Glossary · Culture
Apple howling
Also written howling, youling. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A Sussex and south-eastern name for the orchard wassail, in which parties went from orchard to orchard shouting and beating the trees to wake them and drive off harm.
- Subject
- Culture
- Also written
- howling, youling
In more detail
The word is the interesting part. Howling and youling are recorded in Sussex, Surrey and Kent for a custom the West Country calls wassailing, and the two names describe the same evening from different ends: wassail is a toast — Old English wes hál, be healthy — while howling is what the participants did. Both involve going to the orchard after dark, making a great deal of noise, and treating the trees as an audience.
What the noise was for is where honest description stops and interpretation begins. The explanation usually given — that it woke the trees and drove off evil spirits — is the explanation collectors were given by participants in the nineteenth century, which is evidence of what people then said about the custom rather than of why it began. Nothing in the record establishes an older meaning, and CiderHQ does not supply one.
The custom lapsed across most of the south-east during the twentieth century and has been revived in places since. A revival is a real thing and not a fake one, but it is a different thing from an unbroken tradition, and this site keeps the two apart.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Culture
Wassail
A midwinter orchard custom in which people gather round a chosen apple tree to drink its health, make noise, and pour or hang cider and soaked toast in its branches, traditionally to secure the coming crop.
Orchard
Traditional orchard
An orchard of widely spaced standard or half-standard trees on vigorous rootstocks, with a permanent grassland floor that is grazed or mown. In the United Kingdom it is a recognised priority habitat.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Ethnographic and folklore records of wassailing and orchard custom
Various county record offices and folklore societies · historical source · registered as competent for this subject
Wassailing is unusually well documented for a folk custom, and unusually badly reported: much popular writing dates it far earlier than the evidence supports. CiderHQ describes what the record shows and marks the rest as contested.
Traditional Orchard Habitat Inventory and orchard loss surveys
People’s Trust for Endangered Species / Natural England · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24. The traditional orchard campaign pages were reached and confirmed, but the orchard-loss figures CiderHQ wants from this body sit in survey outputs rather than on the campaign page, and were not located in this pass.