It is remarkable how closely the history of the Apple-tree is connected
with that of man. The geologist tells us that the order of the
_Rosaceae_, which includes the Apple, also the true Grasses, and the
_Labiatae_ or Mints, were introduced only a short time previous to the
appearance of man on the globe.
It appears that apples made a part of the food of that unknown
primitive people whose traces have lately been found at the bottom of
the Swiss lakes, supposed to be older than the foundation of Rome, so
old that they had no metallic implements. An entire black and
shrivelled Crab-Apple has been recovered from their stores.
Tacitus says of the ancient Germans, that they satisfied their hunger
with wild apples (_agrestia poma_) among other things.
Niebuhr observes that “the words for a house, a field, a plough,
ploughing, wine, oil, milk, sheep, apples, and others relating to
agriculture and the gentler way of life, agree in Latin and Greek,
while the Latin words for all objects pertaining to war or the chase
are utterly alien from the Greek.” Thus the apple-tree may be
considered a symbol of peace no less than the olive.
The apple was early so important, and generally distributed, that its
name traced to its root in many languages signifies fruit in general.
Μῆλον, in Greek, means an apple, also the fruit of other trees, also a
sheep and any cattle, and finally riches in general.
The apple-tree has been celebrated by the Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, and
Scandinavians. Some have thought that the first human pair were tempted
by its fruit. Goddesses are fabled to have contended for it, dragons
were set to watch it, and heroes were employed to pluck it.
The tree is mentioned in at least three places in the Old Testament,
and its fruit in two or three more. Solomon sings,—“As the apple-tree
among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons.” And
again,—“Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples.” The noblest part
of man’s noblest feature is named from this fruit, “the apple of the
eye.”
The apple-tree is also mentioned by Homer and Herodotus. Ulysses saw in
the glorious garden of Alcinous “pears and pomegranates, and
apple-trees bearing beautiful fruit” (καὶ μηλέαι ἀγλαόκαρποι). And
according to Homer, apples were among the fruits which Tantalus could
not pluck, the wind ever blowing their boughs away from him.
Theophrastus knew and described the apple-tree as a botanist.
According to the Prose Edda, “Iduna keeps in a box the apples which the
gods, when they feel old age approaching, have only to taste of to
become young again. It is in this manner that they will be kept in
renovated youth until Ragnarök” (or the destruction of the gods).
I learn from Loudon that “the ancient Welsh bards were rewarded for
excelling in song by the token of the apple-spray;” and “in the
Highlands of Scotland the apple-tree is the badge of the-clan Lamont.”
The apple-tree (_Pyrus malus_) belongs chiefly to the northern
temperate zone. Loudon says, that “it grows spontaneously in every part
of Europe except the frigid zone, and throughout Western Asia, China,
and Japan.” We have also two or three varieties of the apple indigenous
in North America. The cultivated apple-tree was first introduced into
this country by the earliest settlers, and is thought to do as well or
better here than anywhere else. Probably some of the varieties which
are now cultivated were first introduced into Britain by the Romans.
Pliny, adopting the distinction of Theophrastus, says,—“Of trees there
are some which are altogether wild (_sylvestres_), some more civilized
(_urbaniores_).” Theophrastus includes the apple among the last; and,
indeed, it is in this sense the most civilized of all trees. It is as
harmless as a dove, as beautiful as a rose, and as valuable as flocks
and herds. It has been longer cultivated than any other, and so is more
humanized; and who knows but, like the dog, it will at length be no
longer traceable to its wild original? It migrates with man, like the
dog and horse and cow: first, perchance, from Greece to Italy, thence
to England, thence to America; and our Western emigrant is still
marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the apple in
his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his load. At least
a million apple-trees are thus set farther westward this year than any
cultivated ones grew last year. Consider how the Blossom-Week, like the
Sabbath, is thus annually spreading over the prairies; for when man
migrates, he carries with him not only his birds, quadrupeds, insects,
vegetables, and his very sward, but his orchard also.
The leaves and tender twigs are an agreeable food to many domestic
animals, as the cow, horse, sheep, and goat; and the fruit is sought
after by the first, as well as by the hog. Thus there appears to have
existed a natural alliance between these animals and this tree from the
first. “The fruit of the Crab in the forests of France” is said to be
“a great resource for the wild-boar.”
Not only the Indian, but many indigenous insects, birds, and
quadrupeds, welcomed the apple-tree to these shores. The
tent-caterpillar saddled her eggs on the very first twig that was
formed, and it has since shared her affections with the wild cherry;
and the canker-worm also in a measure abandoned the elm to feed on it.
As it grew apace, the bluebird, robin, cherry-bird, king-bird, and many
more, came with haste and built their nests and warbled in its boughs,
and so became orchard-birds, and multiplied more than ever. It was an
era in the history of their race. The downy woodpecker found such a
savory morsel under its bark, that he perforated it in a ring quite
round the tree, before he left it,—a thing which he had never done
before, to my knowledge. It did not take the partridge long to find out
how sweet its buds were, and every winter eve she flew, and still
flies, from the wood, to pluck them, much to the farmer’s sorrow. The
rabbit, too, was not slow to learn the taste of its twigs and bark; and
when the fruit was ripe, the squirrel half-rolled, half-carried it to
his hole; and even the musquash crept up the bank from the brook at
evening, and greedily devoured it, until he had worn a path in the
grass there; and when it was frozen and thawed, the crow and the jay
were glad to taste it occasionally. The owl crept into the first
apple-tree that became hollow, and fairly hooted with delight, finding
it just the place for him; so, settling down into it, he has remained
there ever since.
