54 
MODERN APPLE LORE. 
commonly practised. It is called, in the language of the country, “ Nos-cyn-gauaf” the night before 
winter—or, literally rendered, meaning, everything at a standstill, nothing growing. The custom 
consists in making strings of apples, and hanging them to roast before the kitchen fire, with a bowl 
of new milk beneath each string of apples, to catch them as they fall. The dish is then partaken of 
by all the farm servants, and men and maidens crown the feast by dancing out the Autumn into Winter. 
This simplest form of “ Lamb’s wool ” gives place to a liquor much more potent in the colder 
weather of the New Year’s Eve, or Twelfth Night. 
A much more serious and formidable kind of divination is referred to by Burns in “ Hallow 
E’en.” It must have sorely taxed the nerves of the maidens who tried it. A girl has to take a 
candle, and eat an apple while standing alone before a looking-glass at midnight, and is then to see 
in the glass the face of her future husband looking over her shoulder. “Wee Jennie ” in Burns’s 
poem, has not courage to make the experiment alone, but says : 
“ Will ye go wi’ me, Grannie ? ” 
and the poet again quizzes the terror of midnight experiments, by the maiden who employs a 
guard: 
“ She gi’es the herd a pickle nits, 
An’ twa red-cheekit apples, 
To watch, while for the barn she sets, 
In hopes to see Tam Kipples, 
That vera night.” 
Randolph makes fairies declare a partiality for apples stolen from orchards in the night: 
“ We cannot have an apple in the orchard, 
But straight some fairy longs for’t.” 
(Amyntas, 1638.) 
But, in “Cataplus, a Mock Poem” (1672), the writer says of the Sybil : 
“ Thou canst in orchards lay a charm 
To catch base felon by the arm.” 
(Brand , by Hazlitt , III273) 
So there might be danger in the theft. 
On All Souls’ Day (Nov. 2) there was a custom in many parts of England of “going a 
Souling,” as it was called; that is, going about from house to house, singing a rude song, begging for 
apples, as well as for “ Soul cakes,” (a kind of bun, made for the occasion ;) or for anything else they 
could get. 
In Shropshire the verses ran as follows : 
“ Soul! Soul! for a Soul cake ! 
Pray, good mistress, for a soul cake : 
***** 
Soul, soul, for an apple or two : 
If you’ve got no apples, pears will do. 
Up with your kettle, and down with your pan, 
Give me a good big one, and I’ll be gone.” 
In Cheshire they were less exacting, for each verse of the song given in the Journal of the 
