A Book of the West. Volume I Devon

Crediton is now a great centre of apple culture and cider-making. The rich red soil lends itself admirably to the production of delicious apples.

It is quite a mistake to suppose that any fruit serves for cider. There are certain kinds that are vastly superior to others for this purpose, as the Bitter-sweet, the Fox-whelp, the Kingston Black and Cherry Pearmain; but the best all round is the Kingston Black.

When there is going up a general cry for legislation to ameliorate in some way the condition of agriculture, it is a satisfaction to think that one act of Government has had a beneficial effect on the English farmer, if not throughout the land, at all events in the West of England and in other cider-making counties, and that act was the laying of heavy duty on foreign sparkling wines. Quite as much champagne is drunk now as was before the duty was increased, but unless we are very much mistaken some of that champagne comes from the apple and not from the grape.

A story is told that a gentleman the other day applied to a large apple-orchard farmer in the West of England for a hogshead or two of his sparkling cider. The farmer replied that he was very sorry not to be able to accommodate him as in previous years, but a certain London firm had taken his whole year's "pounding." He gave the name of the firm and assured his customer that he could get the cider from that house. The gentleman applied, and received the answer: —

"Sir, – We are not cider merchants. You have made some mistake. We are a firm of champagne-importing merchants from the celebrated vineyards of MM. So-and-so, at So-and-so."

Well, the money goes into English pockets, into those of the hardly-pressed and pinched English farmers. And cider is the most wholesome and sound of beverages. So all is well.

There are, as may have been noticed, three cold nights in May – not always, but often. At Crediton, and throughout the apple-growing districts in North Devon, these are called "Francémass" or "S. Frankin's days;" they are the 19th, 20th, and 21st May. When a frost comes then it injures the apple blossom. The story relative to this frost varies slightly. According to one version there was an Exeter brewer, of the name of Frankin, who found that cider ran his ale so hard that he vowed his soul to the devil on the condition that he would send three frosty nights in May to annually cut off the apple blossom. The other version of the story is that the brewers in North Devon entered into a compact with the Evil One, and promised to put deleterious matter into their ale on condition that the devil should help them by killing the blossom of the apple trees. Accordingly, whenever these May frosts come we know that his majesty is fulfilling his part of the contract, because the brewers have fulfilled theirs by adulterating their beer. S. Frankin, according to this version, is an euphemism for Satan.

Our dear old friend, the apple, not only serves as a kindly assistant to help out the supply of wine, but also forms the basis of a good many jams. With some assistance it is converted into raspberry and plum, but no inducement will persuade it to become strawberry. It is certainly instructive to pass a jam factory in October and thence inhale the fragrance of raspberries.

For some twenty or thirty years the orchards were sadly neglected. The old trees were not replaced, there was no pruning, no cleaning of the trunks, the cattle were turned into the orchard to gnaw and injure the bark and break down the branches, no dressing was given to the roots, and the pounding of apples was generally abandoned. But thanks to the increased demand for cider – largely, no doubt, to be drunk as cider, also, it is more than suspected, to be drunk under another name – the farmers in Somersetshire, Devonshire, Hereford, and Worcestershire have begun to cultivate apple trees, and care for them, as a means of revenue.

In former days there were many more orchards than at present; every gentleman's house, every farmhouse had its well-stocked, carefully pruned orchard. Beer ran cider hard, and nearly beat it out of the field, and overthrew the apple trees, but the trees are having their good times again.

There is a curious song of "The Apple Trees" that was formerly sung in every West of England farmhouse. It was a sort of Georgic, giving complete instructions how apples are to be grown and cider to be made. It is now remembered only by very old men, and as it has, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared in print, I will quote it in full: —

"An orchard fair, to please,And pleasure for your mind, sir,You'd have – then plant of treesThe goodliest you can find, sir;In bark they must be clean,And finely grown in root, sir,Well trimmed in head, I ween,And sturdy in the shoot, sir.O the jovial days when the apple trees do bear,We'll drink and be merry all the gladsome year."The pretty trees you plant,Attention now will need, sir,That nothing they may want,Which to mention I proceed, sir.You must not grudge a fence'Gainst cattle, tho't be trouble;They will repay the expenseIn measure over double.O the jovial days, &c."To give a man great joy,And see his orchard thrive, sir,A skilful hand employTo use the pruning knife, sir.To lop each wayward limb,That seemeth to offend, sir;Nor fail at Fall, to trimUntil the tree's life end, sir.O the jovial days, &c."All in the month of May,The trees are clothed in bloom, sir,As posies bright and gay,Both morning, night and noon, sir.'Tis pleasant to the sight,'Tis sweet unto the smell, sir,And if there be no blight,The fruit will set and swell, sir.O the jovial days, &c."The summer oversped,October drawing on, sir;The apples gold and redAre glowing in the sun, sir.As the season doth advance,Your apples for to gather,I bid you catch the chanceTo pick them in fine weather.O the jovial days, &c."When to a pummy ground,You squeeze out all the juice, sir,Then fill a cask well bound,And set it by for use, sir.O bid the cider flowIn ploughing and in sowing,The healthiest drink I knowIn reaping and in mowing.O the jovial days, &c."

