Watsa Wassail?

British Wassailers

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

If only I'd known years ago. This is the jaunty song that North Americans usually sing as Here We Come a-Caroling (if at all) with the refrain line "Love and joy come to you, and a merry Christmas too." Why change it? Well most of us wouldn't know a wassail from a weasel, so this is a more comprehensible if less intriguing alternative.

According to that unimpeachable source, Wikipedia, the word wassail comes from the Anglo-Saxon greeting Wæs þu hæl, meaning "be thou hale"—i.e., “be in good health”. The correct response to the greeting is Drinc hæl meaning "drink and be healthy".

There were two forms of wassailing during Yuletide, the house-to-house visiting and good cheer tradition and "the ancient custom of visiting orchards in cider-producing regions of England, reciting incantations and singing to the trees to promote a good harvest for the coming year."

What?! The former sounds a lot like the delightful Newfoundland tradition of mummering, which I've written about in the past. The latter intrigues me greatly. What a wonderful notion of standing in an orchard or perhaps a forest and singing to the trees.

There is a recent article in the Christian Century by Terra Brockman about their family celebration of this ancient spiritual practice of gratitude. She offers:

This is the tradition that my sister Teresa had us revive. First we make a big pot of wassail using this past season’s apple cider. Then as midnight draws near we bundle everyone up, and traipse out of the house, with the kids leading the way and the adults bringing up the rear with a jug of steaming wassail and a bag full of pieces of bread.

Last year, although the mercury was hovering at zero, and the barren trees cast stark shadows, we laughed all the way from the house to the old orchard at the crest of the hill. Once there, we placed cider-soaked pieces of bread on the bare branches for the birds, thought to be good spirits, while the kids banged pots and pans to ward off the bad ones. Then we poured some wassail at the base of each tree, formed a circle, and sang an early American version of the old wassail song:

Let every man take off his hat
And shout out to th’old apple tree:
Old Apple tree, old apple tree;
We’ve come to wassail thee,
Hoping thou wilt bear
Hats full, caps full, three bushel bags full;
And a little heap under the stairs.

For a decade we lived in apple country around Bowmanville and a couple in the congregation gave us a bushel of apples at Christmas every year. If I had known I would have arranged to have a congregational wassail. There are orchards in Prince Edward County, so I'll have to do some scheming.

Thanks to Terra and CCfor this enlightenment. Now to find some of those incantations...



Wassailing, the winter ritual of expressing gratitude to the plants and animals who provide us with sustenance, at an orchard. Photo © Transition Brockley via Creative Commons license.

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/first-person/why-we-wassail