If you open a book on 19th century British folklore, the hazel tree is always mentioned as being magical. It was used for dowsing; St. Patrick used a hazel rod to cast the snakes out of Ireland; it is used by witches / used to drive off witches (etc).
How far back can these folk beliefs be traced? Do they turn up in any Anglo-Saxon texts? Do classical authors talk about hazel as a magical plant? Was hazel used in archaeological contexts that suggest ritual / magical properties?
I've only been able to trace it to the late middle ages, but I'm hindered by the profusion of neo-pagan / wicca literature that muddies the waters; because this is a little outside my speciality, I'm struggling to cut through the noise to any real sources that might exist.
I'm specifically interested in what hazel might have meant in 6th century England, but since we don't have any written sources from that century to help us, I'm happy to settle for a more longue duree view of the wood's magical powers.
What do we know about hazel's social history?
Hazel is a wetland tree, often lining the bogs used for ritual deposition. It's also conveniently straight, so you can use it for rods and the like for a number of practical reasons. One is the tying down of bog bodies to prevent them from floating up, for example. I also once attended a lecture by archaeobotanist Welmoed Out (at the CAU in Kiel) on wood selection for Middle Neolithic house construction, and here again hazel was selected for certain sections of the house and left out from others, but it seems she did not publish this explicitly.
The volva's staffs from Danish archaeological context (Aarhus and Trelleborg) are both hazel as well.