This fresh and quaint old song was taken down from an ancient sexton of over eighty near Tiverton.

The young apple trees have a deadly enemy in the rabbit, which loves their sweet bark, and in a night will ruin half a nursery, peeling it off and devouring it all round. Young cattle will break over a hedge and do terrible mischief to an orchard of hopeful trees that promise to bear in another year or two. The bark cannot endure bruising and breaking – injury to it produces that terrible scourge the canker. Canker is also caused by the tap-root running down into cold and sour soil; and it is very customary, where this is likely, to place a slate or a tile immediately under the tree, so as to force the roots to spread laterally. Apple trees hate standing water, and like to be on a slope, whence the moisture rapidly drains away. As the song says, the orchard apples when ripe glow "gold and red," and the yellow and red apples make the best cider. The green apple is not approved by the old-fashioned cider-apple growers. The maxim laid down in the song, that the apples should be "the goodliest you can find," was not much attended to some thirty years ago when orchards were let down; farmers thought that any trees were good enough, and that there was a positive advantage in selecting sour apples, for that then the boys would not steal them. It is now otherwise; they are well aware that the quality of the cider depends largely on the goodness of the sort of apple grown. The picking of apples takes place on a fine windy or sunny day. The apples to be pounded are knocked down with a pole, but those for "hoarding" are carefully picked, as a bruise is fatal. After that the fallen apples have been gathered by women and children they are heaped up under the trees and left to completely ripen and be touched with frost. It is thought that they make better cider when they have begun to turn brown. Whether this be actually the case, or the relic of a mistaken custom of the past, the writer cannot say.

All apples are not usually struck down – the small ones, "griggles," are left for schoolboys. It is their privilege to glean in the orchard, and such gleaning is termed "griggling."

What the vintage is in France, and the hop-picking is in Kent and Bavaria, that the apple-picking and collecting is in the cider counties of England. The autumn sun is shining, there is a crispness in the air, the leaves are turned crimson and yellow, of the same hues as the fruit. The grass of the orchard is bright with crimson and gold as though it were studded with jewels, but the jewels are the windfalls from the apple trees. Men, women, and children are happy talking, laughing, singing snatches of songs – except when eating. Eat they must – eat they will – and the farmer does not object, for there is a limit to apple-eating. The apple is the most filling of all fruit. And yet how unlimited seems the appetite of the boy, especially when he gets into an orchard! The grandfather of the writer of this book planted an orchard specially for the boys of the parish, in the hope that they would glut themselves therein and leave his cider orchard alone. It did not answer; they devoured all the apples in their special orchard and carried their ravages into his also.

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1

Introduction to O'Curry (E.), Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, 1873, I. xxiv.

2

The New Century Review, April, 1897.

3

See M. Drayton's Polyolbion on this.

4

Davidson, "The Saxon Conquest of Devonshire," in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 1877.

5

"Antique and Modern Lace," in the Queen, 1874. The last chapter is devoted to Honiton Lace.

6

The Devon and Exeter Gazette, December 31st, 1885.

7

Quoted in "Some Seventeenth Century Topography," Western Morning News, May 9th, 1876.

8

Names of places, as Heavitree, Langtree, Plymtree, take the "tree" from the Welsh "tref," a farm or habitation. Heavitree is Tre-hafod, the summer farm.

9

In my Lives of the Saints, written in 1874, I accepted M. Barthélemy's view, that Virgilius held that there were underground folk, gnomes; but I do not hold this now, knowing more than I then did of the learning of the great Irish scholars, and of the voyages made by the Irish. The earliest gloss on the Senchus Mor says, "God formed the firmament around the earth; and the earth, in the form of a perfectly round ball, was fixed in the midst of the firmament." – I. p. 27.

10

Ffin– limit, gal– the level land, i. e. in comparison with the Dartmoor highlands.