The ideal partner

Apple trees have been growing on earth for eighty million years. Already during the Neolithic era, people were eating apples, indisputably the oldest fruit in the world.

And yet apples haven’t aged one bit! They are still part of our daily lives, and they continue to shape the collective imagination. For instance, if a man and a woman share an apple, legend has it that they will get married soon! But playing with an apple can turn out to be risky for a young woman in Sicily. If no one picks up the fruit she leaves in the street on the eve of St. John’s Day, she will become a widow very soon after her wedding.
As for Quebeckers, they have made apples into a metaphor for love :

• "singing the apple", means to court
• "biting the apple", means to go farther...

The fruit of all beliefs

Whether Greek or Celtic, mythology features apples as central characters in its stories. All cultures and traditions make reference to apples...even history and science!

• The Apple of Discord
  Eris, the goddess of strife, declared one day that a golden apple had to be awarded to the fairest goddess of Mount Olympus. Hera, Aphrodite and Athena fought over the trophy, until Zeus decided to call on Paris, a mortal, to decide. Paris, who was none other than the son of Priam, king of Troy, granted the Apple of Discord to Aphrodite. In exchange, he received the love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen. But the young woman was already married to the King of Spartacus, Menelaus. She fled with Paris anyway, and their action brought on the vengeance of Menelaus and the war of Troy.
• The apples of the Garden of the Hesperides
  Hercules was also confronted with the legendary fruit. In order to accomplish his 11th labour, he had to retrieve the golden apples from the Hesperides. These apples belonged to Hera, who had received them as wedding presents. The Hesperides were keeping them in a garden, hidden from the world, with the help of the dragon, Ladon. Hercules asked Atlas the Titan to go gather the fruit, in exchange for a favour; he would hold up the heavens for him while Atlas was fetching the apples. Upon his return, Atlas refused to go back to his place. Hercules pretended to yield, but asked the Titan to take the burden back while he grabbed a cushion...then he fled with the golden apples and triumphed!
• The fruit of Celtic wisdom
  For the Celts, apples were, above all else, the fruit of science and magic. Don’t forget that Merlin the Wizard taught his craft under an apple tree...
  The Celts believed that apples came from the island of Avalon, the island of apples. This plot of land, located beyond the ocean, marked the boundary between the world of the gods and that of the living. There is no doubt that for the mortals, the apple had a sacred, even mystical value!
• Temptation, and the heritage of sin
  Who hasn’t heard of the troubles of Adam and Eve? As the story goes, a piece of the forbidden fruit got stuck in Adam’s throat. This is the incident behind the famous “Adam’s apple” that some men have...
  But after all, was it really an apple? The Bible mentions a fruit, nothing more. It is the Latin translation that caused the apple to be named, due to a mix-up between malum (apple) and malus (evil).
• William Tell
  In the early 14th century, the emperor of Austria named an Austrian governor, Gessler, as the bailiff of the village of Artof. Upon arriving, the new bailiff decided to hang his hat up on the public square, thereby obliging the inhabitants to salute him symbolically every time they passed.
  One day, William Tell was crossing the square with his son, but he refused to submit. He was arrested immediately. Gessler, the bailiff, made him choose between the death sentence and a challenge: piercing with his crossbow an apple balanced on top of his son’s head. William Tell took the challenge and succeeded. This episode is at the origin of the Swiss rebellion against the Dukes of Austria and the independence of Switzerland.
• Newton’s apple
  Here is an apple that has made many heads turn, for a question of attraction!
  Did that apple know, when it fell on the sleeping Newton’s head, that it would trigger a major discovery in the history of science?
  In any event, it would seem that it was this chance event that led Isaac Newton to discover the laws of universal gravity...