Response to Notes & Queries - Are Soulmates a Real Thing?

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 Below is a response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 7th August, 2022

The comment has since been deleted from the website.

This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented under the terms of fair use. 

This entry reinstates passages that I was forced to edit out of the original in order to bring the comment under the 5000 word character limit.

Are soulmates a real thing?

In many English villages, you will find, at one end, the church – a diminishing focal point of the community - and at the other extreme, a green space of some sort. It may be no more than a scrap of grass occupying the off-centre of a dusty junction, where the road branches at peculiar angles in deference to ancient field boundaries. Or it may be something larger and more developed. No matter the size, somewhere upon it you are likely to find an apple tree. It will be one of the hardier variants with lifespans that stretch across the centuries - a bartingale (also known as a barngale) or one of the few remaining gladhanders. Somewhere around the lower part of the trunk, you will find, carved into the bark, the misshapen likeness of a sword pointing upward, the blade having warped as it widened with the tree.

Viewed through the lens of Christianity this rustic arrangement takes on a symbolic meaning. The church represents where we are now in our relationship with God. The distant apple tree is symbolic is of where we came from – the Garden of Eden – and where we might one day return, though opinion is divided on this matter. Many Christian theologists claim that our banishment from the garden is permanent – the catalyst that set our species on a path toward some alternative state of grace that we must achieve through our own agency.

I have a friend named Wiggins who was, up until a few months ago, a reverend for the Church of England. I don't think he would object to my description of him as an 'Edenist'. He believes that when Adam and Eve shared a bite from the same piece of fruit, they were guilty of elevating their own bond over and above the bond that they shared with God.

In early Christian iconography, the apple is portrayed as a harmonious influence. The monasteries during the Anglo-Saxon period cultivated apple orchards. There was a ritual known as the compage – a bucolic variation of the Holy Communion – in which several brothers would eat from the same apple and thereafter enter into a state of fellowship and equanimity. There are illuminated manuscripts that document this ritual. My favourite is a page for the Toab Bible – not a bible as you would imagine, but an incomplete variation of the Old Testament, seasoned with insights into the minutiae of life at the monastery. Among these, you will find a small painting of a pair of standing monks who are attempting to take bites from a very large apple that they have pressed between their heads.

There is some sketchy scientific research suggesting that the chemicals within a singular apple can induce a state of mutual harmony in those who consume it, as if some compound within the fruit is capable of placing people on the same mental wavelength for a short while. A similar, less intense, effect can be achieved by eating apples from the same tree.

I am just remembering an aid worker, named Joan Illsley, who I met in Senafe, who was rightly disdainful of my belief that the quinine in a gin and tonic would be sufficient to stave off malaria for another day. She would no doubt be equally scornful of the idea that a singular apple can affect a momentary union of the souls. And yet there are many who believe it to be true:

A long-standing tradition (one of many that seemed to breathe their last following the Second World War) was for courting couples to meet under the boughs of the apple tree in their village, every Sunday after church, and share a piece of the fruit when it was in season. It seems strange that the clergy would accommodate a ritual that so obviously recreates the original sin. Maybe it is regarded as a personal acknowledgement of that first misstep under the judgmental eyes of our creator. I will have to ask Wiggins about it, the next time I see him.

The pips from every apple that was consumed by these formative couples were diligently harvested. When a hundred had been gathered, the pair were regarded by their peers as sufficiently bonded to enter into a state of wedlock. Given the shortness of the apple season, and the stipulation that only fruit that had been plucked from the boughs could be eaten,, it would take a couple between two and three years to acquire this quantity of seeds. There are stories of men falling from high branches, or brawling over the last fruit of the season. Apple bobbing, also known as apple gazing, was a last ditch attempt to gather enough seeds - an end of season lottery.

There is a painting by Paradisiss that hangs in the National Gallery: A young man broods over a collection of apple seeds. He has between 96 and 99 (the shadows make it difficult to make an accurate count – I suppose the fact that he has less than 100 is all that matters). In the background, an apple withers in a fruit bowl. He has fallen short and must wait another year before he can marry.

Maybe there is a unifying compound within apples that can lay the chemical foundations for a strong bond of kinship, or even a strong and lasting marriage. Or perhaps it is the act of making time for each other, sharing simple food and discussing a shared future that is the true source of an enduring union.

“You can call it the placebo effect if you want,” said Alan Stone. “I do know that, when I lived in Uchelbrent, during the miner's strike, one night they sent in a crew to bring down a pair of apple trees at the end of the village. After that the community, that had been united up until that point, fell apart. Everybody left. The village was in ruins by the end of the century. You go there now and it's 80% holiday cottages and glamping.”

At that moment, a scattered bridal bouquet, that had been cast into the winds from the top of the bell tower on the crest of the hill only a minute before, raced past us, studding the netting around the raspberry beds with delicate flowers.

Later, he carefully raised the stems from where they dangled in the holes of the mesh. He gathered them up and brought them inside, where he placed them in a crazed white vase that had belonged to his grandparents, on a tiled sill above the kitchen draining-board.

I hope this is of help.

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