Eiseman was familiar with galls long before writing his first book, particularly the common ones referred to as “oak apples,” for their large size and roughly spherical shape.

Instead, Frith sent them strange singers, beautiful and sick like oak apples, like robins’ pincushions on the wild rose.

With silvery oak apples, and fir cones brown—

Green boughs and oak apples were worn, and even flaunted, about the streets, by groups of persons on May 29th, the anniversary of Charles the Second's restoration.

“They flogged three soldiers to death the other day for wearing oak apples in their caps.”