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 ORIGIN AND MEANING 
 
 APPLE CULTS 
 
PUBLISHED FOR THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY AT 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H. II. McKechnie, Secretary) 
 12 Lime Grove, Oxford Road, Manchester 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 London: 39 Paternoster Row 
 New York : 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street- 
 Bombay : 8 Hornby Road 
 Calcutta: 6 Old Court House Street 
 Madras: 167 Mount Road 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF 
 APPLE CULTS 
 
 BY 
 
 T. RENDEL HARRIS, M.A., Litt.D., D.Theol., etc. 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Reprinted from " The Bulletin of the John Ry lands Library'* 
 Vol. 5, Nos. I and 2, August 1 91 8 -March 1 91 9 
 
 Manchester : AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN & COMPANY 
 
 London, , New York, Chicago, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras 
 
 1919 
 
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ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS. 1 
 
 By J. REN DEL HARRIS, M.A., Litt.D., D.Theol., etc., 
 Hon. Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge. 
 
 IN some recent investigations which I made into the origin of the 
 Greek gods the suggestion was made that a number of the 
 Olympian Divinities were personifications of or projections from 
 the vegetable world. The plant or tree was first thought of animistic- 
 ally as being the residence of some virtue or potency, helpful or hurtful 
 as the case might be, capable of being propitiated on the one hand, or 
 employed in human service on the other : and it was not difficult to 
 trace, in individual cases, the process of personification as the hidden 
 life of the plant or tree became an animal form, a human form, or an 
 ultimate deity. Amongst the cases which were discussed one of the 
 most interesting was that of the great god Apollo, the lord of light and 
 healing : it was suggested that the god was the personification of the 
 healing virtue and solar attributes of the mistletoe, and particularly of 
 the mistletoe as it is found growing upon the apple-tree ; and that the 
 apple and its mistletoe are his original sacred symbols. 
 
 Moreover, since it is tolerably certain that Apollo in the Greek 
 religion is a migration from the more northerly regions, and his mythical 
 home is somewhere at the back of the North wind, it was not unnatural 
 to suggest that the name by which he was known in the Hellenic world 
 is not a Greek name at all, but itself a migration from some northern 
 tribe : and it was audaciously affirmed that Apollo was only our apple 
 in disguise. 
 
 One need not be surprised that such revolutionary views provoked 
 sharp opposition. The religious conservatism of the scholarly world 
 was offended, for scholars are still more pagan than Christian, and 
 have never really lost faith in the more decent of the Olympian 
 
 1 An elaboration of the lecture deliyered in the John Rylands Library 
 on 23 October, 1917. 
 
.6:/:'::;: ;/: : THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 deities. The degradation of the great god of light to a spray of mistle- 
 toe, or to an apple-tree would have been blasphemy in ancient times, 
 and is academic blasphemy still. 
 
 Even those who were not the victims of hereditary religious con- 
 servatism found it hard to believe that there had been a northern 
 apple-god, when no trace of such a divinity had even been detected, nor 
 had any satisfactory parallel to Apollo turned up in the northern 
 mythologies. It was not an unreasonable request, therefore, to be asked 
 to produce one's apple-god in a definitely northern form, and to find 
 the missing links between himself and our lord Phoebus. The object 
 of the present lecture is to try and meet these criticisms and questionings. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 On the Existence of Apple Cults. 
 
 All students of folk-lore are aware that, in collecting and comparing 
 the quaint customs which still linger on the country-side, they are not 
 merely dealing with customs, but with cults that underlie them, with 
 misunderstood rituals and lost divinities ; in many cases the rituals and 
 worships which are thus embalmed like flies in the amber of unchanging 
 or slowly-changing popular habit, turn out to be the very earliest beliefs 
 and the most primitive religious acts of the human race. For example, 
 it will not be easy to find anything that takes one further back re- 
 ligiously or ritually than the Corn-baby, Corn-child, or Corn-mother of 
 the harvest-field, of which so much has been written in recent years. 
 Every surviving fragment of such a ritual is as valuable to us as a page 
 of an early gospel which time has blurred, or whose first-hand has been 
 overwritten. We see through it, down a long vista across which 
 many shadows are cast, the reasons which made man a religious animal, 
 and not merely the superstitions that keep him so. Of the customs 
 of the corn-field there is not much more, perhaps, to be said ; the 
 matter has had such exhaustive treatment at the hands of Mannhardt, 
 Frazer, and others, that the field may be considered well reaped and 
 satisfactorily gleaned, and there does not seem to be any last sheaf 
 whose cutting might make the reputation of later investigators. In the 
 case of the fruit- orchard, the inquiry has not gone so far, nor been so 
 effective. If it should turn out, as we have recently suggested, that 
 the ancestry of the god Apollo runs back into the apple-tree, in the 
 same way as Demeter disappears into a peculiar bunch of corn-stalks, 
 we can only say that Apollo was much more elusive than Demeter, 
 and the identification of his origin is much more easy to contradict. 
 Let us try to find out something more about apple-cults and the 
 associated places where apple-sanctity has been recognised. We will 
 begin with our own country where there are traces of recently expired 
 
 7 
 
8 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 customs relating to the apple, which are in some respects parallel to 
 those which occur, or used to occur until recently, in the harvest-field. 
 
 If we turn to Lysons' Magna Britannia, which is a storehouse 
 of valuable observations of ancient customs, we shall find him describing 
 practices which prevailed at a certain time of the year, in the orchards 
 of Devonshire. He tells us that : — 1 
 
 " In most parts of the cyder-district a custom still prevails of what 
 is called in ancient times * wassailing the apple-trees \ This custom 
 was accompanied by a superstitious belief, in the words of an old poet 
 (see Herrick's Hesperides\ 
 
 That more or less fruit they will bring, 
 As you do give them wassailing. 
 
 This ceremony at some places is performed on Christmas-eve. It con- 
 sists in drinking a health to one of the apple-trees, with wishes for its 
 good bearing, which generally turns out successful, as the best-bearing 
 tree in the orchard is selected for the purpose. It is attended by the 
 singing of some verses apposite to the occasion, beginning * Health to 
 thee, good apple-tree \ The potation consists of cyder, in which is 
 put roasted apples or toast ; when all have drunk the remainder of the 
 contents of the bowl are sprinkled on the apple-tree. The old Saxon 
 term ' wassail ' which is known to imply drinking of health is thus de- 
 fined in the glossary of the Exmoor dialect : * a drinking song sung on 
 Twelfth-night eve, throwing toast to the apple-trees in order to have 
 a fruitful year, which seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to 
 
 P» ♦» 2 
 omona . 
 
 So far Lysons, who goes on to describe the cutting of the " neck" 
 
 of the harvest in Devonshire, which we now know so well to be 
 
 a tradition from the earliest strata of religion. So we naturally ask how 
 
 we are to interpret the wassailing of the apple-trees. Is that also 
 
 ancient ? The use of the term " wassail " for the ceremony shows that 
 
 it has come down out of Saxon times ; but there is much more in the 
 
 account than can be explained by a Saxon habit of drinking health to 
 
 everybody and everything at a particular time of the year. It is clear 
 
 that what the Devonshire rustics were engaged in was a veritable 
 
 sacrament, in which they brought their deity to their deity and partook 
 
 of their deity with their deity, under solid and liquid symbolism. 
 
 1 Lysons, Magna Britannia (Devon), cccliv. 
 
 2 Apparently this is from Grose, Provincial Glossary \ 1 790, v. infra. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 9 
 
 Evidently we must try and find out some more about this interest- 
 ing custom. 
 
 If we turn to Hazlitt's Faiths and Folk-lore y which incorporates 
 most of the Popular Antiquities of Brand and Ellis, we shall find 
 several accounts of apple-wassailing. We transcribe first an article on 
 44 Apple- Howling" : — 
 
 44 In several counties the custom of Apple-howling (or yuling) to 
 which Herrick refers in his Hespc rides, is still in observance. A 
 troop of boys go round the orchards in Sussex, Devonshire, and other 
 parts, and forming a ring about the trees, they repeat these doggerel 
 lines : — 
 
 Stand fast root, bear well top, 
 
 Pray God send us a good howling crop ; 
 
 Every twig, apples big ; 
 
 Every bough, apples enou ; 
 
 Hats full, caps full ; 
 
 Full quarter sacks full." 
 
 Hasted says : l 44 There is an odd custom used in these parts about 
 Keston and Wickham (in Kent) in Rogation-week : at which time a 
 number of young men meet together for the purpose, and with a most 
 hideous noise run into the orchards, and encircling each tree, pronounce 
 these words : — 
 
 Stand fast root, bear well top ; 
 
 God send us a youling sop, 
 
 Every twig, apple big, 
 
 Every bough, apples enow. 
 
 For which incantation the confused rabble expect a gratuity in money, or 
 drink, which is no less welcome : but if they are disappointed in both, they 
 with great solemnity anathematize the owners and trees with altogether 
 as significant a curse." It is clear that we have evidence here, at least 
 as far back as the end of the eighteenth century, when Hasted wrote 
 his History of Kent, for the occurrence of some surviving ritual and 
 magic in reference to the apple-tree. 
 
 Hazlitt continues : 44 It seems highly probable that this custom has 
 arisen from the ancient one of perambulation among the heathens, 
 when they made prayers to the gods for the use and blessing of the 
 fruits coming up, with thanksgiving for those of the previous year ; 
 
 1 No reference is given, but it is clear from what follows that he is quot- 
 ing Hasted' s History of Kent. 
 
10 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 and as the heathens supplicate Eolus, god of the winds, for his favour- 
 able blasts, so in this custom they still retain his name with a very 
 small variation ; this ceremony is called Youling; and the word is often 
 used in their invocations/' 
 
 Thus far Brand-Hazlitt on the custom of apple-howling. We 
 need not spend time over Eolus ; he is certainly not the deity involved 
 in the act of youling : the texts are clear for Yule-tide, and this again 
 takes us back to Saxon times, and shows us that if the youling-custom 
 was attached to Rogation-week, it has been transferred to it from the 
 Christmas season. So we need not spend further time over the per- 
 ambulations of the Ambarvalia, or the chants of the Litania Major, 
 Incidentally we note that, as we are not deriving our apple-ritual from 
 Rome, we may remove the reference which Lysons has given us to 
 Pomona. 
 
 Now let us see what Hazlitt has to report elsewhere. Under the 
 
 heading of Twelfth Night we are told that "formerly it was custom 
 
 in Devonshire on this night to drink hot cyder and eat cakes, and after 
 
 the company had partaken of this entertainment to their satisfaction, 
 
 they proceeded into the orchard, where they offered a portion to the 
 
 apple-trees and pear-trees by laying a piece of cake on a bough of 
 
 each, and pouring over it a libation of hot cyder. The men who 
 
 happened to be present then fired a salute, and the women and girls 
 
 sang in chorus, 
 
 Bear blue, apples and pears enou' 
 Barn fulls, bag fulls, sack fulls. 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Hurrah ! 
 
 There are several versions of the subjoined song : but that here given 
 is correct in Devonshire on Twelfth Day : — 
 
 Apple-tree, apple-tree, 
 Bear apples for me : 
 Hats full, laps full, 
 Sacks full, caps full. 
 Apple-tree, apple-tree, 
 Bear apples for me. 
 
 " In the South-hams of Devonshire, on the Eve of the Epiphany, 
 the farmer, attended by his workmen, with a large pitcher of cyder, goes 
 to the orchard, and there, encircling one of the best-bearing trees, they 
 drink the following toast three several times : — 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 1 1 
 
 Here's to thee, old apple-tree, 
 Whence thou mays't bud, and whence thou mays't blow ! 
 And whence thou mays't bear apples enow ! 
 
