Page:Devon & Cornwall Notes & Queries.djvu/286

 Devon Notes and Queries, 207 shotted guns, accompanied by cider drinking, shouting the old charm : — " Here's to thee, old apple tree," etc., and the libation o{ cider at the roots of the best bearing trees. It has been suggested that the shock and smoke of the gun-firing tends to detach insects, the evil spirits of orchards,, from their hiding places in the moss and bark, which either fall to the ground or become a more easy prey to small birds. The use of shot also is supposed to tear the bark in places and quicken the fruiting similar to the effect of beating a walnut tree. P. F. S. Amery. 166. The custom alluded to by your correspondent is that known as "wassailing" or "blessing the apple trees," one of the best known and most frequently described of all Devonshire folk customs. Rev. S. Baring-Gould says it has " now completely gone out " {Book of the West, I., p. 89), and I have never met anybody who had seen it performed, but it was apparently practised in the neighbourhood of Torquay a few years before 1876 {Trans, Devon Assoc, viii., p. 49). The earliest allusion is probably in Herrick's Hesperides (1647-8) : — Wassail the trees that they may bear You, many a plum, and many a pear ; For more or less fruits they will bring, As you do give them wassailing. In the vocabulary of the Exmoor dialect, given in the Gentleman^ s Magazine for 1746 (xvi., p. 405), wassailing is defined as a " drinking on twelfth-day eve, throwing toast to the apple-trees in order to have a fruitful year ; which seems to be a relick of a heathen sacrifice to Pomona." In the same magazine for 1791 (Ixi., p. 403) is the following description of the custom as practised in the South Hams. — On the eve of the Epiphany, the farmer attended by his workmen» with a large pitcher of cider, goes to the orchard, and there encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three several times : — Here's to thee, old apple-tree, Whence thou may'st bud, and whence thou mays't blow [bloom], And whence thou may'st bear apples enow ! Hats full! Caps full! Bushel— bushel — sacks full, And my pockets full too 1 Huzza ! This done, they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are