Lore - Legends 37: An Apple a Day

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Folklore grows. It has roots that run deep and branches that stretch out far and wide. The stories we pluck from it are fruit, in more ways than one—and that’s not necessarily a safe thing. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson, and research by GennaRose Nethercott. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: Quince: Premium European clothing and accessories for 50% to 80% less than similar brands, at Quince.com/LORE for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. ————————— ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin. On the day that Satan rose up against God, he was thrown into a bush. Many people have heard how when the devil lost his battle against the archangel Michael, he was cast out of heaven. But there's an alternate ending that many are less familiar with. You see, according to British folklore, after he was thrown out, he landed butt-first in

a thorny blackberry bush. In a rage, the devil cursed the bush's fruit. Some stories say that he then stomped on all the blackberries with his cloven hooves. Others say that he spit on them or breathed fire at them or even urinated on them. The point though is clear. The blackberries were completely ruined. Well, many years after Satan was dethroned, the church started celebrating the holy feast of Michaelmas in honor of Archangel Michael.

Now, originally Michaelmas, or Old Michaelmas, as it's now called, was celebrated on the 10th or the 11th of October, depending on what part of England you lived in. But after Europe shifted from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, the feast day was moved to September 29th. It is a religious holiday, but religion and folklore have a long history of working in tandem.

The witch is why it was determined that eating the devil's cursed blackberries on or after Michaelmas was terrible luck. Some people thought that it would simply bring misfortune to their lives, while others believed that it could kill you instantly. The expiration date on wild blackberries might seem like an odd superstition to a modern audience, but believe it or not, this bit of folklore is probably rooted in practicality. You see, many counties in England get their first frost by mid-October, in other words, around the time of Old Michaelmas. Frost turns the fruit mushy, and therefore much more likely to develop dangerous mold. The folklore served a function.

Don't eat blackberries after it gets cold because they're not safe to ingest. But of course, folklore doesn't spring up out of thin air. Stories are bound to the communities that tell them, and communities are bound to the land. And so folklore is often inspired by what comes out of that land, be it a blackberry bush, a grapevine, or an apple tree, which illustrates a powerful truth. If you want to understand how people once interpreted the world around them, look at the stories they told about what grew from their land.

The power of folklore is often found in the fruit. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore Legends. When you think about fruit, what typically comes to mind? Maybe it's the apple that you gave your teacher on the last day of school. Or maybe it's that perfect mango you had on vacation. Your mom's blackberry cobbler or a good old fashioned Maine blueberry pie. In 21st century America, we had the luxury of thinking about fruit in a very casual way. After all, it's a food group that we have relatively easy access to. Most of us can walk into the grocery store at any time and buy a container of raspberries

or a can of peaches. It isn't life or death. For most of us, fruit is just a food. But for many civilizations throughout history, it was one of their only major sources of food. A number of agricultural communities depended on their crops to provide for their entire villages. Whether the fruit came from a vineyard, an orchard, or a backyard garden, people often relied on it for sustenance and income. If the harvest failed, people could die or lose their

income. And so fruit took on an important role. And of course, we humans like to make up stories about the things that are important to us. In pivotal times, like say in the months leading up to a harvest or when a family member was on their deathbed, people would reach for superstitions to tell them what the future held. It gave them a sense of control. And fruit, a plant that grew on a normal cycle and could almost be relied upon, ended up being involved in these superstitions more often than not.

In Wales, it was believed that if a plum tree blossomed in December, then someone in your family would die soon. In the Ozarks, locals claimed that the shape of a persimmon seed could predict the upcoming winter weather. In Turkey, carrying a date in your wallet was believed to bring wealth and luck. The Spanish believed that eating a grape for every clock chime at midnight on New Year's Eve would bring good luck in the coming year, while the Greeks believed that smashing a pomegranate would bring prosperity.

And since the 18th century, bringing bananas onto a ship has been considered bad luck, possibly because bananas float and oftentimes the only things left after a shipwreck were banana crates bobbing ominously in the water. But people haven't just used fruits to tell the future. They've also built creation myths around them. For example, Burmese folklore claims that a long time ago, an infamous mischief maker played one too many tricks and the king had him executed. The troublemaker's head was buried and everyone thought that the matter was over and done.

