Читать книгу A Book of Britain: The Lore, Landscape and Heritage of a Treasured Countryside - Johnny Scott - Страница 53

Crab trees – crab from the Norse word skrab, meaning scrubby – is a familiar sight in hedgerows, but was traditionally a woodland tree often found growing among oaks. They produce fragile, sweet-scented, pink-tipped flowers in the spring and bitter, rock-hard little apples – the ancient mother of all apples – in late September.

As a spring-flowering, autumn-fruiting tree, crab apples were venerated by pagans across Europe, with many beliefs and legends connected to them. Most were centred around the fruit being a symbol of love, fertility, wisdom and plenty. Crab apples are one of the hosts for mistletoe and the Druids are believed to have planted them near oak groves to ensure the sacred trees would have their ‘Golden Bough’. The little fruit were highly prized as the essential ingredient in the highly alcoholic drink cyser, or melomel – a potent cider and mead mixture drunk during the various winter festivals.

During the period of the Roman occupation, domesticated apple varieties were introduced and apple orchards became established, often run by army veterans who were persuaded to stay in Britain by being given land on which to plant apple trees. The Vikings brought with them the habit of ‘wassailing’, in mid-January. Wassail is derived from the Norse ves heill, meaning ‘be healthy’, and wassailing was the equivalent of our New Year’s Eve partying, at which the centrepiece was the wassail bowl, containing strong ale mixed with pulped roasted crab apples. During the Middle Ages, wassailing the apple orchards became a popular event in the cider-making counties, and it is still carried on in parts of the West Country.

One of the strangest customs in Britain is the Egremont Crab Fair, which has been held every September almost continually since the Cumbrian town was granted a Royal Charter in 1267 by Henry III. A principal feature of the fair is the World Gurning Championships, where contestants compete to pull the ugliest face whilst their head is stuck through a horse collar. This extraordinary practice, where competitors have been known to devote a lifetime to achieving exceptional ugliness, was inadvertently started by Thomas de Multon, Lord of the Barony of Egremont. After harvest, de Multon was in the generous habit of rewarding his serfs by riding through the town and tossing each a crab apple; the bitter taste of the apples caused the peasants’ faces to contort and thus began the tradition. Giving away crab apples continues to this day with the ‘Parade of the Apple Cart’, where apples are thrown to the people who line the main street.