Revisiting a childhood memory (and a tree)

The things one learn sometimes through blogging... I learned recently from this blog that the rowan tree, in French called a sorbier, is associated with witchcraft and supernatural in folklore. It has many names in English, many of them very poetic: witchbane, whispering tree, witchwood, witchen, etc. I say this because I grew up with such a tree the back garden, in a remote place of the garden, behind the fence of the swimming pool. I never thought it had such strong otherwordly associations. I wish I knew. My brothers and I used to play swords and sorcery games, or Dracula games, or ghost games, or other childhood make-belief games, around it (or around one of our apple trees, another tree associated with supernatural), from springtime to late autumn. It was certainly a fitting setting for the spooky games we used to play.