 Hats full, caps full ! 
 
 Bushel — bushel — sacks full, 
 
 And my pockets full to ! Huzza ! " 
 
 4t On the Eve of Twelfth Day, as a Cornishman informed Mr. Brand, 
 on the edge of St. Stephen's Down, 28 October, 1790, it is the 
 custom for the Devonshire people to go after supper into the orchard, 
 with a large milkpan full of cyder, having roasted apples pressed into 
 it. Out of this each person in company takes what is called a clayen 
 cup, i.e., an earthenware cup full of liquor, and standing under each of 
 the more fruitful apple-trees, passing by those that are not good bearers, 
 he addresses it in the following words : — 
 
 Health to thee, good apple-tree, 
 Well to bear, pocket-fulls, hat-fulls, 
 Peckfulls, bushel-bag-fulls ! 
 
 And then drinking up part of the contents, he throws the rest with its 
 fragments of the roasted apples at the tree. At each cup the company 
 set up a shout.'* 
 
 This last reference appears to be taken from Pennant's Tour in 
 Scotland. 1 
 
 Now suppose we turn to Grose's Provincial Glossary \ which is 
 almost contemporary with Hasted (I quote from the second edition of 
 1 790), we shall find, M Watsail. A drinking song, sung on Twelfth- 
 day Eve, throwing toast to the apple-trees, in order to have a fruitful 
 year : which seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona. 
 Wassail. Exm.," which concluding words I take to mean that wat- 
 sail is wassail, and that the custom referred to is an Exmoor custom. 
 Grose has probably taken it from a Glossary of the Exmoor Dialect. 
 
 We learn something fresh from this reference. The custom is 
 called wassail, and so is connected naturally (but not exclusively) with 
 Yule-tide. The throwing of toast must be noted, for it explains the 
 line in Hasted's account, when prayer is made that 
 
 God send us a good youling sop ; 
 
 i.e., a Yule-tide toast, as we shall see more clearly presently. Pomona 
 
 1 Ed. Chester, 1771, p. 91. 
 
12 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 may be dismissed, and Yule has clearly the right of way against the 
 howling Eolus, as already pointed out. 
 
 Now let us see whether we can get some further evidence as to the 
 wassail-song and the wassail-customs in reference to the apple-trees 
 on the Eve of Twelfth Day. 
 
 We quoted just now from Hazlitt- Brand a reference for apple- 
 howling to the Hesperides of the poet Herrick. The passage is as 
 follows : — l 
 
 Wassaile the Trees, that they may beare 
 
 You many a Plum, and many a Peare : 
 
 For more or less fruit they will bring 
 
 As you do give them Wassailing. 
 
 From this verse we learn several things ; Herrick may be taken as an 
 authority for the West of England, and for Devonshire in particular ; 
 the Hesperides\ which, as its name implies, is a Western production, 
 was published in 1 648. So the custom of wassailing the trees pre- 
 vailed in Devonshire in the middle of the seventeenth century. It was 
 not at this time limited to apple-trees, but was a general charm to make 
 all fruit-trees prolific in the coming year. The name of " wassail" by 
 which the custom is covered goes back naturally to Saxon times. 
 
 It is interesting to notice the modification of the word in country 
 districts where it was no longer understood. In Mrs. Latham's West 
 Sussex Superstitions we find the following statement : — 
 
 " It is the custom in the cider districts of Sussex to worsle the apple- 
 trees on New Year's Eve, and for several succeeding days, and it is 
 considered unlucky to omit doing so." 2 
 
 Here worsle is a debased form of wassail in Sussex dialect. Ap- 
 parently, in some parts of Yorkshire, the term wassail was corrupted 
 to vessel ; for it is said that " it was usual to carry about the vessel- 
 cup at Christmas, and sing carols, with a view to collect money. This 
 was done in 1813, and perhaps later, at Holderness and in other parts 
 of Yorkshire. The cup was sometimes accompanied by an image of 
 Christ and roasted apples? 3 
 
 We shall see presently that the roasted apples are properly a part 
 of the ritual of wassailing the orchard, and it is significant that an image 
 
 1 Ed. Moorman, p. 264. 
 
 2 Quoted also in Folk-Lore Record (1878), 13. 
 
 3 Hazlitt-Brand, p. 620. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 13 
 
 of Christ is carried in the procession. Does this belong to the wassail- 
 ing of the trees, or is it merely a reminiscence of Christmas generally ? 
 At all events the roasted apples should be noted, and the disappear- 
 ance of the ancient word which covers the ceremonies. 
 
 To return to Mrs. Latham's account of the " worsling " of the 
 trees in Sussex : she continues : — 
 
 " Farmers give a few pence to the worslers, who form a circle 
 round the trees and sing at the top of their voices : — 
 
 Stand fast root, 
 Bear well top, 
 Pray God send us 
 A good howling crop. 
 
 Every twig 
 
 Apples big, 
 
 Every bough, 
 
 Apples enow. 
 Hats full, caps full, 
 Full quarter sacks full, 
 Holla, boys, holla ! Huzza ! 
 
 and then all shout in chorus, with the exception of one boy who blows 
 a loud blast on a cow's horn. Last New Year's Eve the mother of a 
 sick boy told me thai her poor child was sadly put out because he was 
 not able to worst e his grandfather's apple-trees ; and it is quite certain 
 that both mother and child expected a total failure of the apple-crop in 
 the grandfather's orchard to follow the omission." 
 
 We can add something to Mrs. Latham's account of the Sussex 
 ceremonies : a writer in Notes and Queries tells us that M in the 
 neighbourhood of Chailey (some miles to the north of Lewes) . . . 
 a troop of boys visit the different orchards," and after repeating the 
 chant before-mentioned, they " shout in chorus, one of the boys accom- 
 panying them on the cow's horn : during the ceremony they rap the 
 trees with their sticks 'V 
 
 In West Somerset they fire guns, apparently, at the trees : the 
 point should be taken in connection with the just-mentioned beating of 
 the trees with the sticks. The whole custom for this part of Somerset 
 is described as follows : — 
 
 M On Old Christmas Eve (5 January), or the Eve of the Epi- 
 phany, it was the custom not long since, and may be still, for the 
 
 1 N. and Q. (1852), 1st Sen, v., 293. 
 
14 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 farmer, with his men, to go out into the orchard, and to place toast 
 steeped in cider, along with a jug of the liquor, up in the * vork * of 
 the biggest apple-tree, by way of libation ; then all say, 
 
 Apple-tree, apple-tree, 
 
 I wassail thee ! 
 
 To blow and to bear, 
 
 Hat vulls, cap vulls, 
 
 Dree-bushel-bag-vulls. 
 
 And my pockets vull too ! 
 
 Hip ! Hip ! Hooraw ! 
 
 (Bang with one or more guns.) This ceremony and formula is re- 
 peated several times at different trees, with fresh firing of guns. I can 
 well remember quite a fusillade from various orchards on Old Christ- 
 mas Eve/' l 
 
 There are very ancient features in this account which do not appear 
 in the customs of the Sussex villagers. First and foremost there is the 
 presentation of the toast and cider to the biggest apple-tree in the 
 orchard, which is supposed to partake of the offering ; the ritual is 
 now turned into a communion service. 
 
 As we go further West we come across more traces of this curious 
 custom. 
 
 In Hunt's Popular Romances? we are told with regard to the 
 11 drinking to the Apple-trees on Twelfth Night Eve," that " in the 
 eastern part of Cornwall, and in western Devonshire, it was the cus- 
 tom to take a milk-pail full of cider, into which roasted apples had been 
 broken, into the orchard. This was placed as near the centre of the 
 orchard as possible, and each person, taking a clomben 3 cup of the 
 drink, goes to different apple-trees, and addresses them as follows : — 
 
 Health to the (/. thee) good apple-tree ; 
 Well to bear, pocketfuls, hatfuls, 
 Peckfuls, bushel-bagfuls. 
 
 Drinking part of the contents of the cup, the remainder, with the frag- 
 ments of roasted apples, is thrown at the tree, all the company shout- 
 ing aloud." 
 
 Mrs. Whilcombe in Bygone Days of Devon and Cornwall* tells 
 
 1 Elworthy, West Somerset Word-Book. 2 P. 175. 
 
 3 Clome for China is still in use in W. Cornwall, or was in my early 
 days. 
 
 4 P. 27. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 15 
 
 the same story with slight variations : " They carry with them to the 
 orchard a pitcher of cider and some cake. They hang pieces of this 
 on the branches of one of the trees, and sprinkle the cider over its 
 roots. 1 * 
 
 It is further noted that "it is customary in some parts to fire at 
 the apple-trees, and several guns are called into requisition for this 
 purpose ". 
 
 Here the pieces of cake in the branches replace the toast in the 
 primitive account. A special tree is the centre of the ritual, and our 
 conjecture that the trees were actually fired at is confirmed. That the 
 toast is actually soaked in the cider appears from the statement in 
 Tozer's Poems that M it was the custom for the country people to 
 sing a wassail or drinking song, and throw the toast from the wassail- 
 bowl to the apple-trees, in order to have a fruitful year , J 
 
 The general question of wassailing is summed up as follows by the 
 editor of Folk- Lore in the year 1902 (pp. 95-6) : — 
 
 44 The custom of wassailing and carrying a vessel-cup are noticed 
 in Ellis's Brand, i., 1, 45 ; Henderson (2nd edn., 64-8), and Gent. 
 Mag. Library (Popular Superstitions), 16, 76. The information 
 given may be summarised as follows : Wassailing, or health-drinking 
 from a bowl or loving-cup was a usual accompaniment of Christian 
 feasting, sometimes extended to the orchards and oxen. The favourite 
 liquor was 4 lambswool,' a mixture of ale, spices, and roasted apples. 
 In many places parties of wassailers went about visiting the neighbour- 
 ing houses singing their good wishes and carrying a bowl with apples, 
 which the hosts were expected to fill with ale, or money to purchase it. 
 But the custom of carrying a representation of the Madonna seems to 
 have been confined to Northumbria, where the name 4 vessel-cup * and 
 the apples are the only relics of the wassail-bowl which, one supposes, 
 once accompanied it." 
 
 The writer did not get very far in his researches into the origin of 
 wassailing, but he sees that the apples belong to the original function, 
 and in the roasted form. How else could one explain the term 
 44 lambswool ". 
 
 Here is another small indication of the importance of the apple in 
 the composition of wassail : — 
 
 "The Antiquarian Repertory (1775) contains a rude woodcut of 
 
 'Tozer, /W/.r(l863), p. 65. 
 
16 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 a bowl carved on an oaken beam, which had formed a portion of an 
 ancient chimney recess. The vessel rests on the branches of an apple- 
 tree, alluding, perhaps, Sir Henry Ellis suggests, to part of the materials 
 of which the liquor was composed " (Hardwick, Traditions, Super- 
 stitions, p. 61). 
 
 Another point that comes up in the Folk-Lore Summary is the 
 carrying of an image, this time of the Madonna in Northumbria. But 
 here, again, we cannot assume that the image is an archaic feature of 
 the ceremony, for the Yule-tide includes Christmas, and so the Madonna 
 and the Christ may have come in on their own account, without any 
 link with the sacred apple-tree. 
 