The trickster, though, would have the last laugh. A tree grew from where his head was buried and it sprouted a strange fruit that looked just like his head, even coming equipped with the same thick skull. The Burmese dubbed the tree Ganbin, which means mischief maker's tree, but in English we call them coconuts. Another legend goes that in the Philippines, there once was a lazy girl named Pina who was never able to find what she needed anytime she was asked to help with a chore. One day, her mother yelled, I wish you had a thousand eyes so you can find what it is you were looking for. It turns out that the mother had unwittingly cursed her daughter.

Pina instantly vanished and nobody, no matter how hard they looked, could find her. But months later, Pina's mother noticed a strange plant growing in the yard where her daughter used to play. She tugged on its leaves until she pulled up a large yellow fruit covered in a thousand eyes. The mother understood. This fruit was her daughter. Her curse had come true and Pina had finally been given enough eyes to find anything in the world. And that is the story of how we got the pineapple. Origin myths like Pina the pineapple are fun,

but not every story that involves fruit can be sweet. More often than not, when it comes to folklore, fruit turns sour. And one of the most common motifs that we see is that of the forbidden fruit. Juicy and intoxicating, fruit has been used to represent any number of attractive pitfalls, Divine knowledge, love, immortality. You name it, the fruit has been a stand-in for temptation. From the story of Adam and Eve to the myth of Persephone and Hades, fruits have long lured protagonists into terrible fates. For this very reason, it's considered a bad idea to accept fruit from fairies. If you do, then you'll never

be able to escape their clutches. In some stories, humans who eat their food are trapped in fairy land. In others, the human is allowed to return to Earth only to waste away until they are dead. Christina Rossetti's poem Goblin Market is one of the more famous examples of fairy fruit cursing a human. It tells the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, who hear the call of the goblin merchants at the goblin market. Intrigued, the girls go to get a closer look.

But while Lizzie soon makes the sensible decision to go home, Laura stays, drawn in by the magnificent fruit they have on display. Desperate for a taste, she gives the goblins a lock of her hair and a single tear

as payment for as much fruit as she can eat. Laura gorges herself on the fruit, tearing into it as though she were possessed. Then she returns home in a daze. The goblin fruit is all she can think about, but she is soon horrified to discover that while her sister Lizzie can still hear the Goblins calls, she no longer can. She's cut off from the market and therefore cut off from the fruit. Laura quickly falls ill, but no matter how weak she becomes, she still pines for that

beautiful fruit. As the months pass by and her condition worsens, Lizzie realizes that Laura is dying. She runs to the Goblin market to buy more fruit to save her sister. But once the goblins realize that Lizzie doesn't want to eat any of it herself, they pelt her with their wares, and soon she is completely covered in fruit pulp. Still, she manages to escape,

and she runs straight to her sister's deathbed. Laura licks the fruits off of Lizzie's body, but it doesn't have the same effect as before. The taste now pains Laura, sending fire through her veins. All seems to be lost, but miraculously, when Laura wakes up in the morning, she's healed. Fruit folklore doesn't fit into a single mold. Gift or curse, salvation or damnation, creation myth or superstition. All around the world, it's played every possible role.

So be careful when you take your next bite because you never know if your teeth will sink into something sweet or something sour. The old woman had come to sell her apples, but Snow White, of course, was wary. In the original Grimm fairy tale, the princess wasn't quite as naive as she is in the Disney film. In this older version of the story, the Evil Queen had already tried to kill her multiple times. So, just to be cautious, Snow White told the old woman, no, she couldn't accept anything. To which the Crone asked, are you afraid of poison? Look, I'll cut the apple in two.

You eat the red half and I shall eat the white half. Well, Snow White couldn't argue with that. She gave in and accepted the apple. But of course, it was the wrong choice. The red half was poisoned, and no sooner had Snow White taken a single bite than she dropped the ground dead. There are some major differences between the original fairy tale and the one that most of us know.

