The Silver Apples of the Moon, the Golden Apples of the Sun

 

This is our apple tree, so laden with fruit this year that a massive branch actually cracked in the wind one night and broke off under the weight, as though taking Keats’ lines from Ode to Autumn far too literally –

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core… 

The lawn is still almost ankle deep in windfalls.

What is it about apples? Why are they so evocative? Why was the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – not actually named in the Bible – assumed to be an apple? Why did the Firebird, in Russian folklore, steal golden apples from the garden of the Czar? Why did golden apples of immortality grow in the Garden of the Hesperides, why was the Norse goddess Idun the keeper of golden apples which preserved the youth of the gods? Why was the Apple of Discord – with its inscription To the Fairest – an apple, and why were three golden apples so irresistible to Atalanta that she paused to pick them up and lost her race? (Mind you, that dress she's wearing wouldn't help.) 

 

As the fruit of immortality, or perhaps equally of death, the apple appears as a symbol in Celtic mythology too. Heralds from the Land of Youth might bear a silver apple branch bearing silver blossoms and golden fruit, whose tinkling music lulled the hearers to sleep – perhaps to everlasting sleep. Arthur, after his final battle, went to the island of Avalon, island of apples, to be healed of his mortal wound. Then of course there’s the apple given by the wicked Queen to Snow-White, one bite of which sends the little princess into a death-like sleep.    

 

 

Apples are tokens of love and promises of eternity. In Yeats' ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’, the lovelorn Aengus seeks forever the beautiful girl from the hazel wood.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands

I find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

But such an eternity is probably also the land beyond death. 

Where do apples even come from, why are they so ubiquitous? Why, even today, are so many varieties available even in supermarkets, usually the home of homogeneity? I went into our local Sainsburys one day and counted eleven different named varieties of apple all on sale at once: Empire, Royal Gala, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Russets, Granny Smiths, Pink Ladies, Jazz, Braeburns and Bramleys. By contrast, there were just four named varieties of pears – and everything else was generic: bananas, strawberries, oranges etc. 

 

 

Apples are related to roses, I’m delighted to tell you.  According to a rather lovely book called ‘Apples: the story of the fruit of temptation’ by Frank Browning (Penguin 1998):

‘In the beginning there were roses. Small flowers of five white petals opened on low, thorny stems, scattered across the earth in the pastures of the dinosaurs, about eighty million years ago. …These bitter-fruited bushes, among the first flowering plants on earth, emerged as the vast Rosaceae family and from them came most of the fruits human beings eat today: apples, pears, plums, quinces, even peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

‘The apple [paleobotanists believe]… was the unlikely child of an extra-conjugal affair between a primitive plum from the rose family and a wayward flower with white and yellow blossoms of the Spirea family, called meadowsweet.’ 

Isn’t that wonderful? Apples originated in the mountains of Central Asia, where they still grow in many different varieties, and from there they were carried along the Silk Road to Europe. The Pharoahs grew them, the Greeks and the Romans grew them. And they keep. You can store apples overwinter, eat them months after you’ve picked them: fresh fruit in hard cold weather when there’s nothing growing outside. So perhaps you would think of them as life-giving, immortal fruit. They smell fragrant. They feel good too: hard-fleshed, smooth, a cool weight in the hand.  

The medieval lyric 'Adam lay y-bounden' provocatively celebrates the Fall of Man when Adam ate the forbidden fruit:

And all was for an appil

An appil that he toke

As clerkes finden

Written in her boke.

It ends on the mischievously subversive thought that if Adam had not eaten the apple, Our Lady would never have become the Heavenly Queen:

Blessed be the time

That appil take was!

Therefore we maun singen:

Deo gratias.

Here is a poem by John Drinkwater (surely the most poetically-named poet ever!) which captures some of those mystical coincidences of apples, eternity, sleep, moonlight, magic and death. 

MOONLIT APPLES

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,

And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those

Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes

A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then

There is no sound at the top of the house of men

Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again

Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams

On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams

Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams

And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.

And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep

Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep

On moon-washed apples of wonder.

Picture credits:

Apple tree: Author's garden

Atalanta racing Hippomenes: Willen van Herp, c1650

Silver Apples: Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh

Adam and Eve: Lucas Cranach, 1537

Apple Tree: Arthur Rackham

The Silver Apples of the Moon, the Golden Apples of the Sun

Here is Hercules, in brown, depicted on an Athenian vase. Eros, standing on his shoulder, offers him one of the golden apples of immortality from the Garden of the Hesperides.  The female figures are the Hesperides themselves – the Daughters of Evening, or the Western Maidens  – designations all apparently tied to their imagined location in the distant west. (Hesperis is the personification of the evening: Hesperus is Venus as evening star.)