 It is likely that a good deal of confusion has arisen in the wassail 
 ceremonies through the change in date of the Christmas festival from 
 the Twelfth Night or Old Christmas Day (the Epiphany) to its present 
 position. The wassail-bowl moved back when the date for Christmas 
 receded, and the wassail-ceremony for the orchards remained on the 
 old Christmas Eve. In modern times the wassailing date underwent, 
 perhaps, another slight change in some quarters ; it was moved from 
 Twelfth Night Eve to Twelfth Night itself ; here is a bit of West- 
 country talk reported in 1 908 : " Thicky Twelfth Night is not the 
 hraight day for wassailing the arpul trees. Her should be doned on 
 Old Twelfth Night, not on old Christmas Day," said the ancient sage 
 of Stockland in January, 1 908. 1 Apparently this means that the old 
 West-country custom had moved forward a day. 
 
 There is, however, some evidence from Somerset that the wassail- 
 ing of the orchards was moved back with the wassail-bowl, and perhaps 
 the Christmas ceremonies, to Christmas Eve, and it may be to this that 
 the aged rustic refers. Lysons, whom we quoted above, wassails the 
 trees on Christmas Eve. In Poole's Customs, Superstitions, and 
 Legends of the Comity of Somerset, 1877, pp. 6, 7, we find the 
 following account of the Yule-log and the wassailing : — 
 
 44 The burning of the Ashen Faggot on Christmas Eve is an 
 ancient ceremony transmitted to us from the Scandinavians, who, at 
 their feast of Yuul, were accustomed to kindle huge bonfires in honour 
 of Thor. The faggot is composed of ashen-sticks, looped round with 
 bands of the same tree, nine in number. When placed on the fire fun 
 
 1 C. N. Whistler, " Sundry Notes from West Somerset and Devon," 
 Folk-Lore, 1908, p. 91. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 17 
 
 and jollity commence. . . . Every time the bands crack by reason of 
 the heat of the fire, all present are supposed to drink liberally of the 
 cider, or egg-hot, a mixture of cider, eggs, etc. The reason why ash 
 is selected in preference to any other timber is, that tradition assigns it 
 as the wood with which Our Lady kindled a fire in order to wash her 
 new-born Son. In some places it is customary for the yeoman and his 
 family to proceed to the orchard, one of the party bearing a hot cake 
 and cider, as an offering to the best-bearing apple-tree, and after 
 depositing the cake on the tree the cider is poured on the latter amid 
 the firing off of guns and pistols, the women and children shouting, 
 
 Bear blue, apples and pears enough, 
 Barns full, bags full, sacks full, 
 Hurrah ! Hurrah ! Hurrah ! " 
 
 Here again the Madonna appears to be an intrusion from the 
 Christian side, and the date of the wassailing has receded in accordance 
 with later Christian reckoning, but the ceremony itself is very archaic. 
 One tree stands out clearly as the object to be feted, and it is difficult 
 to resist the feeling that the shooting of the guns is meant for the tree, 
 or for some representative of the tree. 
 
 In 1 686 Aubrey published his Remains of Gentilisme, and in 
 this invaluable little book for the folklorist (it has been reproduced in 
 recent times by the Folk- Lore Society) we find reference to the wassail- 
 ing of the apple-trees in Somersetshire. Aubrey notes as follows : — 
 
 " Memorandum that non obstante the change of Religion, the 
 Ploughboies, and also the Schooleboies will keep-up and retaine their 
 old ceremonies and customes and priviledges, which in the West of 
 England is used still (and I believe) in other parts. So in Somerset- 
 shire when the wassaile (which is on ... I think Twelve- Eve) the 
 Ploughmen have their Twelve-cake, and they go into the Ox-house to 
 the Oxen, with the Wassell-bowl and drink to the ox with crumpled 
 home, that treads out the corne ; they have an old concerved rhythme ; 
 and afterwards they goe with their Wassel-bowle into the orchard and 
 goe about the trees to blesse them, and putt a piece of tost upon the 
 roots in order to it/' 
 
 Here we again have seventeenth century evidence for the custom of 
 wassailing the trees of the orchard in the West of England, accompanied 
 by a curious extension of the wassailing to the cattle. Aubrey notes 
 
18 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 that for the participation of the tree in the offering, the toast is placed, 
 not in the branches, but at the roots. We had one case of this pre- 
 viously. 
 
 Similar results to our own have been reached by Mr. A. B. Cook, 
 who has studied the legends in the Celtic literature with such astonish- 
 ing industry and effect. 1 He finds out, in fact, from these legends, 
 that the apple-tree was almost as sacred as the oak, that it had nearly 
 as good a claim as the oak to the title King of the Wood, that on the 
 one hand it represented the Sky- God, and on the other the life of a 
 king or hero with whom it was associated. Mr. Cook suggests that 
 the " religious or mythological transition from oak-tree to apple-tree 
 corresponds to an actual advance in pre-historic civilisation. Tribes 
 that were once content to subsist upon acorns and wild fruits in general 
 learnt gradually the art of cultivating the more edible varieties of the 
 latter, and so came in the course of many centuries to keep well-stocked 
 orchards. . . . The apple in particular, the oldest cultivated fruit-tree 
 in Europe, is felt to be the equivalent to the oak." The divergence 
 between Mr. Cook's views and those of Dr. Frazer is not serious, it is 
 a case of the expansion of an argument, not of its contradiction. Our 
 own method confirms Mr. Cook's results from an opposite direction, 
 viz., the unnoticed survival of an apple-ritual, the centre of whose de- 
 motion was an apple-spirit. 
 
 At this point we may review the evidence which we have collected ; 
 there would be more of it, but, unfortunately, my notes are lying some- 
 where at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and so we suffer from in- 
 completeness at the hands of the war-god. Enough has been brought 
 forward to show that we have unearthed a genuine ritual of which the 
 apple-tree is the centre. This apple-tree, by preference the biggest or 
 best or oldest of the orchard, and on that account entitled to be called 
 (if the High Priest of Nemi will permit the appellation) the King of 
 the Wood, is regarded as a sentient being capable of sacramental 
 participation with its worshippers under two species : toast soaked in 
 cider, with roasted apples form the one species ; cider, which is the 
 life-blood of the tree, forms the other. The offering is shared between 
 the divinity and the worshippers, and the offering is the divinity. 
 Every side of sacrificial communion is here represented. The offering 
 
 1 1 refer to the papers on the " European Sky-God" in Folk-Lore, vol. 
 xt., 1904, etc. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 19 
 
 has an especial magical value ; it is a charm for fertility, and perhaps 
 a reminiscence of previous fertility. For our purposes the most im- 
 portant point is that the whole of these ceremonies involve the personi- 
 fication of the tree itself, which cannot be thought of as partaking of 
 apples and cider, except by humane analogy. This, then, was the first 
 point that we had to establish, namely, that there is evidence of a sur- 
 viving ritual of the apple-tree, which would almost inevitably result in 
 the projection of the tree into a personal form, just in the same way as 
 the oak-tree inhabited by the lightning becomes the woodpecker and 
 ultimately Zeus himself. We have not, as yet, supplied evidence to 
 enable us to say whether there was an annual death of the apple-spirit 
 celebrated, nor whether it was a death by violence ; nor can we say 
 whether the image of Christ, which appears to have been carried about 
 by wassailers in Yorkshire, has replaced an earlier image. Further 
 investigations may throw light on these points. All that we have 
 proved is the existence of an apple-tree spirit as an object of cult. 
 That is the reply, the first stage of the reply, to those who say that 
 there is no trace of an apple-god in the north of Europe. Let us see 
 whether we can take further steps to capture this elusive apple-spirit. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Apple-Bird and the Apple-Boy. 
 
 We may supplement our statements as to the custom of wassailing 
 the apple-trees in Devonshire by extracts from a special report made 
 on the subject by a Committee on Devonshire Folk- Lore, whose report 
 is printed in Transactions of the Devonshire Association for 1 905 
 (vol. xxxvii.). The extracts which follow will show how late the 
 custom persisted (it may still be extant for all I know), and will intro- 
 duce to us the apple-spirit under a new form. Mr. R. H. Jordan of 
 Teignmouth says : "I remember in my younger days (a long time ago) 
 being told of the custom ok firing at the apple-trees on the night of 
 Twelfth Day, being carried out in several country places in Devon- 
 shire ; and I especially remember an old gentleman, who had resided 
 for many years at Bovey Tracey, informing me that when it was done 
 there was a song sung, a part of which I remember : — 
 
 Bear and blow, 
 
 Apples enow, 
 
 Hats full, caps full, bushels full, etc." 
 
 In Devon Notes and Queries, vol. iii., p. 113, Mr. Henry Gibbon 
 communicates (1) a curious parallel to the cult of the fruit-tree from 
 Japan, (2) a report of the Devonshire custom taken from the Christmas 
 number of the Illustrated London News for 1901. 
 
 1. Dr. Aston, late British Consul at Seoul, writes : " There is a 
 custom in Japan, in places where there are fruit-trees, for two men to 
 go to the orchard on the last day of the year. One of the men climbs 
 up a tree, while the other stands at the bottom, axe in hand. The 
 latter, addressing the tree, asks whether it will bear fruit well or not in 
 the coming year ; otherwise it will be cut down. Then the man up 
 in the tree replies, * I will bear well \ The effect of this little drama 
 
 20 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 21 
 
 is said to be very satisfactory." We add an illustration of the Japanese 
 custom from a Carian coin, which appears to have a similar meaning. 1 
 
 Platb I 
 
 2. In this case (the Devonshire custom) the means adopted was 
 bribery, not intimidation. On Christmas Day the owner of the orchard 
 and his people place a cake on the fork of an apple-tree and pour wine 
 on it, while the women chant a chorus, " Bear barns full, sacks full, 
 bags full *\ 
 
 The Japanese parallel is very interesting, as one of the men em- 
 ployed is put up into the tree to answer for the tree. For the occasion 
 he is the tree-spirit. (Parallels not very remote can be found in the 
 Gospels.) 2 
 
 Mr. Gibbon inquired for further details as to the custom, and 
 educed a shoal Ji references, many of which have been already alluded to. 
 
 It is noted that Mrs. Bray in 1 832 in her book Borders of the 
 Tamar and Tavy, 1 879, vol. i., p. 290, was apparently the first to 
 mention " placing bits of toast on the branches ". 
 
 44 A writer in Notes and Queries for 1851 (1st series, iv., p. 
 309) speaks of a preliminary feasting, at which hot wheat flour cakes 
 were dipped in the cider and eaten : later in the evening a cake was 
 deposited on a fork of the tree and cider thrown over it, etc/* 
 
 We come next to a very important communication, taken from the 
 Transactions of the Devon Association, vol. viii., p. 49. " Miss 
 Pinchard [of Tor, Torquay] in 1876 says that a little boy was hoisted 
 up into the tree, and seated on a branch. He was to represent 
 a torn -tit, and sit there crying * Tit, tit, more to eat * ; on which some 
 of the bread and cheese and cider was handed up to him.'* 
 
 1 See British Mus. Coins, Caria, vi., 7. 
 
 - Professor Elliot Smith draws my attention to a statement in Gubernatis, 
 Mythologie des Plantes (i., 5, n. 1); " Pres de Messine et lorsque le 
 Christ est ressuscite, les paysans qui ont des arbres steriles, vont pour les 
 couper ; un compagnon qui est toujours present intercede en faveur des arbres 
 qu'on laisse Yirre dans l'espoir que le Christ resuscite les a fecondes ". 
 
22 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 Mr. A. P. Chope, who draws attention to this feature, makes the 
 parallel with the Japanese custom described above and says acutely 
 that " the boy is evidently the personification of the spirit of the apple- 
 tree, and the libations and offerings are intended to propitiate the spirit 
 in order to obtain a good crop in the coming year. The firing of guns 
 may possibly be intended to frighten away the evil spirits of blight and 
 disease ; but, as this seems to be a recent addition to the custom, its 
 object is more likely to emphasise the shouting." 
 
