You're playin' in my orchard, now don't you see,
If you don't like my apples, stop climbin' my tree...
Hesitation Blues
No fruit, not even the tomato, can compare with the apple as a love symbol or a simile in love and sex poetry. Although the peach, cherry and banana offer strong competition, the apple is the only forbidden fruit to which an entire volume could justifiably be devoted.
Apples were not the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, however. Adam never ate an apple, at least not in the Biblical account of his transgressions, which refers only to an unspecified forbidden fruit on the tree in the Garden of Eden. The Forbidden fruit of which the Lord said, "Ye shall not eat of the fruit which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die" (Genesis 3:3) was probably an apricot or a pomegranate; the Moslems intending no joke believe it was a banana. Numerous fruits and vegetables have been called apples. Even in medieval times pomegranates were "apples of Carthage," tomatoes and eggplant "loveapples," dates "finger apples" and potatoes "apples of the earth." Similarly, many places have been called the original Garden of Eden. Claims have been made for Persia, Armenia, Chaldea, Basra and El Mezy near Damascus, where the waters of the Tege and Barrady divide into four streams that are said to be the four streams of Moses mentioned in Genesis. One seventeenth century Swedish professor wrote a book attempting to prove that the garden was located in the Land of The Midnight Sun.
Tradition has it that Adam succumbed to Eve's wiles and ate of an apple from which she took the first bite, that a piece stuck in his throat forming the lump we call the Adam's Apple, and that all of us, particularly males, inherited this mark of his "fall." Modern scientific physiology, as opposed to folk anatomy, explains this projection of the neck, most prominent in adolescents, as being anterior thyroid cartilage of the larynx. But pioneer anatomists honored the superstition in the mid eighteenth century by calling it pomum Adami or Adam's Apple. They simply could find no other explanation for this evasive lump in the throat that seemed to move up and down.
Adam and Eve's story is almost identically recounted in The Bundehesh, a sacred Persian book where the "fall" comes to Mashya and Mashyana, the first man and woman. The story is complete with ser'p, nt and tree, though in their shame the two lovers covered their once innocent nakedness with animal skins instead of fig leaves.
Many respected Biblical authorities, such as William Cole, claim that the sexual act was not the original sin, Adam and Eve's sin being the defiance of God instead. As for the apple being the fruit in Paradise, St. Jerome was the first to make this claim in the fourth century A.D.; the belief then inspired the folklore that it was the innocent apple, in Milton's words, "carnal desire enflaming," which caused Adam "to cast lascivious Eyes upon Eve.
Few are aware that there is a real Adam's Apple Tree, Tabernaemontana Coronia, which is also called Nero's Crown. Why the folkname Adam's Apple Tree? Clearly a case of another claim on Eden. We quote from the Encyclopedia of Gardening (1838) by J. C. Loudon:
The inhabitants of Ceylon say that Paradise was placed in their country.
... They also point out as the tree which bore the forbidden fruit, the Devi Ladner or Tabernaemontana alternifoxha [the species name has since been changed to coronaria].... In confirmation of this tradition they refer to the beauty of the fruit, and the fine scent of the flowers, both of which are most tempting. The shape of the fruit gives the idea of a piece having been bitten off, and the inhabitants say it was excellent before Eve ate of it, though it is now poisonous.
Poisonous or not, the Kama Sutra gives a recipe for "An ointment made of the tabernamontana coronia (plus other ingredients) which can be used as an unguent of adornment." Anyone wanting to try the preparation might carefully consult that love manual, for the Adam's Apple Tree, or crape jasmine, or East Indian rosebay still other names for the same plant thrives in subtropical gardens of the United States.
The true apple has been lauded as a love fruit with far more frequency than its unrelated namesake. Old Scandinavian legends describe the apple as the fruit on which the gods would feast when they grew old and needed rejuvenation. "Comfort me with apples," says the Song of Solomon and today we describe a loved one as "the apple of his (or her) eye." In Greek legend, Aphrodite wins an apple as her prize in what might be called the world's first beauty contest, when Paris selects her as the fairest of the goddesses, although this particular apple has become known as the "apple of discord the machinations involved in selecting the first Miss Universe being the cause of the Trojan War.
In both ancient Greece and Rome lovers exchanged apples as tokens of affection or symbols of their love. The poetess Sappho wrote
Art thou the topmost apple The gatherers could not reach Reddening on the bough?
Today the French still call the api variety apple (our "Red Lady") after the legendary Roman gourmet Apicius, who is said to have produced it by grafting. Even the lowly crab apple was considered potent by the Romans, Ovid among them, and one charming ninth century Arabic poem shows how aptly the fruit was used as a simile for love:
The apple which I received from the hand Of the most charming gazellelike maiden, Which she had plucked herself from a branch That was as supple as her own body. And sweet it was to place my hand upon it
As though it was the breast of the one who gave it. Pure was the fragrance of the apple, Like the breath of the giver One could see the color of her cheek on it, And I thought I was tasting her lips When I began to eat the apple.
Sweet it was, the apple and such evocations of same, but there were those who objected to the fruit almost from the beginning. "This apple, dear Sisters," Ancren Riwle wrote in a handbook for nuns in about the year 1200, "is a token of everything that arouses lust and sensual delights." Fortunately, most everyone but nuns ignored his advice and an apple a day still helps keep sexual lassitude away. At least people have considered the apple a love food for centuries. John Ray wrote in 1670 that "An apple, an egg and a nut/ You may eat after a slut" (apparently in order to be ready for the next encounter), and Keats later praised candied apples in his "Eve of St. Agnes." As mentioned, an old German superstition went so far as to claim that eating an apple soaked in the sweat of your loved one's armpits would "increase love." One writer, Paulus Silentiarius, a sixth century Greek poet, did, however, note a certain deficiency in comforting anybody with apples, at least he gave applephiles a good line for all time to come. "If, my pet," he wrote, "you gave me these two apples as tokens of your breasts, I bless you for your great kindness. But if your gift does not go beyond the apples, you wrong me by refusing to quench the fierce fire you lit." '
Rabelais called the breasts pommes d'amour, apples of love, andthe testicles pommes; de cas pendre; in English slang "apple dumpling soup" has meant a woman~s bosom, an "apple monger" a pimp and the "apples" the testicles. All and all, there is quite a history behind Mom's apple pie: Everything Johnny Appleseed Wanted To Know About Apples But Was Afraid To Ask. Dating back to prehistory and the time when the poet of the Song of Solomon rejoiced:
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.