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.