 What the writer did not see was that there was another personi- 
 fication of the tree looking out upon us, just as the woodpecker looks 
 out from the oak-tree over the shoulder of Zeus. This time it is a 
 tom-tit ! The suggestion arises that there was an annual sacrifice of an 
 apple-tree bird, just as there still survives an annual ceremonial slaughter 
 of a woodpecker in the Carpathian mountains. The account in which 
 the boy eats the sacramental bread and drinks the sacramental cider on 
 behalf of the tree is very suggestive. Mr. Chope saw clearly that the 
 firing of guns was late, but here he drifted into rationalism, not suspect- 
 ing that the guns had replaced earlier weapons of attacking the tree- 
 spirit. 
 
 We might note that, if the trees are actually fired at or beaten, 
 whether in their own bodies or in their personifications, it is just as cor- 
 rect to speak of the ritual as intimidation as it is to call it bribery. 
 
 Mr. Chope's communication brought out [one from Mr. P. F. S. 
 Amery, showing that the custom was common in the Ashburton dis- 
 trict down to the fifties, and continued for some time later. " All the 
 old men spoke of it as having been usual in their younger days. The 
 last occasion in which I took part was on 5 January, 1 887, when a 
 party of young men proceeded to our orchard and vigorously saluted 
 the trees with volleys from shotted guns, accompanied by cider drink- 
 ing, shouting the old charm : — ■ 
 
 Here's to thee, old apple tree, etc/* 
 
 Then follows some more unnecessary rationalism as to the possible good 
 effect of the firing of guns in detaching insects from the bark, etc. 
 
 In Devon Notes and Queries, vol. iii., p. 156, Mr. H. C. 
 Adams writes that the trees are charmed in different ways at different 
 places. " I never saw it done in Devonshire, but in my early days I 
 lived in Somersetshire, in the parish of Winchcombe, about four miles 
 over the border from Devonshire, and the custom was regularly kept 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 23 
 
 up there, and I believe it is still, and I have often seen it, and the cere- 
 mony was as follows : — 
 
 44 On the evening (query, on the eve) of Twelfth Day a number of 
 people formed a circle round one of the apple-trees ; some had guns, 
 some old tin kettles, or any tin tray or other thing that would make a 
 loud noise when struck with a poker or fire-shovel. Then the leader 
 of the party sang a song of which I can only remember one verse : — 
 
 There was an old man, 
 
 And he had an old cow, 
 And how to keep her he didn't know how : 
 
 So he built up a barn 
 
 To keep this cow warm, 
 And a little more cider would do us no harm. 
 
 Harm, my boys, harm ! 
 
 Harm, my boys, harm ! 
 A little more cider would do us no harm. 
 
 The guns were fired and tea-kettles and trays banged, and then all 
 stooped down, and raising themselves up three times shouted, 
 ' Now, now, now : hats full, caps full, three bushel bags full, and a 
 little heap under the stairs ; please God send a good crop/ and then 
 4 Now, now, now,* again, and more gun-firing and kettle-banging, after 
 which the cider was passed round and another verse was sung with the 
 same ceremony V 
 
 There are some archaic touches about this. The people stooping 
 three times and lifting themselves up, is a bit of sympathetic magic to 
 represent the lifting and carrying of heavily laden bags of apples. It 
 seems to be a part of the primitive ritual, and to be connected with the 
 three bushel bags in the chant, which we have found elsewhere. 
 
 In this account the gun-firing is clearly a case of making as much 
 noise as possible ; that is shown by the accompaniment, but this idea 
 need not be regarded as archaic. The guns may have replaced arrows. 
 
 Note. — As Miss Pinchard's communication is so important, I print in a 
 note the full text as follows : — 
 
 M Hicssing of Apple-trees. A few years ago, hearing that the ceremony 
 of ' blessing the apple-trees * had been celebrated a night or two before in 
 an orchard close to my house, in the parish of Tormohun, I sent for one of 
 the party who had been officially engaged in the affair to tell me all particu- 
 lars concerning it. 
 
 " He told me that, after partaking of a good supper provided by the 
 owner of the orchard, they all, men, women, and children, proceeded to the 
 
24 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 orchard, carrying with them a supply of bread, cheese, and cider. They 
 then, all being assembled under one of the best apple-trees, hoisted a little 
 boy up and seated him on a branch. He, it seems, was to represent a 
 torn-tit, and sat there crying out : ' Tit, tit ; more to eat ' ; on which some 
 of the bread and cheese and cider was handed up to him. He still sitting 
 in the tree, the whole party stood round, each being provided with a little 
 cup, which was forthwith filled with cider, and they then sang the following 
 toast : — 
 
 Here's to thee, good apple-tree, 
 
 To bear and blow, apples enow, 
 
 This year, next year, and the year after too ; 
 
 Hatsful, capsful, three-bushel bagsful, 
 
 And pay the farmer well. 
 
 " They then drank all round and fired a salute to the trees, making as 
 much noise as possible with all the pistols, guns, or other old firearms they 
 could collect ; or, failing such, with explosions of gunpowder placed in holes 
 bored in pieces of wood, accompanying the salute with loud cheering and 
 then firing into the branches of the trees. 
 
 " They then again stood round, and, after another cup of cider, sang : — 
 
 To your wassail, and my wassail, 
 And joy be to our jolly wassail ; 
 
 which concluded the ceremony. This is done in dead of winter ; and in 
 some cases, buckets of cider with roasted apples floating in them are carried 
 out, and the apple-trees pelted with the apples ; but I am not sure whether 
 he said this was done on the occasion of which I write." 
 
 Here is one more account which has reached me from an old 
 newspaper cutting, describing the custom of wassailing. It is valuable, 
 because it contains a new method of making the apple-tree drink its 
 own cider. This time, the branches of the tree are actually dipped in 
 the liquid, instead of pouring it out over the root. There is no doubt 
 that the tree drinks. Evidence on that point is cumulative and final. 
 
 " Quaint New Year Customs. 
 
 " Wassailing the orchard. A New Year custom in the cider 
 counties. After serenading the farmer, the rustics make a ' cheerful 
 noise * in the orchard, dipping a branch of each apple-tree into a jar 
 of cider, and exhorting them to be fruitful during the coming season. 
 
 " It is in the cider-producing counties in the West of England, Devon, 
 Gloucester, Somerset, and Hereford that one of the most picturesque 
 of old-time New Year customs still survives. The ceremony is called 
 1 wassailing the orchard,* and it is supposed to ensure a good crop of 
 apples for the ensuing season. A body of villagers first serenade the 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 25 
 
 farmer whose apple-trees they have come to bless with a song several 
 
 verses in length, of which the first is : — 
 
 Wassail, wassail, all over the town, 
 The cup is white and the ale is brown : 
 Our bowl is made of the good maple-tree, 
 And so is the beer of the best of barlie. 
 For it's your wassail, and our wassail, 
 And jolly come to our merry wassail. 
 
 " Having been refreshed, the wassailers proceed to the orchard and 
 surround various chosen trees, making a ' cheerful noise * with pokers, 
 tongs, and any piece of metal that may be at hand. There they dip 
 a branch of each tree in a large jar of cider which has been brought for 
 the purpose, and afterwards place a little salt and some crumbs in the 
 angle formed by the tree in the lowest bough. This ceremony is ac- 
 companied by the singing of : — 
 
 Cadbury 1 tree 
 
 I am come to wassail thee, 
 
 To bear and to blow, 
 
 Apples enow. 
 
 Hatfuls, capfuls, and three cornered sackfuls, 
 
 Hollo, boys, Ho ! 
 
 rendered by the full strength of the company. This quaint custom is 
 carried out both on New Year's Eve and New Year's Night, and in 
 some districts on Old Twelfth Night also." 
 
 The study of the folk-lore of the custom of wassailing the apple- 
 trees has involved frequent repetitions, and some of the writers quoted 
 are not independent of one another. It was necessary to collect as many 
 references as were accessible, because it often happens in the pursuit of 
 a lost custom of antiquity that one fragment of the rite is found in one 
 place and another fragment in another, so that it is only by a careful 
 collection of the fragments that we can restore the original mosaic, so as 
 to make intelligible history. For example, in the preceding inquiry, we 
 found little more at the first search than a charm for fertility which 
 appeared in the guise of a communion service, with some traces of 
 violence offered to the tree which was the centre of the rite : and it was 
 not until we unearthed the Torquay custom of sending a boy up into 
 the tree and pretending that the boy was a bird, that we had the 
 parallel personification to the woodpecker as Zeus in the oak-tree. 
 
 1 Query, the charm as performed in the village of Cadbury. 
 
26 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 If the object of putting the bird-boy into the tree is the personifica- 
 tion of the tree for ritual purposes, it is also clear from what has pre- 
 ceded that the ritual is a charm for fertility : and we are entitled to 
 make parallels with similar cults in other quarters. For example, the 
 practice of the Huzuls in the Carpathian mountains is to ceremonially 
 kill and eat the sacred woodpecker once a year. Is there any trace of 
 a similar sacrifice of the apple-bird ? Did they kill and eat the tom- 
 tit in primitive Devonshire ? As soon as we state the question, we 
 recall to mind the curious custom of killing the wren on St. Stephen's 
 Day, which still prevails in the Isle of Man, in Ireland, in France, and 
 elsewhere. It is a natural supposition that the tom-tit may really be a 
 wren. 1 The custom of killing the wren has been carefully studied by 
 a number of investigators, notably by Sir J. G. Frazer in the second 
 volume of the Spirits of the Corn and the Wild (p. 3 1 9). We 
 learn that in the Isle of Man on Christmas Eve the wren is hunted 
 and carried in procession with quaint rhymes. " Boys went from door 
 to door with a wren suspended by the legs in the centre of two hoops, 
 which crossed each other at right angles and were decorated with ever- 
 greens and ribbons." On St. Stephen's Day, 26 December, the wren 
 was buried, but it is significantly reported that " the bearers say certain 
 lines in which reference is made to boiling and eating the bird ". No 
 doubt this was the earlier form of the rite, before the practice of bury- 
 ing the bird. The coincidence with the woodpecker cult is here very 
 close. 
 
 The Irish sing a song over the wren describing him as the King of 
 all birds : — 
 
 The wren, the wren, the King of all birds, 
 St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze : 
 Although he is little his family's great, 
 I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat. 
 
 Elsewhere in South Wales and in France the ceremonies of King 
 Wren are practised on Twelfth Day, which brings it very close to the 
 wassailing time of the apple-trees. In one district in France the person 
 who finds the wren becomes himself the King, is decorated with mock 
 royalty, and the wren is carried before him " fastened on the top of a 
 pole which is adorned with a verdant wreath of olive, of oak, and 
 
 1 The transition is quite easy ; in Norfolk, for instance, the wren is actually 
 known as a tom-tit. Swainson, Folk-Lore of Birds, p. 35. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 27 
 
 sometimes of mistletoe grown on an oak ". Here we have the 
 second degree of personification which answers to the Devonshire boy 
 who is the tom-tit. 
 
 Suppose then we replace the tom-tit by the wren, and agree that 
 the cult involves an actual sacrifice ; can we see any further through 
 the mists of antiquity and into the beliefs of the past ? Perhaps we 
 can get a step or two further. 
 
