-century source trail
Plant-Lore’s account raises a useful complication. It says Edgar Thurston photographed the tree in his 1930 book without mentioning the saint legend, and traces the saint-and-staff version it found to a village vicar in the 1930s.
That is a secondary-source finding, rather than a claim that I have inspected the original pages. It leaves open whether the vicar recorded an existing tradition or helped create the version subsequently repeated.
An omission in a book cannot prove a story did not exist. Equally, a twentieth-century retelling does not become medieval evidence because its main character is a saint.
For now, the responsible conclusion is that the tradition’s age remains unsettled. The uncertainty is interesting enough without announcing that a vicar invented the curse.
The newspapers join in
Plant-Lore also reproduces a 1958 Sunday Express account about men who pruned the tree and survived. An accident involving other tree work later gave the curse fresh material to absorb. Such stories are good at retaining the unfortunate event while becoming less interested in everybody who remained perfectly well.
A separate contemporary source strengthens another part of the chronology. The Freethinker of 24 July 1964, citing the Daily Herald earlier that month, reported that the fig had broken near the base of its trunk and that the vicar wanted the remains cleared.
That report makes the tree itself a historical question. How much of later growth came from the same roots? What was removed, and what regenerated? Botanical and church-maintenance evidence could answer something which the legend cannot.
A clergyman and two figs
Another suggestion links the St Newlyn East tree and the fig at Manaccan with Richard Polwhele, who held the St Newlyn East living from 1821 to 1838 and had earlier served at Manaccan.
His connection with the parishes is documented. A planting record proving the theory has not been found in this research. It remains a lead, rather than an ordinary explanation which has defeated the miraculous one.
That is worth being clear about. Replacing a saint’s staff with a confident story about a gardening vicar is still guessing if the planting evidence is missing.
The part I can remember
My childhood recollection does not establish the curse’s age or power. It establishes that the warning was being passed on seriously enough to produce a memorable reaction.
Folklore does not have to be ancient to become part of somebody’s childhood. It needs a teller, a listener and a place which makes the story feel specific. This one had all three, plus a leaf I had already picked.
The neighbouring histories in The Ancient Circle That Isn’t — and the Ancient Circle That Is show how easily a place’s appearance can persuade us of its age. The fig does something similar through its story: saint, church, unusual growth, warning. The whole arrangement feels as though it must have been there forever.
Perhaps earlier evidence will push the tradition back. Perhaps parish records will reveal how a particular version spread. Either would make a worthwhile addition.
For now, the curse has failed to dispose of me and succeeded in making the tree unforgettable. That is quite an achievement for a leaf.