Music of the Moment

The compound (in various forms) crops up throughout traditional European vernacular poetry dating back to the 1300s. At a minimum (I suspect the semantic pairing of 'brown' and 'berry' is actually much older).

Interestingly, we have a direct parallel in contemporary idiomatic English: "brown as a berry" - used to describe a person with a deeply-suntanned complexion.

Berry-brown ale, berry-brown steeds (see Chaucer's "broun as a berye"), berry-brown blades...the list goes on and on.

Here's an instance that recently surprised me! An early form of the phrase crops up in the incomplete Middle English poem 'Wynnere and Wastoure', found in the London Thornton Manuscript:

This kynge was comliche clade in kirtill and mantill -
Bery-brown was his berde - brouderde with fewlys

(Translated: Berry-brown was his beard - embroidered with birds)

Thank you very much for the explanation! I didn’t know that there was so much history there.

There is one berry that is brown-ish, the Marquette grapes that ripened a few weeks ago. But they were even more of a grey than brown. I do wonder…

Gryphon - The Unquiet Grave (Child Ballad #78)