SC - Mulled Cider

[Elysant at aol.com]

Adamantius wrote:

"...wonder if we're going to find that "mulled" is British West Country 
dialect for "hot".

Somerset is the English county usually associated with cider or as they 
pronounce it - "Zyder".  

I'm guessing that apples have grown there in abundance for ages... the island 
of Avalon supposedly was there somewhere - the word meaning Apples in Welsh. 
Somerset itself was called so because in the past it was only in the summer 
that the estuary mud set there.  Summer-set.  Hence a lot of the high ground 
were considered islands at times in the past.

Incidentally they make the Cider out of "Cider Apples" - I"m not sure which 
type of apples would be considered Cider apples though (anyone?).  A popular 
folk song from there goes (something like) "We're all up from Zomerzet where 
the zyder apples grow!"

Back to "mulled".  I don't know other than English or Welsh what language 
would influence the dialect there, and Welsh words for hot or warm are things 
like "twym" or "poeth" - not at all like "mulled".

So I looked mulled up the the Merriam-Websters Online dictionary, and came up 
with the fact that "mull" as a verb comes "from Middle English  - from mul, 
mol dust, probably from Middle Dutch"  It is akin to the Old English "melu" 
meaning "meal" and refers the reader to "meal".

To mull first appeared in the 15th century and currently means "to grind or 
mix thoroughly - PULVERIZE".

Under "meal" I found the additional information that "meal" comes also from 
the old English "melu" and is akin to Old High German "melo" meal, Latin 
"molere" to grind,  and the Greek "myle" to mill.

One set of current deifinitions for meal (N) is 
"1.  The usu. coursely ground and unbolted seeds of a cereal, grass or pulse; 
especially: CORNMEAL.

2.  A product resembling seed meal esp. in particle size or texture."

So I think the mulling is referring to the texture of the cider - thicker 
perhaps?

In another part of his post Adamantius wrote:

>(snip) mulled beer (traditionally made with a red-hot poker thrust into it) 

My great grandmother (Welsh) used to put a red hot poker into water to infuse 
iron into it for people who were anaemic.  Don't know how related that is to 
the topic at hand, but thought it an interesting tidbit.

Elysant