“Here’s to thee, old apple tree, Whence thou may’st bud, And whence thou may’st blow! And whence thou may’st bear apples enow! Hats full! caps full! Bushel--bushel-sacks full! And my pockets full too! Huzza!” The pitcher being emptied, they returned to the house, the doors of which they were certain to find bolted by the females; who, however bad the weather might be, were inexorable to all entreaties to open them, till some one had divined what was on the spit. This was generally not easily thought of, and if edible was the reward of him who first named it. The party were then admitted.--_Kingsbridge and Salcombe Historically Depicted_, 1819, p. 71. Vide _Gent. Mag._ 1791, vol. lxi. p. 403. Brand, on the authority of a Cornishman, relates it also as a custom with the Devonshire people to go after supper into the orchard with a large milk-pan full of cider, having roasted apples pressed into it. Out of this each person in company takes what is called a _clome_--i.e. earthenware--cup, full of liquor, and standing under each of the more fruitful apple-trees, passing by those that are not good bearers, he addresses them in the following words: “Health to thee, good apple tree, Well to bear pocket-fulls, hat-fulls, Peck-fulls, bushel bag-fulls;” and then drinking up part of the contents, he throws the rest, with the fragments of the roasted apples, at the tree. At each cup, the company set up a shout.--_Pop. Antiq._ 1849, vol. i. p. 29. Herrick thus alludes to this custom and the superstition attached to it: “Wassail the trees, that they may bear You many a plum and many a pear; For more or less fruit they will bring, As you do give them wassailing.” GLOUCESTERSHIRE. In the parish of Pauntley, and the surrounding neighbourhood, the servants of each farmer formerly assembled together in one of the fields that had been sown with wheat. At the end of twelve lands, they made twelve fires in a row with straw, around one of which, much larger than the rest, they drank a cheerful glass of cider to their master’s health, and success to the future harvest; then, returning home, they feasted on cakes soaked in cider, which they claimed as a reward for their past labours in sowing the grain.--Fosbrooke, _Hist. of Gloucestershire_, 1807, vol. ii. p. 232. HEREFORDSHIRE.