4 
The golden apples are often met with in Northern Mythology. The Golden Bird seeks the 
golden apples in the king’s garden in many a Norse legend; and when the tree bears no more, the 
good mother goddess “ Frau Bertha ” reveals to her favourite, that it is because a mouse gnaws at 
the tree’s root. These golden apples, it is related in some legends, may be taken from a tree grow¬ 
ing over a fountain of holy water with a rejuvenating power; myths traceable to the tree and foun¬ 
tain of Urd, one of the Naunir. 
In a pretty Sclavonian myth,—the Russian Cinderella,—a small apple, rolled round a small 
silver plate, shews everything its fair owner wishes to see. Her sisters choose fine dresses and are 
evil-minded; but she is all goodness, and becomes of course the Czarina. 
The Prince Ahmed, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, discovers the wondrous apple 
which has the power of restoring all sick persons who smell it, to immediate health, and he thus 
cures the princess Nouronnihar. The Bohemian version of the same legend makes the one apple 
into three, which must be eaten, and thus the king, the queen, and the princess Libena are all 
snatched from the grave. 
In the Danish story of “ Svend’s Exploits,” his father gives Svend three magic apples grown 
from a pip brought from a dragon’s island. Two of the apples were large and red, but the third 
was small, shrivelled and green. “ Don’t eat the apples yourself,” said his father, “ and take especial 
care of the least, for though it looks the worst it is the best of them all, and can cure any injury 
caused by the others.” A certain knight, Peter, afterwards robbed Svend of all his magic treasures, 
among them the two fine looking apples ; and being through gross duplicity, on the eve of espousing 
a fair princess whose hand had been pledged to Svend, he gave one apiece to the princess and the 
king, her father. The king and princess had no sooner eaten them, than their royal noses began to 
grow to such a frightful length that nobody in court could refrain from laughing. No one but 
Svend could restore those royal features to their normal propriety. He denounced knight Peter as 
an impostor, fetched the shrivelled, green apple, and dividing it, gave half to the father and half to 
the daughter, whose noses immediately resumed their natural proportions, and Svend was rewarded 
with the hand of the princess and the half of her father’s kingdom. Thorpe. “ Yuletide Stories .” 
The apple is again said, sometimes to make the nose grow so large that the sacred pear can 
alone restore it to moderate size. In the goddess Holla’s garden the favourite fruit trees are the 
apple and the pear—the latter of which fruits retained its sanctity in Franee long after the introduc¬ 
tion there of Christianity. 
The apple however is not always beneficent. Azrael, the angel of death, accomplished 
his mission by holding an apple to the nostril: and in the Northern folklore, Snowwhite is tempted 
to her death by an apple, half of which a crone has poisoned, but she recovers life when the 
apple falls from her lips. 
A present of apples is ofttimes the symbol of a matrimonial proposal. 
“ Malo me Galatea petit.’' ( Virgil. Ec.) 
In the Servian legend of “ The Three Brothers,” whose only property was a pear tree, from 
which they shared the fruit, each of them in turn gives a pear to a poor beggar. The good angel 
on whom they had thus bestowed charity unconsciously, grants to each of them his wish. One asks 
for rivers of wine ; the second for countless flocks of sheep ; and about these no difficulty is made. 
