The' Wild woman. And how at the end Fand became 

 Apple. once more a drift of white blossom upon the 

 deerskin. For, when the longing and the 

 sorrow of all .sorrows in the heart of Ulad 

 wrapt his heart in flame, suddenly a wind-eddy 

 scattered the blossoms upon the deerskin, so 

 that they wavered hither and thither, but 

 some were stained by the wandering fires of 

 a rainbow that drifted out of the rose-red 

 thickets of the dawn. 



How far back do these apple-legends go ? 

 I know not. But when Aphrodite was born 

 of the Idalian foam she held an apple in her 

 hand, as Asia or Eve looked long upon the 

 fruit of life and death in Eden. In Hades 

 itself was it not the lure and the bitterness of 

 Tantalus ? All old poems and tales, as I have 

 said, have it, whether as legend, or dream, or 

 metaphor, or as a simile even, as in the 

 seventh-century MS. of the Cain Adamnain, 

 where Adamnan's old mother cries mo maccan- 

 sawut amail bis ubullfo tuind . . . 'my dear 

 son yonder is like an apple on a wave ' : [i.e.'} 

 little is his hold on the earth. And those of 

 us who have read, and remember, the Prose 

 Edda, will recall how Iduna ' keeps in a box, 

 Apples, which the gods, when they feel old 

 age approaching, have only to taste to become 

 young again/ 



134 