But what is it about apples?  Why are they so evocative? Why was the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – not named in the Bible – assumed to be an apple?  Not only did golden apples of immortality grow in the Garden of the Hesperides, but the goddess Idun was the keeper of golden apples which preserved the youth of the Norse gods. Why was the Apple of Discord – with its inscription To the Fairest – an apple at all, and why were three golden apples so irresistible to Atalanta that she paused to pick them up and lost her race?

The apple as the fruit of immortality, or perhaps equally of death, appears as a symbol in Celtic mythology too. Heralds from the Land of Youth would bear a silver apple branch with silver blossom and golden fruit, whose tinkling music lulled the hearers to sleep – perhaps to everlasting sleep…  And Arthur, after his final battle, went to the island of Avalon, the island of apples, to be healed of his mortal wound.  And of course there’s the apple Snow-White’s stepmother gave her, of which one poisoned bite sent her into a death-like sleep.   

Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love... Apples are tokens of love and promises of eternity. In Yeats' ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ the lovelorn Aengus seeks forever for the beautiful girl from the hazel wood.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

But such an eternity is probably also the land beyond death. 

Where do apples even come from, why are they so ubiquitous? Why are there, even today, so many varieties available even in supermarkets, usually the home of homogeneity? I went into our local Sainsburys the other day and counted eleven different named varieties of apple all on sale at once:  Empire, Royal Gala, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Russets, Granny Smiths, Pink Ladies, Jazz, Braeburns and Bramleys.  (In comparison, there were four named varieties of pears, and everything else was generic – bananas, strawberries, oranges, etc.)

But if you look here, you'll find names and pictures of many more, older varieties with names like poems. Adam's Pearmain, Foxwhelps. D'Arcy Spice, Marriage-Maker, St Ailred, Sops-in-Wine, and Ribston's Pippin, of which Hilaire Belloc wrote:

I said to Heart: "How goes it?"
Heart replied, 
"Right as a Ribston Pippin!"
But it lied.

Apples are related to roses, I’m delighted to tell you. According to a rather lovely book called ‘Apples: The Story of the Fruit of Temptation’, by Frank Browning (Penguin 1998):

‘In the beginning there were roses. Small flowers of five white petals opened on low, thorny stems, scattered across the earth in the pastures of the dinosaurs, about eighty million years ago. …These bitter-fruited bushes, among the first flowering plants on earth, emerged as the vast Rosaceae family and from them came most of the fruits human beings eat today: apples, pears, plums, quinces, even peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

‘The apple [paleobotanists believe]… was the unlikely child of an extra-conjugal affair between a primitive plum from the rose family and a wayward flower with white and yellow blossoms of the Spirea family, called meadowsweet.’ 

Isn’t that wonderful? Apples as we know them today developed in Europe and Asia. The Pharoahs grew them. The Greeks and Romans grew them. And they keep. You can store apples overwinter, eat them months after you’ve picked them: fresh fruit in hard cold weather when there’s nothing growing outside. So perhaps you would think of them as life-giving, immortal fruit. They smell fragrant. They feel good too: hard-fleshed, smooth, a cool weight in the hand.

The medieval lyric Adam lay y-bounden provocatively celebrates the Fall of Man. when Adam ate the forbidden fruit...

And all was for an appil
An appil that he toke
As clerkes finden
Written in her boke.

…by ending with the mischievously happy thought that if Adam had not eaten the apple, Our Lady would never have become the Heavenly Queen:

Blessed be the time
That appil take was!
Therefore we maun singen:
Deo gratias.


Here is a poem by John Drinkwater, surely the most poetically-named poet ever - which consciously or unconsciously captures some of those mystical coincidences of apples, eternity, sleep, moonlight, magic and death. 

MOONLIT APPLES

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green.  There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night.

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams
Out of the moon, those moonlit apples of dreams
And quiet is the steep stair under.

In the corridors under there is nothing but sleep.
And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep
Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep
On moon-washed apples of wonder.


Picture credits: 
Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides:  Red-Figured hydra made in Athens circa 370-360 BCE.
The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens:  Arthur Rackham
Adam and Eve:  Lucas Cranach

Now is the month of Maying...

We drove up to Yorkshire last weekend, partly to take my daughter back to university, partly to visit old friends in the Dales.  My mother came along with us, and was exclaiming all the way up the M1 about the masses of hawthorn blossoming everywhere.  I love hawthorn – its curds-and-cream, compact, sweet-scented flowers are like ornate jewellery when you get up close.  The blackthorn which comes out earlier in the year is whiter, more delicate and elfin, more poetic.  But hawthorn is as sturdy and lavish and sure of itself as a Tudor rose. 

