Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 11

Tree Myths and Forest Lore. 261
ladder which appeared under an apple-tree in her garden. In
the lower regions she saw a garden in which the sun seemed even
more beautiful than on earth ; and the trees were laden with fruit.
She filled her apron with apples, which became golden as soon
as she came back to the earth." This is supposed to represent
the sun's journey at night ending in the golden dav/n. A German
popular song begins : —
" Bitterly wept the dear Sun
In the apple-garden ;
From the apple-tree has fallen
The golden apple.
Weep not, little Sun,
God is making another
Of gold, of iron, and of silver. "
The sun at first loses his golden apple and weeps; people try-
to put him to sleep in the orchard, and to make him hope to find
his golden apple in the morning ; he still weeps, and they tell him
he will have another, of the three metals, representing the grey
morning, the dawn, and the full sun-glow. A Swedish mytho-
logical enigma thus runs : — " Our mother has a bed-'cover
which nobody can fold ; our father has more gold than any-
one can count; and our brother has an apple which nobody
can bite." The explanation is : — " Our mother is the earth :
the earth's counterpane is the sky; our father is in Heaven;
his golden stars are countless ; our brother is the Divine Saviour,
whose apple is the sun." The identity of the sun and the apple
in such myths is scarcely open to question.
The Pear-tree has never been so popular as the apple, perhaps
on account of the rapidity with which it succumbs to corruption.
According to a Thuringian legend, a mad cow was at first changed
into a pear-tree, and afterwards into an old woman. This legend
is supposed to figure three seasons of the year — the hot sun be-
! comes a pear-tree in autumn, and a sterile old woman in winter.
\ The Alder appears in a Tyrolese legend, thus: — "A boy
! mounted a tree and saw what the witches were doing below ; they
cut to pieces a woman's body and threw the bits up in the aPir ; the
boy caught a rib, and kept it beside him. When the witches
counted the bits, they found one amissing, and they replaced it
by a bit of alder ; then the body revived," They say in Germany