The Apple

Harvest, Folklore & Old Belief

There are some fruits that seem to belong to a particular time of year.

Strawberries feel like summer. Blackberries belong to the hedgerows at the end of August. But apples have always felt a little different to me. They arrive just as the year begins to turn, hanging from the branches when the mornings are cooler and the leaves are beginning to change, and suddenly there are baskets of them everywhere.

Perhaps that is part of the reason the apple has gathered so many stories around itself.

For centuries, apples have been grown, gathered, pressed, stored and shared, becoming part of ordinary rural life as well as folklore and seasonal tradition. They appear in myths, fairy tales and religious stories, and in Britain they became particularly tied to the orchard — to harvest, cider, fertility and the hope that next year's trees would fruit just as well.

There are also some wonderfully strange traditions surrounding them.

People have sung to apple trees, poured cider around their roots, placed toast in their branches and made enough noise to wake the orchard. Apples have been used in love divination, associated with goddesses and otherworldly places, and eventually became one of the most recognisable symbols of temptation — even though one of the most famous apple stories of all isn't actually about an apple at all.

So how did such an ordinary fruit end up carrying quite so much folklore?

The Apple in Britain

The apple has been part of British food and farming for a very long time, but the orchard as we picture it today is also part of a much longer history of cultivation, local varieties and rural life.

By the early modern period, apple growing was particularly important in parts of the west of England, where apples were grown not only for eating but for making cider. Old orchards became part of the landscape, with particular varieties belonging to particular places and communities.

That relationship can still be seen today. At Barrington Court in Somerset, for example, the National Trust maintains around ten acres of apple orchard, with a particular focus on cider apples. Across South Somerset, it helps protect more than 150 types of apple, including many heritage varieties. 

The apple was therefore never simply something picked from a tree and eaten.

It could become cider, juice, preserves and food for the winter, making the autumn harvest part of the practical rhythm of rural life. The orchard itself became part of that rhythm too — a place that had to be tended throughout the year and, eventually, harvested.

And once a tree becomes important to your livelihood, it is perhaps not surprising that people begin to develop traditions around it.

The Apple & the Harvest

There is something particularly satisfying about an apple harvest because the fruit arrives in abundance.

One tree can suddenly be carrying far more apples than one household could possibly eat, which meant that harvesting was never simply about picking a few fruits for the kitchen. Apples could be stored, pressed or turned into cider, while the work of gathering them brought people together at one of the busiest points in the agricultural year.

The orchard therefore became a place of both work and celebration.

Traditional orchards were also much more than places to grow fruit. Old trees provide habitats for insects, birds and other wildlife, while the grass and wildflowers beneath them become part of the wider orchard ecosystem. Even today, surviving traditional orchards are valued as both agricultural and ecological landscapes.

But perhaps the most fascinating traditions begin after the main harvest has finished.

Because there is one particularly unusual way of saying thank you to an apple tree.

Wassailing the Apple Trees

If you have never heard of apple wassailing before, it sounds slightly like something from a folk tale.

On Twelfth Night, traditionally the final night of the Christmas period, people would head into the orchard with songs, drink and plenty of noise. The exact customs varied from place to place, but the purpose was broadly the same: to encourage a good crop in the year ahead and protect the orchard from harm.

In some traditions, cider was poured around the roots of the oldest or most important tree. Pieces of toast soaked in cider were placed among the branches, and the tree was sung to. Pots and pans might be banged together to create a tremendous racket.

It is a wonderfully odd image when you first come across it: a winter orchard, a group of people gathered around an apple tree, cider being poured around its roots while everyone makes as much noise as possible.

The noise was traditionally intended to drive away unwanted spirits, while the drink, food and songs were connected with encouraging fertility and a good harvest. The National Trust notes that wassailing customs varied considerably between regions, but singing, drinking, noise and offerings to the trees appear repeatedly.

And the tradition hasn't disappeared completely.

Wassails are still held in apple-growing areas of Britain today, particularly where traditional orchards remain part of the landscape.

There is something rather lovely about that.

The harvest is already over. The trees are bare. Winter has arrived. And yet people are still standing beneath the branches, asking the trees to give them apples again next year.

Apples in Myth & Legend

The apple has an equally complicated life in mythology.

The Romans had Pomona, goddess of gardens, orchards and ripening fruit. Unlike many Roman agricultural deities, she was particularly concerned with cultivated fruit trees, and appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses as the gardener and lover of Vertumnus. 