 It is natural to suspect that if the wren has been replaced by the 
 tom-tit, it has itself replaced the robin : for according to popular tradi- 
 tion the robin is the mate of the wren ; according to the popular 
 
 rhyme : — 
 
 The robin and the wren 
 Are God's cock and hen. 1 
 
 This takes us at once into the region of known thunder-birds, who 
 are sacred on account of their colour symbolism. There is, however, 
 another reason which can be adduced for the displacement : it will be 
 remembered that what we are studying is a charm for fertility : now 
 in such charms, the female has the right of way against the male : be- 
 cause the woman is the fertile element in humanity, and in that sense 
 agriculture is necessarily of the woman. That is why the wren replaces 
 the robin : but if this be so, we should expect that the human repre- 
 sentative would be not a boy in the tree, but a girl ; or at least, that 
 the sacrificial representative of the tree should be a girl by preference. 
 Apart from this consideration, the tree itself, considered as fruit-bear- 
 ing, is commonly regarded as feminine, which leads again to a feminine 
 personification. Do we find any trace of such a choice, or of an 
 alternative custom ? 
 
 The evidence which we have so far collected does not help us to 
 answer the question, and the only modern custom that suggests some- 
 thing of the kind is that, in some parts of the south of France, there is 
 a rivalry between the men and women of a district as to which of 
 them shall capture the wren for the Twelfth Day ceremonies. But if 
 there is no evidence from Devonshire, and no conclusive evidence 
 from France, when we turn to Greek Archaeology, we can readily 
 find what we are in search of. 
 
 1 The wren is called the King of Birds in the ceremonies for his slaughter, 
 but I am informed that in some parts of the Isle of Man, it is known as the 
 Queen of Birds, which expresses its feminine nature, and connects it, as 
 above, with the robin, as the original King of Birds. 
 
28 
 
 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 Up to the present point in the discussion, we have not drawn at 
 all on classical parallels, being content to restore from modern practice 
 and tradition the apple-cult with its boy-and-bird personification and 
 sacrifice. Let us now see if we can find Greek illustrations of charms 
 for fertility involving the placing of a girl in the branches of the tree 
 that is to be fertilised. If we can find such illustrations they will be 
 a just parallel to our apple-boy. The tree in question, which we are 
 to search for, need not be an apple-tree, but it should be, one would 
 naturally suppose, a fruit-tree, for otherwise there is no special object 
 in its fertilisation. 
 
 Those who are familiar with Greek numismatics know that there is 
 a superb series of Cretan coins, chiefly of the city of Gortyna, which 
 have on one side of them a female figure seated in the branches of a 
 tree, variously described as Europa or Britomartis. The maiden is 
 visited or at all events accompanied, by a bird, variously recognised as 
 the eagle of Zeus {i.e., Zeus in the form of an eagle), or some much 
 
 Plate II 
 
 Plate III 
 
 smaller bird (which may be the eagle again, on the hypothesis that 
 Zeus made himself small to avoid scaring the maiden !). Mr. A. B. 
 Cook points out, by setting some of these coins in series, that the con- 
 junction of the bird and the maiden is accompanied by a bursting into 
 life and leaf of the tree. 1 Here are two of such coins, one from the 
 British Museum (Crete, PI. X. 5), the other from the Maclean Col- 
 lection. 
 
 All that I am concerned with at this point, is that the presence of 
 the girl in the tree accompanied by the bird is a charm for fertility, and 
 that we have before us the exact parallel to the Devonshire boy and 
 the torn- tit : or if it is not quite exact, the variation, may, perhaps, lie 
 
 1 He thinks it is a pollard willow, which is something like transplanting 
 Cambridge into Crete. According to Theophrastus it was a plane-tree, a 
 statement which appears to have had wide currency. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 29 
 
 in the fact that the boy is sacrificed, and the girl, perhaps, ceremonially 
 married. The end in either case is the same, the securing of the next 
 year's crop or harvest. 
 
 Now let us go a little further and see if we can find the boy in the 
 tree as well as the girl. 
 
 Among the coins of Phaestos in Crete we find representations of 
 a god, or at least a tree-spirit equivalent to a god, seated in a tree and 
 holding in his hand a cock. The figure is commonly described as Zeus 
 Felcanos, the latter name being inscribed across the coin. 1 Here, then, 
 
 Platb IV 
 
 we have the same conjunction of bird-form and human-form with the 
 tree-form. The tree is evidently the same leafless tree as in the Gortyna 
 coins ; like these coins too (it is a point to be noted), the tree has a 
 strongly defined hollow, which may be an original woodpecker-hole. 
 In any case, the tree is hollow. 
 
 Comparing the Phaestos coins with those of Gortyna, we see that 
 in each case we have a tree-spirit posing for fertility in the branches 
 under the twofold representation of bird and human being. The 
 Phaestos-figure is called Zeus, on the faith of a gloss of Hesychius that 
 Felcanos is a name of Zeus among the Cretans. It is a very young 
 Zeus, if it is Zeus, and certainly not the father of gods and men. 
 Svoronos describes him as follows : — 
 
 M Zeus Felchanos reprdsentd comnie jeune homme nu, assis a 
 gauche sur un arbre, posant la main droite sur un coq, debout a gauche 
 sur ses genoux, s'appuyant de la gauche sur 1'arbre." 
 
 The boy-Zeus, as I may now call him, is the proper Greek parallel 
 to the Devonshire lad who is both tree and torn- tit. If there had been 
 any coins of Torquay, they would have shown the same kind of features 
 as we find in the coins of Gortyna and Phaestos. 2 
 
 1 We give a reproduction of the British Museum Coin (Crete, PI. XV, 
 
 2 The reference which was made above to the hollow in the tree is im- 
 portant, for the hollow is clearly conventional and stands for something. In 
 
30 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 As a result of our investigations we are now entitled to restore the 
 ritual of the killing of the wren to connection with the ritual of the 
 wassailing of the apple-tree. They are parts of the same ceremony. 
 The wren is missing in the Devonshire ceremony, because the bird has 
 been replaced by a boy (or perhaps a girl). The crossed hoops, how- 
 ever, in which the body of the wren is suspended, we have seen to be 
 a part of the ritual of wassailing among the Wiltshire rustics ; and a 
 cow-horn which is blown by a lad in the Sussex orchards was an especial 
 feature of the ceremony of killing the wren in Manxland. 1 
 
 The parallelism between the apple-cults, the oak-cult, and the cult 
 of the corn-field, is now seen to be very close. In each case we have 
 charms for fertility, addressed to the spirit (corn-spirit, tree-spirit) that 
 is involved. 
 
 Thus we have a series of personifications : — 
 
 Oak-tree or Thunder. 
 
 Woodpecker or Thunder-bird (probably killed and eaten at an annual 
 
 ceremony). 
 Zeus or Thunder-god (perhaps preceded by an intermediate stage of 
 
 oak- boy or oak- girl. The latter, perhaps, the Cretan Europa.) 
 
 For the corn-field, we have the corn-spirit as 
 
 Last sheaf in the field 
 
 Corn-dolly or corn-animal (wolf, cat, pig, man) sacrificed and some- 
 times eaten. 
 Corn-mother or Corn-maid. (Demeter and Persephone.) 
 
 For the apple-cult, which is clearly related to the oak-cult, we have 
 
 Apple-tree (containing Sky- god through mistletoe). 
 
 Apple-bird (Robin, Wren, Tom-tit), probably killed and eaten at an 
 
 annual ceremony. 
 Apple-boy or Apple-girl. 
 Apple-god (Apollo, Balder, or some similar identification). 
 
 It has been suggested above that the killing of the wren was 
 really a preliminary to the eating of the wren ; that is, that the bird 
 
 its later forms an incuse square with a well-defined central spot. Appar- 
 ently this central spot once stood for the head of a bird : see plate AR 23 
 of Svoronos. 
 
 1 Britton, Beauties of Wilts, 1825 : " The custom of wassailing is still 
 continued. A party of men assemble in the evening, and having obtained a 
 cheese-bowl, decorate it with two intersecting hoops, covered with ribands, 
 etc." In Train's History of the Isle of Man, we are told that in 1842 
 no less than four sets of boys engaged in hunting the wren were observed in 
 the town of Douglas, each party blowing a horn. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 31 
 
 was eaten sacramentally as the representative of the tree-spirit. In 
 Manxland the wren is buried, but the song which is sung over it is in 
 evidence for another kind of sepulchre. This song is given as follows 
 in Train's History of the Isle of Man (vol. ii., p. 1 4 1 , 1 845) : — 
 
 The Hunting of the Wren. 
 
 We'll away to the woods, says Robin the Bobbin : 
 We'll away to the woods, says Richard the Robbin. 
 We'll away to the woods, says Jackey the Land : 
 We'll away to the woods, says every one. 
 What will we do there ? says Robin the Bobbin, 
 
 Repeat as before. 
 We'll hunt the wren, says, etc. 
 Where is he, where is he ? says, etc. 
 In yonder green bush, says, etc. 
 How can we get him down, says, etc. 
 With sticks and with stones, says, etc. 
 He's down, he's down, says, etc 
 How can we get him home ? says, etc. 
 We'll hire a cart, says, etc. 
 Whose cart shall we hire ? says, etc. 
 Johnny Bil Fel's says, etc. 
 How can we get him in, says, etc. 
 With iron bars, says, etc. 
 He's at home, he's at home, says, etc. 
 How will we get him boiled ? says, etc. 
 In the brewery pan, says, etc. 
 How will we get him eaten ? says, etc. 
 With knives and with forks, says, etc. 
 Who's to dine at the feast ? says, etc. 
 The king and the queen, says, etc. 
 The pluck for the poor, says, etc. 
 The legs for the lame, says, etc. 
 The bones for the dogs, says, etc. 
 He's eaten, lies eaten, says, etc. 
 
 The music of the wren-song is given in Barrow's Mona Melodies, 
 1820. 
 
 For our present purpose, the important point is the survival in the 
 song of the tradition that the wren should be eaten as well as killed. 
 It is as well to record the existence of a musical element in the cere- 
 mony, over and above the noise of the cow-horn. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 
 Personification of the Apple-tree {Continued). 
 
 We may perhaps infer from the occurrence of the two different 
 ways of disposing of the bird, which are suggested by Manx Folk- 
 lore, that the burying of the wren has replaced the eating of the wren. 
 Folk-songs appear to be in evidence for both forms of the cult. 
 
 For, example, there is a song, which is still sung by children in the 
 East End of London, which tells of an old woman who killed a robin, 
 and then planted an apple-tree over its grave. This may very well 
 be another way of saying that the robin as apple-bird was buried at 
 the roots of the apple-tree. 1 
 
 1 The song, as far as I can gather, is to the following effect : — 
 Old Robin is dead and gone to his grave, 
 
 Hum ! Ha ! gone to his grave, 
 They planted an apple-tree over his head, 
 Hum ! Ha ! over his head. 
 
 The apples were ripe and ready to drop, 
 
 Hum ! Ha ! ready to drop. 
 There came an old woman a-picking them up, 
 
 Hum ! Ha ! picking them up. 
 
 Old Robin got up and gave her a knock, 
 
 Hum ! Ha ! gave her a knock, 
 Which made the old woman go hipperty-hop, 
 
 Hum ! Ha ! hipperty-hop. 
 