My theme being the Wild Apple, I will merely glance at some of the
seasons in the annual growth of the cultivated apple, and pass on to my
special province.
The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree’s,
so copious and so delicious to both sight and scent. The walker is
frequently tempted to turn and linger near some more than usually
handsome one, whose blossoms are two thirds expanded. How superior it
is in these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are neither colored
nor fragrant!
By the middle of July, green apples are so large as to remind us of
coddling, and of the autumn. The sward is commonly strewed with little
ones which fall still-born, as it were,—Nature thus thinning them for
us. The Roman writer Palladius said,—“If apples are inclined to fall
before their time, a stone placed in a split root will retain them.”
Some such notion, still surviving, may account for some of the stones
which we see placed to be overgrown in the forks of trees. They have a
saying in Suffolk, England,—
“At Michaelmas time, or a little before,
Half an apple goes to the core.”
Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think
that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth
more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume which they sell
in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten,
along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the
road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona,—carrying
me forward to those days when they will be collected in golden and
ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the cider-mills.
A week or two later, as you are going by orchards or gardens,
especially in the evenings, you pass through a little region possessed
by the fragrance of ripe apples, and thus enjoy them without price, and
without robbing anybody.
There is thus about all natural products a certain volatile and
ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot
be vulgarized, or bought and sold. No mortal has ever enjoyed the
perfect flavor of any fruit, and only the godlike among men begin to
taste its ambrosial qualities. For nectar and ambrosia are only those
fine flavors of every earthly fruit which our coarse palates fail to
perceive,—just as we occupy the heaven of the gods without knowing it.
When I see a particularly mean man carrying a load of fair and fragrant
early apples to market, I seem to see a contest going on between him
and his horse, on the one side, and the apples on the other, and, to my
mind, the apples always gain it. Pliny says that apples are the
heaviest of all things, and that the oxen begin to sweat at the mere
sight of a load of them. Our driver begins to lose his load the moment
he tries to transport them to where they do not belong, that is, to any
but the most beautiful. Though he gets out from time to time, and feels
of them, and thinks they are all there, I see the stream of their
evanescent and celestial qualities going to heaven from his cart, while
the pulp and skin and core only are going to market. They are not
apples, but pomace. Are not these still Iduna’s apples, the taste of
which keeps the gods forever young? and think you that they will let
Loki or Thjassi carry them off to Jötunheim, while they grow wrinkled
and gray? No, for Ragnarök, or the destruction of the gods, is not yet.
There is another thinning of the fruit, commonly near the end of August
or in September, when the ground is strewn with windfalls; and this
happens especially when high winds occur after rain. In some orchards
you may see fully three quarters of the whole crop on the ground, lying
in a circular form beneath the trees, yet hard and green,—or, if it is
a hill-side, rolled far down the hill. However, it is an ill wind that
blows nobody any good. All the country over, people are busy picking up
the windfalls, and this will make them cheap for early apple-pies.
In October, the leaves falling, the apples are more distinct on the
trees. I saw one year in a neighboring town some trees fuller of fruit
than I remember to have ever seen before, small yellow apples hanging
over the road. The branches were gracefully drooping with their weight,
like a barberry-bush, so that the whole tree acquired a new character.
Even the topmost branches, instead of standing erect, spread and
drooped in all directions; and there were so many poles supporting the
lower ones, that they looked like pictures of banian-trees. As an old
English manuscript says, “The mo appelen the tree bereth, the more sche
boweth to the folk.”
Surely the apple is the noblest of fruits. Let the most beautiful or
the swiftest have it. That should be the “going” price of apples.
Between the fifth and twentieth of October I see the barrels lie under
the trees. And perhaps I talk with one who is selecting some choice
barrels to fulfil an order. He turns a specked one over many times
before he leaves it out. If I were to tell what is passing in my mind,
I should say that every one was specked which he had handled; for he
rubs off all the bloom, and those fugacious ethereal qualities leave
it. Cool eveings prompt the farmers to make haste, and at length I see
only the ladders here and there left leaning against the trees.
It would be well, if we accepted these gifts with more joy and
gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of
compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at
least. I find them described chiefly in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities.”
It appears that “on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in
Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a toast in it, and carrying
it in state to the orchard, they salute the apple-trees with much
ceremony, in order to make them bear well the next season.” This
salutation consists in “throwing some of the cider about the roots of
the tree, placing bits of the toast on the branches,” and then,
“encircling one of the best bearing trees in the orchard, they drink
the following toast three several times:—
‘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! Hurra!’”
Also what was called “apple-howling” used to be practised in various
counties of England on New-Year’s eve. A troop of boys visited the
different orchards, and, encircling the apple-trees, repeated the
following words:—
“Stand fast, root! bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bow, apples enow!”
“They then shout in chorus, one of the boys accompanying them on a
cow’s horn. During this ceremony they rap the trees with their sticks.”
This is called “wassailing” the trees, and is thought by some to be “a
relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona.”