Like, for example, Snow White was finally awoken not by a kiss, but by a chunk of the apple being dislodged from her windpipe. But still, the major story beats are the same, including the poison fruit. Unsurprisingly, apples serve as a cornerstone for stories all around the world, and not just for fairy tales. But while they weren't always dangerous, they were almost always deeply connected to the supernatural. In Greek mythology, for example, Hera had a tree of golden apples that was kept in the

garden of Hesperides, the daughter of the Titan Atlas. Anyone who ate one of the glittering fruits was granted immortality. So naturally they were kept under strict guard at all times by a hundred headed dragon. Modern audiences might have heard about these golden apples from the original myth of Hercules. As one of his trials, the demigod Hero is required to steal them from the orchard. Hercules was able to trick Atlas into stealing the apples for him, avoiding the matter of the dragon altogether,

and he left the garden victorious. And similarly in Norse mythology, the goddess Eaden fed her apples to all the gods and goddesses, ensuring that they would live forever. Without the fruit, their bodies gave way to age and decay. Now, Norway didn't have traditional apples like the kind we see in the supermarket today, but they did have crab apples.

And from what we can tell, they were highly revered as symbols for youth, fertility, and immortality. And I hope you noticed that in both of these instances, the divine apples were considered too potent for mortal consumption. So it only stands to reason that once the fruit started popping up in major world religions, people began to see apples as powerful things. After all, if that fruit could grant immortality or divine knowledge to gods, then imagine what it could do for your average everyday folks.

And so following that logic, apples became tools that were just as connected to superstition as they were to sustenance. For example, early Germanic peoples were often actually buried with nuts and apples. In 1904, archaeologists even discovered a bucket of apples in a ninth century burial mound for a high-ranking woman who may have been a Viking queen or a shaman. Apples were also commonly used to divine the future, particularly by young single women who were looking for love.

In Austria, ladies would cut an apple in half and count the seeds. An even number of seeds meant that she would soon marry, while an odd number meant that she would never find her husband. Over in Britain, unmarried women would eat an apple in their bedrooms at midnight facing a mirror with a candle burning behind them. Once the apple was consumed, the face of the man she was meant to marry was said to appear

like a ghost in the mirror. In fact, the British actually had a whole host of superstitions about apples that went well beyond matchmaking. Some dictated that if you didn't wipe an apple clean before eating it, then you would summon the devil. If you left an apple on the branch during harvest and it was still there the following spring, then someone would die. And if you fell asleep under a grafted apple tree, then you risked being carried away to fairyland. You see, many people in the British Isles believe that apple

trees were actually tied to the fairies. Sometimes the fairies watched for napping women who they could kidnap. Other times, wicked sprites attacked children who tried to steal the fruit. And sometimes the trees themselves were guarded by the apple tree man. This fellow only really shows up in folklore from Somerset, Cornwall, and Devon. Like his name suggests, the apple tree man was a fairy spirit who lived in an orchard's oldest apple tree. His presence nurtured the fertility of the orchard and he ensured that all the apple trees flourished year after year. But the apple tree man didn't work for free. And so once a year on either Christmas Eve or the 12th night, farmers would go into the apple orchard to make an offering.

They toasted the apple tree man, then poured apple cider over his roots in a practice called wassaling. Sometimes they banged pots and pans to scare off evil spirits. The entire ritual was meant to keep the apple tree man happy so that the orchard could stay healthy for another year. And sometimes wassaling could bring you more than just a good harvest. The story goes that one day a farmer passed away, leaving everything to his spoiled youngest son.

The eldest son was given nothing but an old ox and a dilapidated cottage with two healthy apple trees in the yard. And even then, he owed his younger brother rent if he wanted to keep living there. The eldest worked hard to till the land, but he still couldn't work fast enough to make the huge amount of money that his brother wanted. The youngest son, though, had a plan to get that rent money no matter what. One cold December day, he visited his brother and told him that there was a great treasure buried somewhere on the land.

