Apples, syrup of

Apples, syrup of: what lore surrounds it?

Of the apple Folkard writes that “not only is the Apple mystical above all the fruits of the earth, but it is the supreme fruit.” The Scandinavian Iduna “religiously guarded in a box the Apples which the gods, when they felt old age approaching, had only to taste the juice of to become young again”; the Hesperides' apples were watched by a dragon; Atalanta lost her race stooping for three; and the apple inscribed Detur pulchriori “caused the ruin of Troy.” The Druids “were wont to cut their divining-rods from the Apple-tree,” Glastonbury was the “Apple Orchard,” and in Herefordshire, Devonshire and Cornwall the farmers still salute the trees on Christmas Eve, sprinkling them with cider and chanting, “Here's to thee, old Apple-tree, Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou may'st blow; And whence thou may'st bear Apples enow.”

Grieve adds the cider country's health lore: “It is stated on medical authority that in countries where unsweetened cider is used as a common beverage, stone or calculus is unknown,” and among doctors in Normandy “not a single case of stone had been met with during forty years”; the old rhyme runs, “To eat an apple going to bed Will make the doctor beg his bread.” Rotten apples as a poultice “is an old Lincolnshire remedy for sore eyes,” and the superstition of Adam's apple “relates that a piece of the forbidden apple stuck in Adam's throat.”