Apple (apple bobbing)
An apple floating in a tub of water: ducking or bobbing for apples, a Halloween party game recorded in England, Scotland and Ireland, where apples and nuts were the food of the night.
Meaning
“Nuts and apples are everywhere in requisition” on Halloween, Chambers’s Book of Days (1864) says of the customs of the whole United Kingdom. Its “grand sport with apples” was to set them afloat in a tub of water and duck for them with no hands; apples with stalks went first. In the other game, “perhaps still observed in some localities”, a stick hung from the ceiling with a candle on one end and an apple on the other, and players leapt at the spinning apple with their teeth, often getting the candle instead. The National Museum of Ireland lists “bobbing” for apples and “apples on a string” among the common Irish Halloween games.
Origin and history
John Brand (1853 edition) found young people in the north of England diving for apples on Halloween, or catching at them on a hanging beam with a lighted candle at the other end, “their hands being tied behind their backs.” A letter dated Dublin, 31 October, in The Life and Character of Harvey, the Famous Conjuror of Dublin (1728), mentions servants who “demanded apples, ale, and nuts” for the night.
Apples also told fortunes. Robert Burns’s notes to his poem “Halloween”, reprinted by Brand, describe going alone with a candle to a looking-glass and eating an apple in front of it, when “the face of your conjugal companion to be, will be seen in the glass, as if peeping over your shoulder.” Chambers remarks that Burns never mentions ducking for apples. In 19th-century Ireland, Lisa Bitel writes, girls peeled an apple in one long strip and read the peel for the initials of their future husbands.
The Pomona theory
The idea that apple games come from a Roman feast is old. Brand quotes Hutchinson’s history of Northumberland: 1 November “seems to retain the celebration of a festival to Pomona, when it is supposed the summer stores are opened”. Regina Hansen of Boston University reports that some scholars have linked Halloween to the Roman festival of Pomona, goddess of fruit trees. Hutchinson put it no higher than “seems”. Bitel and the National Museum of Ireland describe apple games simply as part of the Irish Halloween. For the other food of the night see soul cakes.
See also
Soul cake, Jack-o’-lantern, Black cat, Witch’s hat and broom, Bat, Skeleton and skull.
Sources
- Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 1 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 1 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), Allhallow Even, pp. 377–378; p. 385 (Burns, Halloween, note)
- The Book of Days, vol. 2 (Robert Chambers, 1864), Robert Chambers, ed., The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities, vol. 2 (London and Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, 1864 edition), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), October 31, Halloween, pp. 519–520
- Ghost turnips, the púca, fortune-telling and evil abductions (Clodagh Doyle, National Museum of Ireland), Clodagh Doyle, Keeper of the National Folklife Collection, National Museum of Ireland news (2023; list first published October 2020), National Museum of Ireland, 2. Feasting and games
- The ancient Irish get far too much credit for Halloween (Lisa Bitel, 2024), Lisa Bitel, Dean's Professor of Religion and Professor of History, University of Southern California; The Conversation, 29 October 2024, The Conversation, paragraph on 19th-century Ireland
- Tricking and treating has a history (Regina Hansen, 2017), Regina Hansen, Boston University; The Conversation, 25 October 2017, The Conversation, paragraph on Pomona
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research