WELL within living memory, virtually every household in rural areas would possess one or more besoms.

Some people called them beezums, whilst others preferred the alternative pronunciation of bezzums, but these were handmade brooms with long handles tipped with twigs instead of bristles.

Perhaps a modern image is that of a witch's broomstick. There is no doubt that the popular film Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone helped to remind people of these distinctive and very useful domestic utensils.

Even if it is not possible to sit aboard them and fly off to wonderful places in the manner of fictional witches, then they can be used for their original purpose - sweeping away the more difficult residue which features in our daily lives.

They are very good for removing autumn leaves from lawns, for example, or for sweeping straw and hay from the floors of cattle sheds, or coping with lumps of dried muck from around the outside of the house and cleaning thick dirt from filthy

boots.

Other uses have included brushing cloth in dark Satanic mills or removing scum from molten metal in blast furnaces - but in these latter

instances, the besoms were specially adapted. Those used in the cloth industry were miniature versions while those used in furnaces did not have long handles, but could generally be used no more than twice. Quite literally, they were burnt away.

So how does a besom differ from a conventional broom? The answer lies in the bristles. On besoms, they are usually made from ling (heather), although birch twigs or even broom can be used. Broom was once very popular for this purpose in some areas, hence the name of broom for a sweeping brush.

With incredible ingenuity and a useful tool called a nipper, which clamped the ends of the twigs into a tight bunch, they were trimmed at the top to make them even, then securely bound with long lappings. These were pieces of very slender, strong and pliable ash wood; up to seven lappings

could be used on besoms designed for general farm use.

The long wooden handle was then forced into the twigs, making a very secure fit. There was one further asset with a besom - when its useful days were over, it could be put on the fire to provide light and heat!

Besom-making was, and still is, a craft which requires a high degree of expertise but around the moors and dales, there were many besom-makers well into the 1930s.

In my own North Yorkshire moorland village when I was a child, there was a family of besom-makers called Scarth, but perhaps the biggest centre for their manufacture was around

Pickering.

Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, in their Life in the Moorlands of North-East Yorkshire, tell of John Hall who lived at Hartoft above Rosedale; during the First World War, he made besoms and took them to Pickering by horse and cart, selling them for 11d a dozen. That is less than one old penny each - and he brought up ten children on his smallholding.

The craft continues in the Pickering area. Brian Eddon, whose workshop is at Farwath beside the North Yorkshire Moors Railway line, continues to make besoms in the traditional manner. Mr Eddon is one craftsman who has benefited from the Harry Potter phenomenon and his family name crops up among those of earlier besom-makers.

The besom was regarded as an essential tool around the rural household; long before carpets, the dirt-laden floors had to swept efficiently and the besom was ideal. Indeed, it came to be regarded as the symbol of the housewife. If a woman was away from the house, she would stand a besom outside the door, and some would thrust a besom up the chimney so that its twigs showed out of the top - a long distance signal of her temporary absence.

Just how the besom came to be associated with flying witches is not certain, although it was once a very common belief. A witch was said to annoint her body with a special salve given by the devil, and this enabled her to fly on a broomstick or a besom. She was also said to use other sticks, such as those from a broom plant or even a ragwort stem, and it was widely believed witches used broomsticks as their means of transport to Sabbaths.

Not surprisingly, other superstitions were associated with besoms. If it was said that a woman had jumped over a besom, it meant she had given birth to an illegitimate child, and it was also believed that if a girl accidentally stepped over a broomstick, she would become a mother before she was married. Such a girl was sometimes called a besom; to refer to any woman as a besom was therefore an insult. There was also a superstition that it was unlucky to make besoms during the month of May, or during the 12 days of Christmas.

Updated: 10:42 Wednesday, February 19, 2003