Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1893 — The Apple in Legend and Fable. [ARTICLE]

The Apple in Legend and Fable.

There are few objects which play so conspicuous a role in fable and story as the apple. Itjshone golden in the garden of the Hesperides, Aphrodite, like Eve, held it in her hand, and the serpent and the dragon mounted guard over it, Solomon sang its praises, and in Arab story it is the fruit of healing. Odysseus yearned for it in the garden of Alkinoos, and Tantalus strove vainly to reach it in Hades; and the Edda tells us that Idursa, the goddess of Virtue, treasured apples, the gifts of the gods, of such wondrous virtue that, K as age approached, she had onlyto taste them to renew her youth, until Raynoroks proclaimed universal annihilation. In many a northern story the golden bird seeks the golden apple in the king’s garden, and when the tree is reached and found bare of fruit does not Frau Bertha tell her love that it was because of a mouse that gnawed at the roots? In the mythology’ of the north the apple is ofttimes the tempter, and occasionally makes the nose grow so prodigiously that nothing but a pear will suffice to bring it once more into presentable shape.