 It will interest the people of the North Country to know that the Robin 
 who is buried and comes to life again in the folk-songs of the East End of 
 London, is represented on the coat of arms of the City and the University of 
 Glasgow. Look, for example, at the University shield, which is supposed to 
 represent the miraculous deeds and virtues of St. Kentigern alias St. Mungo 
 the early British saint. We have no space to show that St. Mungo is one of 
 the great and glorious company of Twin Saints, but a glance at the shield will 
 show the thunder-bird, as robin, perched on the top of the thunder-tree (in 
 
 32 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 33 
 
 We ought not to ignore another feature which is suggested by the 
 Manx song, viz. : the presence of the King and the Queen, who are 
 to eat the bird. This is evidence not merely for the eating of the 
 apple-bird, but also for the participation in the ceremony of a Twelfth- 
 Night King and Queen, whose ceremonial union is an added charm 
 for fertility. Some such charm was almost inevitable, if sympathetic 
 magic is to have its proper place in the ceremony. In the Isle of Man 
 there is evidence enough that Twelfth Night Eve is a time of general 
 license, which may easily have been religious in the first instance, and 
 perhaps confined to a single pair, who, like Zeus and Europa, repre- 
 sented the union of the sky-god and the tree-spirit. Here is an 
 account from Waldron's Isle of Man (a.D. 1731 : Manx. Soc. 
 reprint, 1865, p. 49) :— 
 
 M Christmas is ushered in with a form much less meaning and 
 infinitely more fatiguing (than the May-day festival). On 24 Decem- 
 ber, towards evening, all the servants in general have a holiday, they 
 go not to bed all night, but ramble about till the bells ring in all the" 
 Churches, which is at 12 o'clock : prayers being over, they go to hunt 
 the wren, and having found one of these poor birds they kill her, and 
 lay her on a bier with the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the Parish 
 Church, and burying her with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing 
 dirges over her in the Manx language, which they call her knell, after 
 which Christmas begins. There is not a barn unoccupied the whole 
 twelve days, every parish hiring fiddlers at the public charge ; and all 
 the youth, nay, sometimes people well advanced in years, making no 
 scruple to be among the nocturnal dancers. At this time, there never 
 fails some work being made for Kirk Jarmyns (the St. German's 
 prison) ; so many young fellows and girls meeting in these diversions, 
 etc. etc." 
 
 As we have said, the license of the youth in the eighteenth century 
 A.D., is not exactly parallel to that which prevailed in the eighteenth 
 century B.C., when religion, as well as passion, prompted the expression 
 
 this case, the oak) ; and when we turn to the legends of St. Kentigern, we 
 shall find that the robin had been killed, and miraculously raised to life again 
 by the saint. In the Aberdeen Breviary it is described as quae dam avicula 
 quae rubepca (sc. rubeculd) dicitur. Thus the raising to life of the robin is 
 a companion legend to the hunting of the wren. There is much more to be 
 said on the folk-lore of the Glasgow seal and the University coat of arms. 
 
34 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 of life in acts that might affect the prosperity of the whole of the en- 
 suing year. It would be a mistake to think of primitive people as vastly 
 more wicked than ourselves, and as belonging to a time when there 
 " aren't no ten commandments" : if there was no decalogue, there was a 
 myriologue of taboos which preceded the ten. After all, the ten com- 
 mandments are a mere abbreviation of supposed duties. 
 
 If we are right in regarding the Devonshire boy up the apple-tree 
 as a fertility demon parallel to the Cretan Europa or Felcanos, the 
 apple-boy being the key to the understanding of the Cretan oak-boy 
 and oak-girl, we may now take a further step with the assistance of the 
 Cretan coinage. We have examined the coins of Gortyna and of 
 Phaestos, and have seen the way in which these cities have represented 
 the tree-spirit, girl or boy as the case may be. There is another city 
 in Crete not yet identified, which struck a similar series of coins, the 
 place of the t?'ee-spirit being now ocmpied by Apollo himself. 
 The coin to which we draw attention is in the Hunter Collection at 
 Glasgow, and is figured in Percy Gardner's Types of Greek Coins, 
 PL IX, Nos. 1 5 and 1 6. The following is the description in 
 G. Macdonald, Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian 
 Collection, Glasgow, 1901, ii., 200, PI. XLIII, 7. 
 
 Plate V 
 
 Uncertain (Town) of Crete. 
 
 Silver. Fourth Century B.C. 
 
 /Eginetic standard 
 
 Stater. 
 
 Obverse. Reverse 
 
 Male figure, naked to waist, seated Apollo, seated r. head facing, amid 
 
 r. amid branches of a tree ; he sup- the branches of a laurel ; he holds 
 
 ports himself with r., while he holds lyre in 1., and plektron in r. 
 large wreath in extended 1. 
 
 If we assume that the tree on the obverse is identified with the tree 
 on the reverse, and that the god in the tree is the same on both sides, 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 35 
 
 then we have to call the god Apollo, and the tree a bay-tree. Analogy 
 with the coins of Gortyna and Phaestos suggests that he is in the tree 
 as a part of a cult for fertility. The difficult point is to determine what 
 possible object there could be in fertilising a bay-tree. Has the bay- 
 tree displaced some earlier form ? There is much to favour this be- 
 lief : we have shown in the Lecture on Apollo in the book called 
 The Ascent of Olympus, that at Delphi, where Apollo has his own 
 way with regard to trees and the like, the laurel was not primitive, for, 
 as Ovid pointed out in describing the fight of Apollo with the python, 
 
 nondum laurus erat : 
 
 and Apollo found his victor's wreath in a neighbouring oak. This 
 should be the very wreath which he is holding on one side of the coin. 
 
 We are now very near to finding Apollo as an oak-boy, of the 
 type of Zeus Felcanos. The next step from the oak to the apple-tree, 
 is a missing link in numismatic identification. We can find coins re- 
 presenting the god holding the apple, and we can find the sacred 
 apple-tree at Delphi, but the evidence lacks completeness, and we must 
 leave the case in the following form : Apollo in Crete in the fourth 
 century B.C., was a tree-boy, the tree being a bay-tree, with a possible 
 earlier form, not yet identified. 1 Now let us leave a blank at this 
 point for further evidence, if such should be forthcoming, and let us 
 return to the Isle of Man. 
 
 The next thing we come across in the Manx ceremony is a com- 
 bination of music and mantic, in the person of the fiddler who directs 
 the dance. He proceeds to tell the fortune of the coming year to the 
 young men and maidens assembled. This is described as follows by 
 Waldron :— 
 
 M On Twelfth Day the fiddler lays his head in some one of the 
 wenches' laps, and a third person asks who such a maid, or such a 
 maid, shall marry, naming the girls there present one after another ; to 
 which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the 
 intimacies he has taken note of during the time of merriment. But 
 whatever he says is as absolutely depended on as an oracle ; 
 and if he happens to couple two people who have an aversion to each 
 other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth. This they call cutting off 
 
 1 There is some evidence that at Olympia also the primitive prize was 
 an apple. 
 
36 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 the fiddler s head, for after this, he is dead for the whole year. This 
 custom still continues in every parish." 
 
 The foregoing account is very striking, it is almost unbelievable that 
 the ill-assorted unions suggested by the fiddler should have oracular 
 force. What force they possess has certainly come down out of the 
 past, and the fiddler must have religious sanction and be a religious 
 figure. The oracle appears as the Luck of the Year ; it is congru- 
 ous with the charms that determine fertility for the fruit-tree. The 
 fiddler is a primitive Apollo, with a fiddle in place of a lyre, not a wide 
 variation in music ; and the suggestion arises that Apollo was originally 
 oracular at a particular time of the year, and that at other times he was 
 quiescent. The girl in whose lap the fiddler lays his head is the proto- 
 type of the Pythian priestess who gives the responses for the god. 
 
 Those who have read the study of Apollo in the Ascent of 
 Olympus will recall the place which the apple takes in Greek Folk- 
 lore ; in this connection, the story of Hermochares and Ktesulla which 
 is there quoted, is very edifying. The apple which Hermochares 
 throws to the dancing maiden has an oracle inscribed on it to the effect 
 that " Ktesulla will many an Athenian named Hermochares *\ This 
 is just the sort of thing which the Manx fiddler would have said upon 
 occasion. It is a reply to the question, " Whom will Ktesulla marry ? 
 Alas that such an interesting custom should have disappeared ! 
 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine. 
 
 We have to get our answers in another way. The girls give the re- 
 sponses themselves : they have oracular force, 
 
 For if she will, she will, you may depend on't, 
 
 And if she won't, she won't, and there's the end on't. 1 
 
 Traces of the same practice of divination may be noted at the 
 Lenten fires in the district of the Ardennes, and elsewhere. Frazer 
 has described these fires, kindled on the first Sunday in Lent, in 
 Balder the Beautiful (i., 1 09). Here is a striking passage : — 
 
 1 The oracular element survives in the old-fashioned game of " forfeits " at 
 Christmas time, when a person is blindfolded, or hides his head in some one's 
 lap, as a preliminary to guessing the answers of certain questions. One 
 type is, Here is a thing, a very pretty thing, and who is the owner of this 
 pretty thing ? " The punishments for wrong answers have often an oracular 
 ambiguity about them, such as " Bite an inch off the poker ". 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 37 
 
 " At Epinal in the Vosges, on the first Sunday in Lent, bonfires 
 used to be kindled at various places both in the town and on the banks 
 of the Moselle. They consisted of pyramids of sticks and faggots, 
 which had been collected some days earlier by many folks going from 
 door to door. When the flames blazed up, the names of various 
 couples, whether young or old, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, were 
 called out, and the persons thus linked in mock marriage were forced, 
 whether they liked it or not, to march arm in arm round the fire 
 amid the laughter and jests of the crowd. The festivity lasted till the 
 fire died out, and then the spectators dispersed through the streets, 
 stopping under the windows of the houses and proclaiming the names 
 of the/e'cheno/s axi&fe'chenottcs or valentines whom the popular voice 
 had assigned to each other. These couples had to exchange presents : 
 the mock bridegroom gave his mock bride something for her toilet, 
 while she in turn presented him with a cockade of coloured ribbon." 
 
 The foregoing account is parallel in many ways to the Twelfth 
 Night divination in the Isle of Man, but the ceremonies are not so 
 serious, and the oracular force is much diminished. The same thing is 
 true of the Hallowe'en divinations, of which we have the following 
 statement in Frazer : — l 
 
 " In the Highlands of Scotland, as the evening of Hallowe'en 
 wore on, young people gathered in one of the houses and resorted to 
 an almost endless variety of games, or rather, forms of divination, for 
 the purpose of ascertaining the future fate of each member of the com- 
 pany. Were they to marry or to remain single, was the marriage to 
 take place this year or never, who was to be married first, what sort 
 of husband or wife he or she was to get, the name, the trade, the 
 colour of the hair, the amount of property of the future spouse — these 
 were questions that were eagerly canvassed and the answers to them 
 furnished never failing entertainment." 
 
 Here also there seems to be a lack of seriousness which can hardly 
 be primitive. 
 
 1 Op. cit. % i., 234. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Ganymedes and Hebe. 
 
 We have shown that the Devonshire custom of placing a boy in 
 the branches of an apple-tree as a representative of the tree, and as a 
 substitute for a previous bird-representative, is strictly parallel to the 
 development of the oak-cults and thunder-cults, which we were able 
 to trace in Crete and elsewhere. We are now going to show that our 
 investigation is capable of throwing some further light on the problems 
 of Greek mythology. 
 
 Returning for the moment to the Torquay custom, we see that the 
 apple-sacrament by which the rustics share with the tree the life of the 
 tree, has developed a human representative, who stands for the tree on 
 the one hand, and for the agriculturist on the other, who is operating 
 with sympathetic magic on the tree. This representative acts as an 
 intermediary, and makes the communion of the tree-spirit and the people 
 into a visible act ; he eats and drinks the products of the tree with the 
 people on the one hand, and with the tree on the other. The cup of 
 cider which is handed to him is a communion cup and a libation vessel. 
 He will give what he gets, in part at least, to the tree. 
 
 Since the boy is, admittedly, a bird one degree removed, it is 
 evident that if the bird were to be in the tree at the same time as the 
 boy, then the bird would itself have to be fed in order to make the 
 circle of communion complete. 
 