He demanded that his older brother pour cider over the oldest apple trees roots at midnight on Christmas Eve. If the apple tree man came out and revealed where the treasure was, then he would discount that month's rent. So when Christmas Eve arrived, the eldest son snuck out a bit early, calling forth the apple tree man with a mug of mulled cider. Now the apple tree man you have to understand here was smart. He knew that the eldest son had been the one taking care of the land, and that the youngest was just trying to steal money from his brother. So the apple tree man told the eldest son to look under his roots, where a chest full

of gold had been buried. He told the eldest son to take it and run, saying, "'Tis yours and no one else." And so the eldest son ran, and the youngest woke up at midnight to discover that the treasure had already been claimed. That greedy youngest son could have had everything, if only he had remembered to devote love and attention to the apple trees. They say that the apples were filled with blood. At least that's the rumor that's been swirling about the small town of Franklin, Connecticut since the 18th century. The legend goes that in 1699, a man named Micah Rood settled in Franklin and established a farm.

And while there were plenty of successful farms in the area, Micah's was not one of them. And sure, he grew an orchard on his craggy land and it bore fruit, but it only ever grew enough for him to live on, never enough to make much money from. It's easy to see how decades of labor with no real wealth to show for it would wear on someone's soul. To do backbreaking work day after day only to live in poverty. It would have been enough to drive anyone mad.

And as some would argue, that's exactly what happened to Micah Rood. One cold December day, a local peddler stopped by Micah's farm to make his sales pitch. Once he had Micah's attention, he unveiled a collection of beautiful baubles and trinkets, lovely, delicate things that Micah, who had no disposable income to speak of, could never afford. The sparkling display was just too much. Something inside Micah snapped, driven insane longing, he attacked the peddler,

driving a knife into his heart. Once the deed was done, Micah hurriedly buried the peddler's body under an apple tree in his orchard. And then Micah recused himself, shunning his work and his neighbors. Soon enough, everyone got the hint and just left him alone. Sure, his fellow townsfolk noticed that he seemed a bit off, but no one prided too deeply into the matter. The apple tree over the body, however, would not let Micah forget, and unlike his neighbors, its roots dug deep into his sins. The next spring, the blossoms on the tree looked like they always did, but different. You see, they weren't white like any of the other flowers in the orchard. No, these petals were blood red.

Still, since Micah was keeping the townsfolk away, no one noticed anything unusual. Not until August, that is, when the trees started to bear fruit. That summer, you see, a group of young boys were playing in Micah's orchard when they got hungry and stopped to pick some apples from the tree. But when they bit into them, they found that the center of each apple contained a bright, red clot. Understandably, the boys were weirded out by the bloody looking apples, so they told their fathers, who went to investigate the next day. The men picked over a dozen apples from the same tree, and every single one of them had

a glob of red at its core. No one knew what to think for a while. Apples, after all, came in all sorts of shapes and colors. Maybe this was just a new variant. But still, everyone felt uneasy about it. There was just something wrong about that fruit. By winter, people started to notice that the annual visit by the peddler never happened. Normally, he made his rounds every year about that time, but now he was nowhere to be found.

When the people of Franklin got together and tried to remember when they had last seen him, one townsperson recalled that the previous December, the peddler had gone to visit Micah Root's farm, and no one had heard from the man since. And honestly, it was an easy puzzle for the town to put together. The missing peddler, Micah's strange behavior over the last year, the bloody apples. It was all starting to make sense. And so a group from the town went to go confront Micah about it. But word of their mission must have gotten to him before they did, because when they

arrived they found that he had hanged himself from the branches of that very same apple tree. Folklore is often like a gemstone. You can hold it up to the sun and rotate it, watching the different facets catch the light. Each new facet represents a fresh version of the story, or an evolution of an age-old theme. And the legend of Micah Rood definitely fits that bill. In some versions, the story takes place a little later. Micah's father had died in the French and Indian War, making Micah despise the French. In

that version of the story, Micah was driven into a rage after hearing the peddler's French accent, and that was why he murdered him. In another variation, Micah never actually hangs himself, but is instead tried and executed by the village. And in the earliest written version of the story, from 1839, the tale opens with Micah being executed for some unspecified murder. His final meal before dying was, of course, an apple. He was buried in the nearby town of Lisbon, and an apple tree grew up over the site of

