OLD BELIEFS.
What Devon folks do on Christmas Eve is curious, for i'f they have uppic orchards, they still take a bowl of toast and cider into the orchard on Christmas Eve. A piece of toast is then placed upon the principal tree, and this rhyme chanted: — “Apple-tree, we wassail thee, To bear and to flow, apples enow. Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!” In Sussex the custom is for young men also to blow cows’ horns at the same time, and each take hold of a tree. Normandy aud Somerset have the same old custom of wassailing the , apple-orchards. Country people in remote places still credit the pretty old tradition that at midnight on Christmas eve all cattle in stalls fall on their knees, that bees sing inside their hives and that cocks crow all through the night.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/MS19241220.2.61.18
Bibliographic details
Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1197, 20 December 1924, Page 12
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136OLD BELIEFS. Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1197, 20 December 1924, Page 12
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