 When we turn from the apple-tree to the oak-tree, we naturally 
 ask what has become of the meal in which the participation of the 
 worshipper and his cult object is accomplished. Does the oak-tree 
 also eat and drink, or does any bird or boy eat and drink with it ? 
 
 This brings to our mind one of the perplexing features of the Greek 
 mythology, of which no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered : 
 the presence of a pair of cup-bearers, male and female, among the 
 Olympian gods, named respectively Ganymedes and Hebe. They 
 
 38 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 39 
 
 are evidently closely related, for Hebe has sometimes the title of 
 Ganymeda, and she stands in relation to Hera, much in the same 
 light as Ganymedes to Zeus. Each of them is a cup-bearer of the 
 gods. 
 
 Now in Greek art, it is easy to see that Ganymedes has been cup- 
 bearer to the eagle that earned him off, before he has himself become 
 an adjunct of Olympus. We constantly find him represented as pre- 
 senting the bowl of nectar to the eagle ; certainly the eagle stands for 
 Zeus in this connection, but it is Zeus in disguise, and away from 
 Olympus. 1 Ganymedes is really giving drink to the thunder-bird, 
 who precedes the thunder-man, and the thunder-bird is the oak-bird. 
 
 Platb VI 
 
 We can see this expressed in many ways by the Greek artists, who 
 will place an oak-tree in the field of view, near to Ganymedes, or in 
 a position where he can lean up against it. Sometimes the oak is 
 further specified by the depicting of acorns upon it, and sometimes 
 Ganymedes is actually giving the eagle to drink out of an acorn- 
 cup. We see, then, clearly that Ganymedes is the oak-tree boy ; he 
 represents the spirit of the tree, whom he propitiates through the bird 
 by the food and drink which he has with him, exactly as the Devon- 
 shire apple-boy does. This was the way in which he became cup- 
 bearer to Zeus ; he was cup-bearer to the thunder-tree and to the 
 thunder-bird ; to the oak-tree and to the oak-bird." Thus he is 
 something like Dionysos in being a visible Zeus, a palpable, though 
 diminished, King of the Wood ; and it is as such a little Zeus, that 
 upon one of the earliest Greek vases, we find him crowned by Hera, 
 Zeus looking on, and Hebe, his female counterpart, standing behind 
 
 1 The gem which is here represented will be found in Furtwangler, 
 PI. LXV, 52. 
 
 2 The accompanying plate (Robert, vol. ii., PI. II, Fig. 4) shows the eagle 
 twice over, and the oak-tree also in duplicate ; the acorn-cup should also be 
 noted. 
 
40 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 Hera : the cock, as thunder-bird, is in the picture instead of the eagle, 
 just as he appears on the Felcanos coins of Phaestos. 1 The only 
 direction in which there is a want of parallel, is that Ganymedes does 
 not actually sit in the branches of a tree, as do Europa and Zeus 
 Felcanos. This is not a very important omission in view of the fact 
 that the tree is so often in the representation. We take it, then, that 
 Ganymedes and the eagle are practising an annual charm for fertilisation 
 of the oak-tree, and that what is represented on the coins and gems 
 which we have been describing is a religious ceremony : we have given 
 back Greek art to Greek religion, and restored Ganymedes to respect- 
 ability. 
 
 This is not all that we learn from our apple-cult in its Devonshire 
 and other related forms. It will be remembered that we found out 
 that food and drink were given to the tree, or to the representatives of 
 the tree, from the products of the tree itself. The tree is medicined 
 from the food and drink which its own nature supplies, apples and cider 
 being the food and drink in question. When we come to the case of 
 the oak-tree, we see that the eagle is actually being supplied with drink, 
 but what is the drink in question ? Evidently it is the same drink that 
 is supplied to the Olympians, the nectar of the gods, which answers 
 very closely to the Soma that is offered to the Vedic deities. How 
 can this drink be in any way connected with the oak-tree, or indeed 
 any drink, for we can hardly suppose that a brew was made of acorns. 
 There are only two directions in which I see any possibility of solving 
 the riddle. The drink must be made out of the sacred honey, which 
 leads at once to the identification of nectar with some form of intoxicat- 
 ing mead {cf. fiidv and fiedvco) ; or else it is a drink prepared from 
 the ivy, ivy being considered as a part of the oak-tree, and related 
 to it as Dionysos to Zeus. 
 
 It is not impossible that the two points of view may have been 
 combined, just as in the ivy-ale at Ascension-tide in Lincoln College, 
 Oxford. The nectar can hardly have been fermented ivy-juice, pure 
 
 1 Hackl says of the Munich vase that Hera (?) holds a crown over the 
 head of Ganymedes. If that be correct it is perhaps a crown of oak-leaves, 
 and Ganymedes is the King of the Wood. Mr. A. B. Cook objects that 
 " a black-figured vase of this early date would certainly represent a wreath 
 as a black circle ". He thinks that Hera is holding a plate of apples or more 
 probably pomegranates over Ganymedes* head. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 41 
 
 and simple ; yet it can hardly have been without the presence of ivy : 
 for Hebe who administers it, appears to have worn an ivy-crown at 
 her cult centres, and at Phlios in particular, which is her chief place of 
 worship, there was an annual ceremony of ivy-cutting, which must 
 surely be related to the Cult of Hebe herself. 
 
 Thus the suggestion arises that in the composition of the original 
 Soma-drink, which makes and maintains the immortality of the Aryan 
 gods, ivy had a prominent place. Its combination with honey-mead 
 will explain all the references which have hitherto been brought forward 
 to prove that Soma was a honey-drink. We know from the Vedas 
 that it was, primarily, the juice of a plant. The plant was the ivy. 
 
 From the description in the Vedas, it is easy to infer that Soma 
 was a plant, a mountain plant, with long tendrils ; that it grew on the 
 rocks and apparently also on trees ; that it was crushed between stones, 
 strained through a wool-strainer, was yellow in colour (which may 
 refer either to the juice or to the berries of the plant, and would 
 answer very well to some kinds of ivy), and that it became an intoxi- 
 cant and was as such personified and took its place by Indra in the 
 Vedic pantheon. 
 
 For the supposition that the Soma-drink was composite in character, 
 we may refer to Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, who remarks that 
 Soma was mixed with mead : that the term " madhu ... is especially 
 applied to the Soma-juice " (p. 105) : that " the juice is homed (mad- 
 hu mat). The latter expression seems to have meant ' sweetened with 
 honey,' some passages pointing to the admixture." He sums up 
 the Soma question as follows : " The belief in an intoxicating divine 
 beverage, the home of which was heaven, may be Indo-European. If 
 so, it must have been regarded as a kind of honey-mead, brought down 
 to earth from its guardian demon by an eagle, the Soma-bringing eagle 
 of Indra agreeing with the nectar-bringing eagle of Zeus, and with the 
 eagle which as a metamorphosis of Odhin carried off the mead. This 
 Madhu, or honey-mead, if Indo-European, was replaced in the Indo- 
 Iranian period by Soma ; but may have survived into the Vedic period 
 by amalgamating with Soma " (p. 1 1 4). 
 
 " Amalgamation with Soma " is another way of saying that the juice 
 of the Soma plant was sweetened with honey, in some fermented form. 
 
 The equation between Soma and nectar appears to be established ; 
 the philological interpretations are more obscure. The latest explanation 
 
42 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 of nectar explains it in terms of the immortality which it confers, as 
 a " death-destroyer, from the two roots v€k (as in vims, vtKpos, Lat. 
 neceni), and a stem which underlies the Greek reiyow * to rub/ * to 
 wear out * "V 
 
 It stands, therefore, not for the products out of which it is made 
 (honey, ivy, or both), but for the intoxicating quality which it possesses. 
 For the Devonshire wassailers I suppose that cider would be a just 
 equivalent of Soma. 
 
 Another title of Soma is "amrta," which conveys exactly the 
 sense and very nearly the form of the Greek dfju/Bporvs. Philologically, 
 then, we are entitled to equate Soma with nectar. 
 
 1 See Boisacq, Diet. Etym. de la langue Grecque (Paris, 1913), follow- 
 ing closely on the track of Prellwitz, Etym. Wort. d. Griech. Sprache 
 (Gottingen, 1915), equates the meaning of "nectar" with that of "Am- 
 brosia ". 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Name of the Apple-God. 
 
 We have shown that there was a tendency towards personification 
 in the ritual of the apple-orchard ; it was, indeed, difficult to resist 
 such a tendency when one had to ask questions of a tree as to its future 
 conduct, or when one had to share with a tree its life-blood, and apply 
 that life-blood to the life of the tree itself. We pointed out that in the 
 case of the apple-tree, the personification was in the first place through 
 a bird (male or female) that was a denizen of the free, and, in the next 
 case, through a boy or girl substituted for the bird, or thought of in 
 connection with it. Amongst such tree-boys and tree-girls for repre- 
 sentatives of oak, apple, and laurel we were able to recognise by name 
 
 Europa, or, according to some, 
 
 Britomartis. 
 
 Ganymedes and Hebe, and 
 
 Apollo. 
 
 The first three were oak-boys and oak-girls ; the last appeared as a 
 laurel-boy or bay-boy, with a probability that an oak-boy or apple-boy 
 was behind the form which we discovered. The Cretan evidence was 
 admitted to be incomplete, but it was important as far as it went. It 
 certainly disclosed Apollo as a tree-boy, in a form not unlike the 
 Devonshire apple-boy. Returning now to the north of Europe, we 
 take up the inquiry as to the meaning of the Balder legend. The 
 story of Balder the Beautiful and of his tragic death by an arrow of 
 mistletoe is well known. He was the darling of the northern gods, 
 and of the goddess Frigg in particular. She, Frigg, " took an oath 
 from fire and water, iron and all metals, stones and earth, and from 
 trees, sicknesses, and from poisons, and from all four-footed beasts, 
 birds, and creeping things, that they would not hurt Balder. When 
 this was done, Balder was deemed invulnerable : so the gods amused 
 
 43 
 
44 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 themselves by setting him in their midst, while some shot at him, others 
 hewed at him, and others threw stones at him." l 
 
 But Frigg had forgotten to include the mistletoe among the pos- 
 sible enemies of Balder : so had not the malicious Loki, who fashioned 
 an arrow out of mistletoe, and showed the blind god Holdr how to 
 aim it at Balder. So Balder died by the mistletoe, and there was 
 much wailing of gods and goddesses on his account. 
 
 Upon, the whole story Frazer remarks that "whatever maybe 
 thought of an historical kernel underlying a mythical husk in the legend 
 of Balder, the details of the story suggest that it belongs to a class of 
 myths which have been dramatised in ritual, or to put it otherwise, 
 which have been performed as magical ceremonies for the sake of pro- 
 ducing those natural effects which they describe in figurative language ". 2 
 
 Frazer thinks that Balder is the personification of a mistletoe-bear- 
 ing oak, and that he was burned at midsummer, perhaps in the form 
 of an actual sacrifice. 
 
 We suggest that the mistletoe-bearing oak be changed to a mistletoe- 
 bearing apple-tree, and that midwinter be substituted for midsummer as 
 the time of the sacrifice of the tree-boy. The curse of Frigg will then 
 be a description of the spells which are said over the apple-tree in some 
 such form as the following : — 
 
 No fire touch thee : 
 No water drown thee : 
 No iron come near thee : 
 No blight affect thee : 
 No beast beset thee : 
 Good apple-tree. 
 
 The gods will then represent the rustics attacking the tree with sticks 
 and stones which are not meant to hurt it, and attacking the apple-bird 
 or apple-boy with sticks and stones that are meant to hurt, so that the 
 life of the personified tree may be given for the annual reinforcement 
 of the tree itself. 
 
