by A.C. Fisher Aldag
An older tradition, enacted around the British Isles during the days between the Winter Solstice and mid-January, is Wassailing the Trees. This entails a procession into the apple orchards with a bucket of cider and some toasted bread, soaking the bread with the cider, and leaving it in the branches or at the bases of the trees. Participants propose toasts to the health of the trees and offer blessings. A King and Queen may be selected to make the libations. Songs are sung, dances are enjoyed and prayers or incantations are recited as this ritual is performed. Mummer’s plays and games may be included in the ritual, as well as firing guns into the air and/or banging on pots and pans to frighten away evil spirits. And of course, a bowl of hot apple cider, or Wassail, is enjoyed.
While Wassailing the Trees may have originally been performed at the Winter Solstice, it is now primarily associated with Christmas, New Year’s Eve, or “Twelfth Night”, also called the Epiphany on the Christian calendar. This is the day that Christmas festivities come to an end. Some celebrate the holiday around January 17th, which was Twelfth Night on the old Julian calendar. The earliest known reference to Wassailing in literature dates to the sixteenth century, although some scholars can trace it to the 1400s, and others believe it may hearken back to Anglo-Saxon Pagan times. Most participants agree that the custom’s purpose is to honor the trees and to increase their fertility, leading to a healthy, abundant apple crop in the fall.
The word “Wassail” likely comes from the Middle English “Waes Hail” which means “To your health”, which probably comes from the old Norse “Wes Hale”, literally to be “hale” or healthy. The Wassail songs we enjoy at Christmas or Yule, including “Here We Come a-Wassailing” and “Wassail all over the Town” are now associated with singing carols from door to door, yet may derive from the tree blessing rites. The “Twelve Lords a-Leaping” in the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song may refer to the Morris dancing that often accompanies the Wassail rituals. Another custom includes going from door to door either carrying a bowl of hot cider mixed with spices and wine, or singing at each home and being invited indoors for a cup of the drink. Feasting is often held after the ceremony.
The Wassail Song:
Wassail! Wassail! All over the town,
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree;
With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.
This song dates back to the Middle Ages in Gloucestershire, England. Historian A. H. Bullen writes:
“This custom was kept up till the end of the last century. Brand relates that in 1790 a Cornish man informed him it was the custom for the Devonshire people on the eve of Twelfth Day to go after supper into the orchard with a large milk-pan full of cyder with roasted apples in it. Each person took what was called a clayen cup, i.e. an earthenware cup full of cyder, and standing under each of the more fruitful trees, sung —
“Health to thee, good apple-tree,
Well to bear, pocket-fulls, hat-fulls,
Peck-fulls, bushel-bag-fulls.”
“After drinking part of the contents of the cup, he threw the rest, with the fragments of the roasted apples, at the trees, amid the shouting of the company. Another song sung on such occasions was:
“Here’s to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou may’st bud, and whence thou may’st blow,
And whence thou may’st bear apples enow
Hats full! caps full!
Bushel-bushel-sacks full,
And my pockets full, too, huzza!”
“It is supposed that the custom was a relic of the sacrifice to Pomona [the Roman Goddess of Fruits].”
Henry David Thoreau also cited Brand's Popular Antiquities in his essay Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree in 1862. He wrote that young men engaged in the practice of “Apple Howling” on New Year’s Eve in some English counties, which included blowing horns, rapping the tree trunks with sticks, and chanting:
“Stand fast, root! Bear well, top!
Pray God send us a good howling crop:
Every twig, apples big;
Every bough, apples enow!
“WASSAIL the trees, that they may bear
You many a plum and many a pear:
For more or less fruits they will bring,
As you do give them wassailing.”
The tradition of wassailing is offered on this blog, with a video … http://goo.gl/XWHZDk
A wassail celebration with a photo – this one includes lanterns … http://goo.gl/QhBqP8
Wassail Recipe:
Alcoholic—
Non-alcohol –