Then there is Avalon, the mysterious island from Arthurian legend. Its name has long been associated with apples or fruit trees, helping create the enduring image of an otherworldly island filled with orchards. The history behind the name is more complicated than the simple “Isle of Apples” version often repeated today, but the apple has become deeply woven into the modern idea of Avalon.

And then we have the golden apples.

In Greek mythology, the Garden of the Hesperides held golden apples guarded by the Hesperides and a serpent or dragon. Retrieving them became the eleventh labour of Heracles. The apples appear repeatedly in ancient art, including surviving Greek pottery showing Heracles and the garden. 

The fruit keeps appearing.

Sometimes it represents abundance. Sometimes beauty. Sometimes desire, immortality or something just out of reach.

And then Christianity gave the apple another meaning altogether.

The Apple of Temptation

One of the strangest things about the apple's reputation is that the Book of Genesis never actually says that the forbidden fruit was an apple.

It simply calls it the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

So how did the apple become so firmly attached to the story of Adam and Eve?

The answer is more complicated than the familiar story about the Latin words for apple and evil being the same. That explanation has been repeated for centuries, but recent scholarship has found little evidence that medieval Latin commentators actually used the supposed pun to identify the fruit.

Instead, research into medieval language and artwork points towards 12th-century France as an important stage in the apple's transformation into the familiar forbidden fruit. The Old French word pom could originally mean fruit more generally, but gradually came to mean apple. As the meaning changed, artistic representations of the Fall increasingly began showing an apple. 

And so an ordinary fruit acquired an extraordinary reputation.

The apple became associated with temptation, knowledge, desire and the consequences of reaching for something forbidden.

Yet elsewhere, the same fruit could represent abundance, love, fertility and immortality.

Perhaps that is the apple's real folklore story: it has never meant just one thing.

Love, Luck & Divination

The apple also found its way into much more ordinary folk traditions.

Apples have long been associated with love and courtship, particularly in European customs involving young people and divination. The fruit could be peeled, bobbed for, cut or thrown, with the result interpreted as a clue about future love.

The familiar Halloween game of apple bobbing belongs to this wider tradition. While modern parties have turned it into a simple game, older customs connected apples and the act of choosing or catching one with questions of courtship and marriage.

The peel could also become part of the divination itself. A person might peel an apple in one long strip and throw the peel over their shoulder, looking at the shape it made to see whether it resembled the initial of a future sweetheart.

These customs are a reminder that folklore was not always grand mythology.

Sometimes it was simply a group of young people at a harvest gathering, an apple in someone's hand and a question about who they might marry.

The Apple in the Modern Imagination

It is difficult to look at an apple now without bringing some of these stories with us.

It is the fruit of the autumn orchard, the harvest basket and the cider press, but also the fruit of Avalon, Pomona, fairy tales and the Garden of Eden. It can suggest abundance and temptation almost simultaneously.

For modern Pagans and witches, the apple has naturally found a place within seasonal practice, particularly around autumn, harvest and the turning of the year. Some of these associations draw on older folklore, while others are modern interpretations of the fruit's long history of symbolism.

Perhaps that is why the apple works so well as a seasonal symbol.

It is ordinary enough to hold in your hand, but it carries an enormous amount of history.

From the orchard to mythology, from cider pressed at harvest to toast placed in the branches of a winter tree, the apple has spent centuries sitting somewhere between food, folklore and magic.

And perhaps next time you bite into one, it is worth remembering that you are holding a fruit with a rather extraordinary story.

Archive Bookshelf

A small selection of books for exploring apples, orchards, folklore and harvest traditions.

The English Year — Steve Roud
A fascinating guide to seasonal customs, festivals and traditional beliefs across England.

The Lore of the Land — Jennifer Westwood & Jacqueline Simpson
A rich collection of British folklore, legends and traditional stories connected to the landscape.

The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore — edited by Jacqueline Simpson & Steve Roud
A useful reference for exploring individual customs, beliefs and pieces of folklore.

Sources & Further Reading

British Orchard & Wassailing Traditions
National Trust — Wassailing: Ritual and Revelry

British Orchards & Heritage Apples
National Trust — Our Work at Barrington Court

Pomona & Roman Apple Lore
British Museum — Pomona

The Golden Apples of the Hesperides
British Museum — Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides

The Forbidden Fruit & How It Became an Apple
Rutgers University — How the Forbidden Fruit Became an Apple

This record brings together material from British seasonal customs, natural history, classical mythology, Arthurian tradition and Christian folklore. Where modern interpretations differ from older traditions, they have been treated as modern rather than presented as ancient belief.