Oh my goodness! If you’ve read many of my posts on this site you’re probably familiar with my saying, “Well, I thought this was a simple song . . .” But nowhere would this phrase be more appropriate than it is here, as I attempt to explain the concept of “wassailing” and then apply those ideas to two traditional Christmas songs that are often performed during the holidays, “Gloucestershire Wassail (Wassail, Wassail, All Over the Town)” and “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” with a bonus mention of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” which doesn’t directly mention wassailing but which contains wassail-adjacent ideas as you’ll see below.
So I’m just going to plunge in, starting with the meaning of “wassail” and going on from there, and I’ll see how far I get. Is anyone surprised to find out that the word comes from Anglo-Saxon? People would greet each other, especially at festive occasions, by saying “Wæs þu hæl,” meaning “be thou hale”—i.e., “be in good health.” The spelling and pronunciation morphed into “wassail,” and then came to be associated with the drink that accompanied the greeting. Usually it’s some kind of hot spiced wine, or “mulled” wine; it can also be ale or beer—or cider–depending on the specific tradition. So that all seems pretty clear as far as it goes.
But it doesn’t go very far, I’m afraid. The standard wording for “Wassail!” says, “Our toast (or bread) it is white and our ale it is brown.” Ever wondered about that toast thing? I sort of thought that it was a reference to white bread as being considered something high class and tasty, and a nice contrast to the hearty brown ale. But it’s not. I’m going to quote here from Wikipedia as I don’t think I can improve upon it:
The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen leads the song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next, the wassail Queen will then be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast soaked in Wassail from the Clayen Cup as a gift to the tree spirits (and to show the fruits created the previous year).
You may at this point be saying, “Wait just a dog-gone minute! That’s not about Christmas! That’s a pagan autumn festival.” And you’d be right. Oh dear—this is all so complicated. Let me see if I can untangle things just a bit, but first let me ask you to think about some family tradition you have and to figure out how you’d explain it to an outsider or even to ask if you understand it yourself. For instance, when I was growing up my brother and I got to unpack our stockings on Christmas Eve, but we waited until late Christmas morning to open our presents that were under the tree. The stocking presents were supposedly “from Santa,” but I don’t think we ever really believed that, even as little kids. The regular Christmas presents were clearly from our parents. Why did we do it that way? I’m not sure, but I think it may have gotten started because of the weird hours my dad worked as a milkman, going to bed super early and then getting up at around 2:00 AM to deliver the milk. He probably had to do his route even on Christmas, just as the paper route boys had to do their deliveries. So we’d have had to wait until he got back to open our presents, I guess. Opening the stockings the night before took a little edge off the anticipation: at least we got something before late morning on Christmas Day, when my dad was around. And why did we even have stockings? We didn’t have a chimney. There was no way for Santa to get in and fill them. The reason we used them was that my Aunt Eleanor had sent them to us, one for me and one for my brother, with our names spelled out in felt letters on them. I think she had made them. So of course we had to use them. Right?
You see? Even the simplest little family traditions are hard to pin down completely. I have no idea why my husband’s Aunt Karen makes that orange-jello-sherbert-and-mandarin-orange thing for Thanksgiving dinner, but it has always made an appearance on her table over the years we’ve gone there, and my son has always loved it, calling it the “orange ‘tuff” when he was little. So that’s what we’ve always called it.
Okay, Debi! Enough of your priceless stories about yourself! Let’s get to the actual subject of this post. I’m going to list below a skeleton outline of various wassail traditions, and then at the end I’ll give you a source for more detailed and scholarly information. Here goes:
- Early Britain had its own pagan traditions before the coming of the Romans under Claudius in the first century AD. These may or may not have involved worship of trees and priests called Druids (there’s some doubt about whether or not the Druids actually existed). Roman traditions and religion, including fertility rites involving the Roman fruit goddess Pomona, got mixed up with the British traditions.
