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MODERN APPLE LORE. 
“ Nor needst thou blush that such false themes engage 
Thy gentle mind, of fairer stores possest; 
For not alone they touch the village breast, 
But filled in elder time th’ historic page. 
* * * * 
The native legends of thy land rehearse.” 
( Collins: “ Ode on the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands.”) 
“ Let the World have their May-games, Wakes, Whitsun-ales ; their Dancings, and Concerts; 
their Puppet-shows, Hobby-horses, Tabors, Bagpipes, Balls, Barley-breaks, and whatever sports 
and recreations please them best, provided they be followed with discretion.” 
(Burton’s “ Anatomy of Melancholy.”) 
“ Mark it, Cesario ; it is old and plain : 
The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, 
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones 
Do use to chaunt it: it is silly, sooth, 
And dallies with the innocence of love 
Like the old age.” 
(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, II, 4.) 
“ If all the year were playing Holidays, 
To sport would be as tedious as to work; 
But when they seldom come, they wish’d-for come, 
And nothing pleaseth but rare Accidents.” 
(Shakespeare, Henry IV, 1 , 2 .) 
The Apple has been associated with many popular customs and fancies from the earliest 
period. As the favourite fruit of the people, so useful and so widely diffused, it naturally takes a 
prominent place in their every-day life and their rural and domestic festivities. Apples and Apple 
Trees, wherever they abound, are connected with many curious and interesting sayings and 
observances. These are, for the most part, of the most fanciful and trivial kind ; sometimes they 
* 
seem to be the traditions of heathen customs, and are certainly the relics of an age when men were 
more in earnest in their superstitions, and more inclined to believe in vague intimations of the 
unseen than they are now. Sometimes they take the form of divination, half serious and half 
