“Yes; but tell me,” I urged, “about the rite. What did the young men do in the orchards?”
“Why, them rampaged round like young cart colts on spring grass, and they seized each others’ hands and danced aunty-praunty, as if their arms were made of cart-ropes, round the trees, and they capered like young deer, as the deer do at Apley Park, up beyond Bridgenorth, and they kind of hugged a tree, crying out—
“‘Stand fast root, bear well top,
God send us a youngling sop.
Every twig big apple,
Every bough fruit enough.’
And then wherever they passed they got cakes and ale. There war holy beer, made from church water caught in a butt from the roof, and that war supposed to be the best—‘the life of the season,’ folks called it then. And if the lads got a touch too merry, folk knew what to do—they looked the other way. Rough play, rough pleasure; but they war men then.”
As the old man ceased talking, I remembered having read in some old book on “Strange Customs” an account of “Apple Blow Youling,” as it was called in the West. The rite was probably a survival of an old heathen custom. It is supposed that it arose from a Roman practice of giving thanks to Æolus, the god of the winds, and that this pious invocation was instituted by them soon after their conquest of Britain. Anyway, the rite became popular, and long survived the occupation of the Romans; and in some places, apple youling, or howling, went on through the early part of the nineteenth century. There was a pause, and then old Timothy began to talk about the difficulty of inducing village maids to go into domestic service.
“They all thinks themselves born ladies now,” he said sourly. “There’s my cousin Polly Makin’s granddaughter, a fine strapping lass to look at, but her went off last week to Birmingham. Dull, ’er said, it be here. What does her mean,” asked the old man, in a tone of righteous wrath, “by finding it dull in her native town? When folks found it dull in their native place, when I war a lad, we called ’em stoopid; now they calls ’em larned and too good. Now ’tis all roar and express train. But her’ll creep back some day, will Polly—young Polly, and be glad and thankful to find a place to lie her head in. They be all for pleasurin’ now, expeditions and excursions, running everywhere with no eyes, that’s what I call their modern games.”
“But in old days, if I had wanted a housemaid or a scullery-maid, what should I have done?” I asked, bringing back my old friend to his subject.