Beginning with the year: there is in Glamorganshire a New Year's Day custom of great antiquity and large present observance, called the apple gift, or New Year's gift. In every town and village you will encounter children, on and about New Year's Day, going from door to door of shops and houses, bearing an apple or an orange curiously tricked out. Three sticks in the form of a tripod are thrust into it to serve as a rest; its sides are smeared with flour or meal, and stuck over with oats or wheat, or bits of broken lucifer matches to represent oats; its top is covered with thyme or other sweet evergreen, and a skewer is inserted in one side as a handle to hold it by. In its perfection, this piece of work is elaborate; but it is now often a decrepit affair, in the larger towns, where the New Year is welcomed (as at Cardiff) by a midnight chorus of steam-whistles.