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The Apple of His Eye

© Audrey Stallsmith

Comfort me with apples. . .
Song of Solomon 2:5

The aroma of apple pie is, they say, one of the most comforting odors known to man. It must be one of the most enticing too since, in the Language of Flowers, the apple stands for "temptation." That probably harks back to the story of Adam, Eve, and a wily serpent in the garden of Eden. After all, the Latin word for apple, "malus," means "evil."

Later writers like Josephus also speak of apples of Sodom. Located on the shores of the Dead Sea where Sodom and Gomorrah once stood, they supposedly produced pomes that looked lovely but were, as Byron wrote, "all ashes to the taste." Those "apples", however, have been identified as a member of the nightshade family--solanum sodomeum.

Actually, the Genesis account never identifies Eden's forbidden fruit. And, although "apples" are mentioned elsewhere in scripture, Biblical scholars have concluded that the fruit indicated is, in fact, the apricot.

The malus did stir up a lot of trouble in mythology, though. According to one tale, at a wedding attended by all the gods and goddesses, a chap named Discord tossed a golden apple onto the table for "the most beautiful." You can see how this sly trouble-maker got his name!

Also called "pippin," the apple is an ancient fruit, with 27 varieties being cultivated in ancient Rome. Shakespeare's Shallow offers Falstaff "a last year's pippin of my own graffing, with a dish of caraways. . ." Roasted apples were traditionally served with a saucer of caraway seeds.

Those apples, along with bits of toast, also floated in the wassail bowl. Wassail is hot spiced ale, wine, or cider. It was sometimes called Lamb's Wool, not in reference to sheep but to the Irish "la mas nbhal," pronounced "lammas-ool." The term refers to "the feast of apple-gathering" which occurred on All Hallow's Eve. Perhaps that is why bobbing for apples is still a popular Halloween game. And those bits of browned bread floating in the wassail bowl might explain how the word "toast" came to be a synonym for drinking to a friend's health and prosperity.

British farmers once drank to their orchard trees as well as their friends on Christmas Eve. They placed hot cakes in the branches, toasted the trees three times, then flung cider over them. Finally, the women and children shouted while the men fired off guns. All of this is reminiscent of earlier heathen sacrifices made to Pomona, an Italian goddess of fruit.

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