- At some point the idea of going around and singing, usually with a wassail bowl filled with some alcoholic drink, split into two parts: cider-wassailing and house-wassailing. The cider variety involved the orchard ceremonies detailed above and would take place in the fall, after apple harvest. The house variety involved going from house to house and singing carols during what became the Christmas season after the coming of Christianity, sometimes offering the drink from the bowl and sometimes asking the bowl to be filled by the listeners. Various other items were requested in exchange for the singing, thus leading to the demand “Now bring us a figgy pudding” in “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” which is actually a wassailing song at heart. The singers make it clear that “we won’t go until we get some, so bring it right here.”
- But the split isn’t/wasn’t always clear between the autumn festivals and the Christmas ones, since they had come originally from a common source. So the going-from-house-to-house idea morphed into what we now call “trick or treating,” which is of course also in the fall, and was often a far cry from the innocent children’s activity that it (usually) is today. Bands of young men roamed around wearing masks and carrying jack-o-lanterns, sometimes actually staging what today we’d call “home invasions.” (You can read all about how we got Halloween in this post.)
- All of these traditions got all muddled up in the folk songs that grew out of them. Because the songs themselves are so festive, and so much fun to sing, most people don’t worry too much about what they actually mean. But I think you’ll have a whole extra layer of enjoyment if you think of those ancient, medieval and even Victorian people going around and singing outside the master’s house in the hope of getting a few coins and some food.
Here’s a snippet from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which Scrooge chases away one such hopeful caroler:
The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
“God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!”
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
Here’s a video performance for each of the main wassail carols I’ve mentioned, and then, if your appetite isn’t completely sated, I’ll give the promised link to the scholarly source plus the lyrics to both songs. A feast!
It was a nice surprise for me to find a version on YouTube of a Colorado choir, the Longmont Chorale, performing “Wassail, Wassail” with the duo of Margot Krimmel and Beth Gadbaw of White Birds Music, with whom my own choir has performed a number of times.
And here’s a good arrangement for men’s chorus of “Here We Come A-Wassailing”–
And then Karl Jenkins’ fun version of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” unfortunately without a live choir but still giving a flavor of the thing:
First, the long and scholarly article, as promised: “Wassailing! Notes on the Songs and Traditions” from a great website “The Hymns and Carols of Christmas.”
Here are the lyrics to “Wassail! Wassail!”–I think you’ll be able to figure out all the references. “Filpail the cow” is pretty obvious. “Broad Betty” and her “broad horn” is a reference to the fact that there were sometimes actual cow’s horns blown. You can also see that the wording is often used for the sounds of the words–why else toast Dobbin’s “right cheek”? Because “cheek” and “beef” kinda, sorta rhyme.
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And here are ones to “Here We Come A-Wassailing”–
Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green;*
Here we come a-wand’ring
So fair to be seen.
REFRAIN:
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you a Happy New Year
And God send you a Happy New Year.
Our wassail cup is made
Of the rosemary tree,
And so is your beer
Of the best barley.
REFRAIN
We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door;
But we are neighbours’ children,
Whom you have seen before.
REFRAIN
Call up the butler of this house,
Put on his golden ring.
Let him bring us up a glass of beer,
And better we shall sing.
REFRAIN
We have got a little purse
Of stretching leather skin;
We want a little of your money
To line it well within.
REFRAIN
Bring us out a table
And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a mouldy cheese,
And some of your Christmas loaf.
REFRAIN
God bless the master of this house
Likewise the mistress too,
And all the little children
That round the table go.
REFRAIN
Good master and good mistress,
While you’re sitting by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who are wandering in the mire.
REFRAIN
*These “green leaves” must refer to pine tree, hollies, and mistletoe, since they’re all evergreen. This isn’t a cider-wassailing song, obviously, since the apple trees would have lost their leaves by the time the apple harvest was over. Just in case you were wondering!
both sets of lyrics accessed via Wikipedia
Would you like to make a version of wassail yourself? I’d highly recommend this video with host Max Miller of “Tasting History”–he has a plethora of images and sources, and he makes and then drinks wassail from a fairly standard recipe. What larks!
© Debi Simons
What a fun article! Especially since we had wassail last night with dinner at our son’s and daughter-in-law’s home.