his dead body. Like the tree in the original story, these apples also had a red center. There has been debate over what the original version of the legend is, but whatever the story started out as, what we do know is that there is some truth behind it. That's right, Michael Rood was a real person. The real Michael Rood was born in 1653 and died in 1728. He actually did live on a farm and he really did fall into hard times. He also seems to have developed some kind of a melancholy near the end of his life, or as we might call it today, a depression, until he was unable to care for himself. In fact, the town records from July 5th of 1727 read,

The inhabitants do now, by their votes, agree to allow each man that watches with Michael Rood two shillings per night, also to those who have attended Rood by day three shillings per day. But Micah never killed anyone, and he was never hanged for his crimes. So where did the murder in the story come from? Well, Micah didn't commit any crime, but his father did. In 1672, Micah's father was convicted of incest with his own daughter, Sarah, as punishment he was executed. In fact, he is the only person ever officially executed for incest in what is now the United States. And so there you go, Micah Rood was completely innocent,

but he did grow apples, although none of them were bloody. But here's what you get if you follow the roots of the tale. You see, there are thousands of varieties of heirloom apples from all around the world that have gone extinct, and it's believed that the gruesome apple from Micah's story was inspired by one of them. In eastern Connecticut in the early 1800s, an apple was discovered that was in fact speckled with red, as if it were splattered with blood. And even though it developed decades after Micah died, this apple became known as the Micah Rude Apple. Over the years, its name was shortened to the Mic.

Those apples might be gone today and Mike a rude long dead. But folklore has conspired to wrap them up together in its twisted roots. The result is a story with drama, horror and death and enough magic for anyone to sink their teeth into. One of my favorite parts of this job is being able to give all of you a new perspective on a familiar thing. To know that the next time you pick up an apple, you'll approach it just a little bit differently. And that, my friends, is the power of folklore.

But although an apple a day may keep the doctor away, according to our next folktale, it can sometimes also do the exact opposite. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode of Lore was made possible by Quince. It might not surprise you to learn that my favorite season is fall. And as the weather turns cooler, I'm looking forward to a lot of the same things you are.

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Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs! Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? They had finally made it. Reverend Philip Condit's family had just arrived in Oregon after five long months of grueling travel across the American West. It had been a trying journey and no one had a harder time than little Nancy Black. At only nine years old Nancy had been orphaned during the expedition. Her

mother had started the journey already sick and she never got better. In the end she didn't make it past the Rocky Mountains. So now poor Nancy was part of the Good Reverence family. They had taken her in with open arms, promising her a safe, loving home with them once they reached Oregon. On top of getting a new family, Nancy also got a built-in best friend, her new adoptive sister Mary Condit, who was also nine years old. The two young girls held fast to each other for the rest of their expedition, finding

stability and comfort in one another's company. But finally, the terror of the last five months was over. On September 7th of 1853, the wagon train arrived at the Philip Foster Farm in Eagle Creek, Oregon, and finally, they could begin their peaceful new lives together as a family. Immediately after they arrived, the pioneers flooded the local general store for provisions. Incidentally, the man who owned the store was the same man whose farm they had stopped at, Philip Foster. Foster's heart went out to the ragged crowd in his shop, and he told them that they could help themselves to as much of the fruit in his orchard as they wanted. After so long a journey, Foster's orchard must have looked like

the Garden of Eden. Tree after tree with sagging with fruit, pears and apples and peaches, all perfectly ripe and weighing down the branches. Nancy Black and Mary Condit wasted no time, delighted they ran to the first tree they saw, a peach tree, and then the girls gorged themselves on sweet, juicy peaches until they couldn't stomach another bite. It's easy to imagine these little girls, emaciated from so many days without a decent meal, giggling together in the orchard as peach juice ran down their chins. They probably thought that they had somehow floated up to heaven, but as beautiful as it was, this was not heaven.

