STEALING THE APPLES OF THE HESPERIDES SKIN
When the stem breaks and comes away from the apple, the letter on which it does so is the first letter of your future partner’s name, and the letter on which the stem pierces the skin is the first letter of your future partner’s surname. Many of the various charms used by young girls at Samhain to divine their future partners used apples, from the charm where you try and peel the skin off the apple in one continuous strip to ensure love in the following year, to apple bobbing, and the custom to twist the stem off the top of the apple whilst reciting the alphabet, one letter with each twist, and then stab the end of the stem into the apple’s peel, again while reciting the alphabet. These days, there are a fairly large array of spells, charms, bits of folklore and customs associated with the apples. Brian Froud's gorgeous painting based around the apple - very appropriate! Fortunately for wily Hercules, he managed to talk Atlas into holding the planet for a few minutes while he stretched his arms out in preparation for the long haul ahead, and when Atlas took the planet back, Hercules quickly snatched up the golden apples of youth and ran off. Atlas agreed, on the condition that Hercules hold the world while Atlas carried out the task, however when Atlas returned with the fruit, he refused to take the world back from Hercules. Hercules approached Atlas, who was carrying the world on his shoulders at the time, and persuaded him to get the apples from the garden as the Hesperides would not hurt their own father. Unfortunately the Hesperides were a little too fond of the apples and got into bad habits, stealing the fruit from the tree, so Hera set the serpent Ladon to coil about the tree’s roots to protect the tree from further theft. The Hesperus or Venus star, sacred to Aphrodite, rose above the tree every night. The nine Hesperides protected the tree and sang to it daily, songs comparing the sunrise and sunset to an apple hanging in the sky.
The tree on which these fabled apples grew was given to Hera by Mother Earth as a wedding gift on her marriage to Zeus. The eleventh task given to this famous hero was to steal the golden apples from the Garden of the Hesperides, a tricky task given that these maidens were the daughters of Atlas. Another famous Greek legend that features apples is a part of the labours of Hercules.
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