 Another reason why we say that Balder is the Northern Apollo 
 and the personified apple-tree is that his name invited the supposition. 
 We have shown (in the Rylands Library Lecture on " Apollo ") that the 
 word " apple," in its primitive form "abal," had the accent on the 
 
 1 Frazer, Balder the Beautiful \ i., 101. 
 
 2 Ibid., I, 105. 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 45 
 
 second syllable ; when suffixes were attached to the word, the forward 
 accent released the initial vowel, and left the syllable " bal ". 
 
 Now the name for " apple-tree " is found in early charters as a 
 place-name in the form " Appledore," " Apuldre," closely related to 
 which are the forms Apf alter > Affalte>\ Affolter, in the Middle 
 High Dutch. Upon these names I remarked as follows in the Rylands 
 Lecture on the " Cult of Artemis ": — l 
 
 11 It has occurred to me that perhaps the * apel-dur,' * apel-dre/ 
 and ' appeldore,* which we have been considering may be the origin of 
 Balder (and of Pal tar of Grimm's hypothesis), in view of the occurrence 
 of the corresponding forms mentioned above in the Middle High Dutch. 
 If, for instance, the original accent in apple (abal) is, as stated above, 
 on the second syllable, then it would be easy for a primitive apdl-dur 
 to lose its initial vowel, and in that case we should not be very far from 
 the form B 'alder ; which would mean the apple-tree originally and 
 nothing more." 
 
 According to these suggestions Balder is the apple-boy, because 
 Balder is apple-tree. It is interesting to see whether the beautiful 
 Northern god has left his mark on the place-names or personal names 
 in this country. For instance, there is a personal name Baldrewood 
 (an English novelist) and another Balderston, but these are clearly 
 place-names used to denote persons. Balderwood, for instance, occurs 
 in the New Forest. On the other hand, Balderson appears to be a 
 real personal name, corresponding to the Greek Apollonides. In York- 
 shire we have Baldersby as a place-name, certainly Scandinavian, and 
 in Lancashire, Balderstone. The Greek parallel would be Apollonia. 
 In Cheshire and Notts we have Balderton. There is another near 
 Wrexham in North Wales. I do not know any Balders or Bolders 
 in the Midlands. 
 
 It is possible that the arrow-struck apple-tree spirit has been per- 
 petuated in the Christian St. Sebastian, whose festival is a fortnight 
 later than Twelfth Day (Epiphany), and whose death is due, (i) to a 
 shower of arrows, (ii) to beating with clubs. 
 
 But this requires closer examination. Was not the tomb of 
 Sebastian found in the Catacomb of St. Calixtus ? 
 
 It will be asked whether, if we are correct in interpreting Balder 
 as the apple-tree, and the oath taken by Frigg as the spells for the good 
 
 1 P. 64. 
 
46 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 luck of the apple-tree, and the beating of Balder with sticks and stones 
 as a part of the rustic ritual, we ought to omit the pathetic part of the 
 Balder story, where his wife Nanna insists on accompanying him to 
 the lower world. According to the Edda, when Balder's body was 
 placed upon the funeral pile upon his ship, his wife Nanna saw it, died 
 of grief, and was laid on the same funeral pile as her husband. 
 
 It is not an unnatural question as to whether Nanna is merely a 
 lay-figure in the mythology, or whether she also has to be interpreted. 
 The only directions in which an interpretation seems possible are (1) 
 that the sacrifice of Balder the tree-boy has been accompanied not only 
 by a mystical marriage with the view of fertility, but by a sacrifice of 
 the tree-girl as well as the tree-boy ; (2) that a pair of trees might 
 have been associated together, and thought of as married, in which 
 case the rites for fertilising the first would naturally apply to the second* 
 The two points of view suggested are not necessarily exclusive. 
 
 The marriage of trees is still practised in India : let us see what is 
 said on this curious custom. 
 
 " The aswatta {ox pip at) tree is consecrated to Vishnu, or rather 
 it is Vishnu himself under the form of a tree. . . . Sometimes it 
 is solemnly married. Generally a vepu or margosa tree is selected for 
 its spouse, and occasionally a plantain or banana tree. Almost the 
 same formalities are observed for this curious marriage as in the case of 
 a marriage between Brahmins. Here and there on the high roads and 
 elsewhere the aswatta and vepu trees may be seen planted side by 
 side on little mounds. This union is not an accidental one, but the 
 result of an actual marriage ceremony. Not thirty yards from the 
 modest hut where these pages were written were two of these trees, 
 under whose shade I have often reclined. Their trunks were so closely 
 entwined that they had become incorporated one with another. The 
 inhabitants of the village could remember to have seen them planted 
 together some fifty years before, and said that they had been present 
 at the wedding festivities, which lasted several days, and were cele- 
 brated at the expense of a wealthy person of the neighbourhood at a 
 cost of more than 1 500 rupees." ? 
 
 There is, then, nothing impossible in the idea of an actual tree- 
 marriage. The explanation of this quaint belief may lie in various 
 
 1 Dubois and Beauchamp, Hindu Manners, Customs, and Ceremonies 
 (3rd ed., p. 653). 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 47 
 
 directions ; it would be quite natural in the case of a pair of trees of 
 the same species, one of which was male and the other female (as the 
 wild fig-tree and the fruit-bearing fig-tree) : but how are we to explain 
 the union where the trees are diverse ? The suggestion arises that it 
 may be due to the use of a pair of fire-sticks, male and female, which 
 might be made from the same tree, or, as was often the case, from two 
 different trees, a hard-wood male tree and a relatively softer female 
 tree. In some such way, then, the idea of the tree-marriage might 
 have been arrived at. The Hindu practice certainly assists the im- 
 agination in finding a place for Nanna the Faithful by the side of 
 Balder the Beautiful. It also helps us, by its identification of the 
 aswatta tree with Vishnu, to understand better the personifications of 
 the tree-spirit which we have come across in Western folk-lore and 
 mythology. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Since writing the preceding essay I have received the following in- 
 teresting communication from a South Devonian who has actually 
 " wassailed " the apple-trees — Mr. P. G. Bond, of Plymouth (a mem- 
 ber of the Plymouth Institution)^ — who also reminds me of the pre- 
 valence in his youthful days of the custom of cutting the " neck" of the 
 harvest ; of this corn-ritual there is much more surviving evidence than 
 for the " wassailing" of the apples. His reminiscence may very well 
 be added to the general folk-lore tradition. 
 
 WASSAILING THE APPLE-TREE. 
 
 BY P. G. BOND, M.R.C.V.S., PLYMOUTH. 
 
 What was no doubt the last flickering remains of this local custom 
 confined to the cider district of the South Hams, in the County of 
 Devon, came under my notice in or about the year 1 860, fifty-eight 
 years ago. 
 
 I may be said to have taken part in it, although I did not know 
 anything about the custom, its origin, its significance, or its mode of 
 procedure. At the time I was eight years old. The scene was 
 either at an old farm called Henacres Farm, an off- farm of Rack Park 
 Farm in the occupation of my aunt, near Washbrook Mill in the parish 
 of Dodbrooke, or at the mill. I had as schoolfellow a son of the 
 miller, Stephen Cole. 
 
 I very frequently spent the Saturday at the mill with him and his 
 family, returning home about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. 
 
 The mill apple orchard adjoined the mill ; it was entered by a 
 gate from the main road, and also by a gate from the mill yard. The 
 best apple-tree stood about 1 2 to 15 feet in from the roadway gate. 
 Another apple orchard was in connection with Henacres Farm, and 
 the best and most prolific tree on it was one bearing the apple called 
 
 the "Royal Red Streak". 
 
 4 8 
 
ORIGIN AND MEANING OF APPLE CULTS 49 
 
 On this occasion it was Christmas Eve not Twelfth Eve, of that 
 I am not in doubt. On Christmas Eve there would be usually a 
 good many callers, customers of the miller, and friends of the house ; 
 they called to give the compliments of the season and receive them. 
 The drink offered was warmed cider in which were placed baked 
 apples. The cake offered was a good currant cake, there was no 
 deficiency of fruit. The health of the household was drunk, and the 
 health of the apple-trees. 
 
 Words said to have been used : — 
 
 M Here's a health to the good apple-tree, may we all have cap 
 fulls, pocket fulls, sack fulls," or words to that effect. 
 
 1 do not remember them myself ; the cider cup was passed around 
 to all and sundry with the cake. I do not remember any gun being 
 fired off at the tree ; this was a Somersetshire custom, not usually 
 done in Devon. The wassailing died out and did not maintain its 
 hold as did the "crying of the neck". 
 
 In a note I made some years ago, I find as follows : — 
 
 " I heard the Knack cried in 1865 at Dudbrooke Hills on 
 Cranch's ground, part of Aunt Bond's farm, it was cried by a man 
 called William Hodge who repeated the following words : — 
 
 M * We've ploughed and we've sowed, we've reaped and we've 
 mowed. Neck.' ' This was said three times, and those looking on 
 walked slowly round a sheaf of corn. The knack was called over 
 the last sheaf of wheat cut on the farm for that harvest. 
 
 William Hodge was foreman and horsekeeper at Rack Park 
 Farm, the Home Farm, and at Dodbrooke Henacres Farm. 
 
 Cranch's ground where the "neck" was cried was an off -part 
 of the farm. Hodge was the arch priest of the folk-lore. 
 
 In looking back so long to pick up the memory of the past, I 
 begin to think I heard more of this old custom and wassailing than 
 I saw of it. I have not any note in connection with it, so I am uncer- 
 tain. I have heard of it, though, from many a source. My father 
 was born in 1806, my grandfather in 1774, my great-grandfather in 
 1 754, my great-great-grandfather in 1 730, my great-great-great-grand- 
 father in 1 697, all on farms ; all were farmers, and the account of the 
 old custom has been passed on. I have not heard of it during the past 
 fifty-five years. 
 
 I regret very much the passing away of the old folk-lore and 
 
50 THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY 
 
 legends of the past. On a winter's evening to sit around the old 
 hearth-fire eating apples and drinking warm cider in the fitful light of 
 the burning wood, and where the conversation became general, dul- 
 ness did not take hold of the company, and tradition was passed on 
 as in the old Icelandic Sagas. 
 
 How can we resuscitate English country life with all its old 
 charms fast disappearing ? 
 
 Mr. Bond also draws my attention to the following passage in 
 Hawkins* History of Kingsbridge, 1819, and shows that it is prob- 
 ably from Hawkins that Lysons obtained the tradition which we have 
 quoted. 
 
 Hawkins, loc. cit, y pp. 71, 72 : — 
 
 "A custom of great antiquity prevails in these districts for the 
 ciderist, on Twelfth Eve, attended by his workmen with a large can 
 or pitcher of cider, guns charged with powder, etc., etc., to repair to 
 the orchard, and there at the foot of one of the best bearing apple- 
 trees drink the following toast three times repeated, discharging the 
 firearms in conclusion : — 
 
 Here's to thee, 
 
 Old apple-tree, 
 Whence thou mayst bud, 
 And whence thou mayst blow, 
 And whence thou mayst bear 
 
 Apples enow, 
 
 Hats full ! 
 
 Caps full ! 
 Bushel bushel sacks full ! 
 And my pockets full, too ! 
 
 Huzza! 
 
 " The pitcher being emptied, they return to the house, the doors 
 of which they are certain to find bolted by the females, who, be the 
 weather what it may, are inexorable to all entreaties to open them till 
 some one has divined what is on the spit which is generally a rarity not 
 thought of, and, if edible, is the reward of him who first names it. 
 The party are then admitted, and the lucky wight who guessed at the 
 roast is recompensed with it." 
 
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