When I was writing ‘Dark Angels’ (‘The Shadow Hunt’, if you are in the US), which is set in the 12th century, I wanted to get in some of that feeling for spring, that explosion of joyful delight in the beginning of the warm months and the escape from the dearth and pain of winter, which is so obvious in medieval lyrics like ‘Lenten is come with love to town’, or  ‘Bitwene Merch and Averil/when spray beginneth to spring’, or simply ‘Sumer is i-cumen in’.  If you know you might easily not survive winter, the phrase glad to be alive means so much more…

Since one of the main characters in the book, Hugo, is a troubadour knight (with a tragic past) I tried my hand at some faux-medieval verse for him.  First of all, though, I looked at some genuine troubadour songs (written, naturally, in early French).  Here is one – the poet is anonymous, which is by no means always the case – with my own somewhat approximate translation beneath each verse: 

Voulez vous que je vous chante
Un son d’amours avenant?
Vilain nel fist mie,
Ainz le fist un chevalier
Sous l’ombre d’un olivier
Entre les bras s’amie.

Would you like me to sing you
A fine song of love?
By no peasant was it made:
But a gentle knight who lay
With his true love in his arms
In an olive tree’s shade.

Chemisete avoit de lin
Et blanc peliçon hermin
Et bliaut de soie
Chauces ot de jaglolai
Et solers de flours de mai
Estroitement chauçade

Her chemise was of linen
And her white pelisse of ermine
Of silk was her dress.
Her stockings were of iris leaves
And her slippers of mayflowers
Her feet to caress.

Ceinturete avoit de feuille
Que verdist quant li tens meuille,
D’or est boutonade
L’aumosniere estoit d’amour
Li pendant furent de flours
Par amours fu donade.

Her belt was of leaves
Which grow green when it rains,
Her buttons of gold so fine.
Her purse was a gift of love,
And it hung from flowery chains
As it were a lovers’ shrine.

Et chevauchoit une mule
D’argent ert la ferruere
La sele ert dorade;
Sus la croupe par derriers
Avoit plante trois rosiers
Pour faire li ombrage.

And she rode on a mule
The saddle was of gold,
All silver were its shoes:
Behind her on the crupper
To provide her with shade
Three rose bushes grew.

Si s’en va aval la pree
Chevaliers l’ont encontree
Beau l’on saluade:
“Belle, dont estes vous nee?”
“De France sui la louee,
De plus haut parage.”

As she passed through the fields
She met gentle knights
Who demanded courteously:
“Fair one, where were you born?”
“From France am I come,
And of high family.

“Li rossignol est mon pere
Qui chant sor la ramee
El plus haut boscage.
La seraine est mon mere
Qui chante en la mer sale
Li plus haut rivage.”

“The nightingale is my father
Who sings from the branches
Of the forest’s highest tree.
The mermaid is my mother
Who sings her sweet chant
On the banks of the salt sea.”

“Belle, bon fussiez vous nee!
Bien estes emparentee
Et de haut parage.
Pleüst á Dieu nostre pere
Que vous ne fussiez donee
A femme esposade.”

“Fair one, well were you born!
Well fathered, well mothered,
And of high family.
If God would only grant
That you might be given
In marriage to me!”


You can hear it sung here:

I just love that – I love the almost physical delight in the natural world, the celebration of springtime, and of the lady as a kind of fairy queen both of whose parents are the sweetest possible singers: the nightingale, and the ‘sirene’ or mermaid. 

Here is the song I made for Hugo, whose wife is dead:

When all the spring is breaking and blossoming
And the hedge is white with blossom like a breaking wave,
That’s when my heart is bursting with love-longing
For the girl who pierced it, for that sweet wound she gave.

And I hear the nightingale singing in the forest,
Singing for love in the forest, ‘Come to me, I am alone –’
Better to suffer love’s pain for a single kiss
Than live for a hundred years with a heart of stone.

And just to show that the subject of spring, hawthorn blossoms, and heartache isn’t restricted to the Middle Ages, here’s another lovely poem, from Edward Marsh’s anthology ‘Georgian Poetry 1916-1917’ : it’s by John Drinkwater, and it’s called ‘Birthright’.


Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed
Because a summer evening passed;
And little Ariadne cried
That summer fancy fell at last
To dust; and young Verona died
When beauty’s hour was overcast.

Theirs was the bitterness we know
Because the clouds of hawthorn keep
So short a state, and kisses go
To tombs unfathomably deep,
While Rameses and Romeo
And little Ariadne sleep.





Picture credits: Hawthorn copyright http://www.strickley.co.uk/flowers.htm