Another Greek custom combines the purifying powers of Epiphany water with the fertilizing influences of the Christmas log--round Mount Olympos ashes are taken from the hearth where a cedar log has been burning since Christmas, and are baptized in the blessed water of the river. They are then borne |345| to the vineyards, and thrown at their four corners, and also at the foot of apple- and fig-trees.{33} This may remind us that in England fruit-trees used to come in for special treatment on the Vigil of the Epiphany. In Devonshire the farmer and his men would go to the orchard with a large jug of cider, and drink the following toast at the foot of one of the best-bearing apple-trees, firing guns in conclusion:-- "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!"{34} In seventeenth-century Somersetshire, according to Aubrey, a piece of toast was put upon the roots.{35} According to another account each person in the company used to take a cupful of cider, with roasted apples pressed into it, drink part of the contents, and throw the rest at the tree.{36} The custom is described by Herrick as a Christmas Eve ceremony:-- "Wassail the trees, that they may bear You many a plum and many a pear; For more or less fruits they will bring, As you do give them wassailing."{37} In Sussex the wassailing (or "worsling") of fruit-trees took place on Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter blowing on a cow's horn.{38} The wassailing of the trees may be regarded as either originally an offering to their spirits or--and this seems more probable--as a sacramental act intended to bring fertilizing influences to bear upon them. Customs of a similar character are found in Continental countries during the Christmas season. In Tyrol, for instance, when the Christmas pies are a-making on St. Thomas's Eve, the maids are told to go out-of-doors and put their arms, sticky with paste, round the fruit-trees, in order that they |346| may bear well next year.{39} The uses of the ashes of the Christmas log have already been noticed. Sometimes, as in the Thurgau, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Tyrol, the trees are beaten to make them bear. On New Year's Eve at Hildesheim people dance and sing around them,{40} while the Tyrolese peasant on Christmas Eve will go out to his trees, and, knocking with bent fingers upon them, will bid them wake up and bear.{41} There is a Slavonic custom, on the same night, of threatening apple-trees with a hatchet if they do not produce fruit during the year.{42}