By that evening, it was clear that the girls had eaten too much fruit. Maybe the peaches had spoiled in the hot sun, or maybe they had eaten the sweet food too quickly after starving for months on end. Whatever the case may be, they quickly fell ill, and by dawn, both Nancy and Mary were dead. They were buried right there at the farm, becoming the first residents of the Foster Family Cemetery. Though their graves are unmarked, it's said that a fruit tree grew over their bodies,

and every spring it bursts into bloom. Legend has it that their ghosts still haunt that tree to this very day, and locals know them as the Peach Girls. Now, this is not a well-known story outside of Oregon, but it's still loved by the residents of Eagle Creek. The Philip Foster Farm has even been known to host Halloween events where actors portray Mary and Nancy. And just a few decades ago, a local Girl Scout troop funded two gravestones for the Peach

Girls. Under each name, the stones are inscribed, age 9, died September 7, 1853, came over on a wagon train. And with these new gravestones, it seems that the girls are finally being mourned in a way that they deserve. Except for one tiny problem. The story that everyone knows is wrong. Now, before we move forward, I have to stress how amazing what you're about to hear is. This regionally beloved tale has always been accepted as fact.

And to be fair, some details are accurate, but not all. And so, thanks to the aid of the Oregon Historical Society, we are now able to reveal the truth behind the Peach Girls. Some documents have revealed that the Condit family arrived in Eagle Creek in 1854, not 1853. But that's an easy mistake to make, right? After all, that's just a year's difference. The rest of the discrepancies, though, are a little more serious.

It turns out that Nancy Black and Mary Condit weren't even actually close to the same age. According to the Condit's family genealogy, Mary was born in 1838. That means that she was at nine when she was on the wagon train to Oregon. She was 16. And while she may have taken Nancy under her wing as a new adoptive sister, it's unlikely that they were close friends with that level of age difference. The real kicker, though, is that Mary didn't die with Nancy. That's right. Mary died on October 2nd of 1862, eight years after Nancy passed away in 1854.

Mary lived well into adulthood, even getting married before she died. So if Mary survived, then what about Nancy? Well, tragically, Nancy actually did die on the foster farm. In his diary, the Reverend Condit wrote, The Lord in his mysterious providence sends sickness and death into our family. Little Nancy is called away from us to a better land as I humbly trust." He also attributed her death to Camp Fever, which was another name for typhus. But Camp Fever was frequently used as a generic term for a sudden illness, and so Nancy really

could have been killed by peaches. But the story gets even better from here. You see, Nancy's location at her time of death was confirmed by an 1862 letter from here. You see, Nancy's location at her time of death was confirmed by an 1862 letter from Reverend Condit's son, Cyrus, written to the Philip Foster Farm. Cyrus's parents had recently died and he wanted to move his adopted sister's remains to be buried near them. He wanted to bring Nancy home to her family. But Nancy isn't the only girl that Cyrus wrote about. On the back of the letter, someone from Foster Farm scrawled a note, which reads, Condit letter about Nancy Black, Sarah Whitley, both buried in our graveyard 1854,

died from eating peaches. The revelation is stunning. According to this letter, the peach girls were in fact real, and the general perception was that they had passed away after eating peaches. But if the second peach girl wasn't Mary, then it might have been a girl named Sarah Whitley. It's all gotten tangled up in some odd game of folklore telephone.

Nancy might have died alone, or she might have died with this Sarah. We don't know who Sarah Whitley was, only that Cyrus wrote to ask after her as well. All we really know today is that the little body under Mary Cunnett's gravestone is actually someone else. The long-forgotten Peach Girl. This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Alex Robinson, research by Jenna Rose Nethercote, and special help from Nikki and Renato at the Oregon Historical Society. Their hard work and expertise is the real reason we uncovered the true story

of the Peach Girls. Thank you for lending the team your archival sleuthing skills. It was an honor to work with you. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There's a paid version of lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad free. Plus subscribers get weekly mini episodes called Lore Bites. It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it. For more information about all of those ad-free options, go to lorepodcast.com slash support. Of course, Lore is much more than just a podcast.

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