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| Our Wassail and the wassailing bowl - please attribute this blog if you use this photo. |
"The following is a note of the same learned writer [Reed, of Reed's Shakspeare] on the Polyolbion, song 9 : "I see," says he, "a custome in some parts among us : I mean the yearly Was-haile in the country on the vigil of the New Yeare, which I conjecture was a usuall ceremony among the Saxons before Hengist, as a note of health-wishing (and so perhaps you might make it Wish-heil), which was exprest among other nations in that form of drinking to the health of their mistresses and friends. " Bene vos, bene vos, bene te, bene me, bene nostram etiam Stephanium," in Plautus, and infinite other testimonies of that nature (in him, Martial, Ovid, Horace, and such more), agreeing nearly with the fashion now used : we calling it a health, as they did also in direct terms ; which, with an idol called Heil, antiently worshipped at Cerne in Dorsetshire, by the English Saxons, in name expresses both the ceremony of drinking and the New Yeare's acclamation, whereto in some parts of this kingdom is joyned also solemnity of drinking out of a cup, ritually composed, deckt, and filled with country liquor," &c.
" Of Christmas sports, the Wassell Boule,
That tost up, after Fox-i'-th'-Hole ;
Of Blind-man-buffe, and of the care
That young men have to shooe the Mare:
Of Ash-heapes, in the which ye use
Husbands and wives by streakes to chuse:
Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds
A plentious harvest to your grounds."
That tost up, after Fox-i'-th'-Hole ;
Of Blind-man-buffe, and of the care
That young men have to shooe the Mare:
Of Ash-heapes, in the which ye use
Husbands and wives by streakes to chuse:
Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds
A plentious harvest to your grounds."
Brand 1813
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