5 January: Wassailing

Wassailing is an old British tradition celebrated around Twelfth Night, usually on 5 or 6 January. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. The word Wassail comes from the Old English ‘was hál’, meaning ‘be hale’ or ‘good health’.

2. These words were used when drinking Toasts, and by the 14^th century, wassail had come to mean the drink used for the toast, especially spiced ale or Cider.

3. There were two distinct forms of wassailing. One would involve going from door to door, singing, offering drinks from a wassail bowl and receiving gifts or treats. This doesn’t happen much nowadays, but it’s thought to be a precursor to the modern tradition of carol singing. This form of wassailing is thought to be the premise behind the song “We wish you a merry Christmas” dating back to when wealthy people would give gifts of food, such as “figgy pudding” to those less fortunate. It wasn’t always benign: sometimes it would be crowds of rowdy youngsters who would demand treats and if they didn’t get them, would vandalise the house of anyone who refused. “We won’t go until we get some” is suggestive of that.

4. The type of wassailing still common today takes place in orchards, particularly those growing Apples or Pears. People gather in the orchards to sing and generally make noise. They might bang pots and pans or even let off shotguns. The purpose of this is twofold: firstly to wake up the trees and second to scare away any evil spirits lurking in the branches.

5. It’s a tradition especially common in cider producing areas like Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, where the ceremony will include drinking to the health of the trees and a good harvest. Wassailing is also a traditional event in Jersey, Channel Islands where cider (cidre) made up the bulk of the economy before the 20th century.

6. There are traditional songs for the occasion, including ‘The Gloucestershire Wassail Song’ (Wassail! Wassail, all over the town, our toast it is white and our ale it is brown’); ‘The Wassailer’s Carol’ (‘Here we come a-Wassailing among the leaves so green’); and Gower Wassail. English band Blur recorded ‘The Gloucestershire Wassail Song’ as ‘The Wassailing Song’ in 1992.

7. Some of the wassail drink would be sprinkled over the trees. The biggest tree would get wassail poured over its roots. Pieces of toast soaked in cider were placed in the forks of branches.

8. There might be a wassail King and Queen, who lead the procession from orchard to orchard and lead the singing. It would be the Wassail Queen who would place the cider soaked toast in the branches of the trees, lifted up by the crowd.

9. A Somerset folktale tells of the Apple Tree Man, the spirit of the oldest apple tree in an orchard, and in whom the fertility of the orchard is thought to reside. In the tale a man offers his last mug of mulled cider to the trees in his orchard and is rewarded by the Apple Tree Man who tells him the location of some buried Gold.

10. There’s even a wassailing tradition in London where the Bankside Mummers and the Holly Man ‘bring in the green’ and drink to the health of the people and the River Thames.