30-486: Wassail ( / ˈ w ɒ s əl / , /- eɪ l / WOSS-əl, -ayl ) is a beverage made from hot mulled cider , ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing , an ancient English Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year. According to the Oxford English Dictionary ,
60-523: A 500-year-old batch. It was mentioned and explained to Bing Crosby by Frank Sinatra in a special episode of the Frank Sinatra Show entitled "Happy Holidays with Bing and Frank" released 20 December 1957. In 2004, the alternative Christmas message was presented by The Simpsons who close out with a cup of "traditional British wassail". When the director cuts, they spit it out in disgust, with Bart remarking that it tasted "like hurl". Wassail
90-447: A circle around the largest apple tree, hang pieces of toast soaked in cider in the branches for the robins , who represent the 'good spirits' of the tree. A shotgun is fired overhead to scare away evil spirits, and the group sings the following being the (last verse): Old Apple tree, old apple tree; We've come to wassail thee; To bear and to bow apples enow ; Hats full, caps full, three bushel bags full; Barn floors full and
120-411: A close resemblance to the "Gloucestershire Wassail". In her song "Oh England My Lionheart", on the 1978 album Lionheart , Kate Bush sings, "Give me one wish, and I'd be wassailing in the orchard, my English rose." The alternative rock band Half Man Half Biscuit from Tranmere , England, included a song named "Uffington Wassail" on their 2000 album Trouble over Bridgwater . With its references to
150-478: A drink called 'lambswool' drunk on Lammas day, still known in Shakespeare 's time. Later, the drink evolved to become a mulled cider made with sugar, cinnamon , ginger and nutmeg , topped with slices of toast as sops and drunk from a large communal bowl . Modern recipes begin with a base of wine , fruit juice or mulled ale, sometimes with brandy or sherry added. Apples or oranges are often added to
180-484: A little heap under the stairs. "Lamb's wool" or "lambswool" is an early variety of wassail, brewed from ale or mead, baked apples, sugar and various spices. Next crowne the bowle full of With gentle Lambs wooll [ sic ], Adde sugar, nutmeg, and ginger, With store of ale too, And thus ye must doe, To make the Wassaile a swinger . British-Irish antiquarian Charles Vallancey proposed that
210-503: A punch bowl, Niles retorts, "Then it wouldn't be Wassail then would it?" In response, Martin looks up 'wassail' in the dictionary, defined as 'a Christmas punch'. In the Good Eats holiday special episode "The Night Before Good Eats", Alton Brown is given a wassail recipe by St. Nicholas which he then must make to appease a mob of angry carolers. In Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas Celebration, which originally aired December 21, 1987,
240-564: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Stanza In poetry , a stanza ( / ˈ s t æ n z ə / ; from Italian stanza , Italian: [ˈstantsa] ; lit. ' room ' ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation . Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes , but they are not required to have either. There are many different forms of stanzas . Some stanzaic forms are simple, such as four-line quatrains . Other forms are more complex, such as
270-576: Is a beverage that has been prepared with these spices (usually through heating in a pot with mulling spices and then straining). Mulling spices may also be added to the brewing process to make spiced beer. The combination of spices varies, but it usually consists of cinnamon , cloves , allspice , and nutmeg , and less frequently star anise , peppercorn , or cardamom . It also usually includes dried fruit, such as raisins, apples, or orange rind . Mulling spices can be bought prepackaged. This cooking article about preparation methods for food and drink
300-492: Is to awaken 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 lead the song or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next; the wassail Queen is then lifted into the boughs of the tree where she places toast soaked in wassail from
330-608: The Rowena story , which has wes heil ... drinc heil (or, in a variant reading, was heil ). Later Middle English manuscripts have a variety of spellings, including wæs hæil, wæshail, wessail, washayl, washail, wesseyl, wassayl, wassaile, wassaylle, wessayle, whatsaile and whatsaill . The second expression, "drinkhail", may derive either from Old Norse or Old English, again with a variety of spellings including drinkel, drincheheil, drechehel, drincheheil, drinceseil, drinqueheil, drinkeil and dringail . The earliest example of
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#1732851670739360-473: The Spenserian stanza . Fixed verse poems , such as sestinas , can be defined by the number and form of their stanzas. The stanza has also been known by terms such as batch , fit , and stave . The term stanza has a similar meaning to strophe , though strophe sometimes refers to an irregular set of lines, as opposed to regular, rhymed stanzas. Even though the term "stanza" is taken from Italian, in
390-469: The 1700s, and possibly earlier: 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 unto thee. At Carhampton , near Minehead , the Apple Orchard Wassailing is held on Old Twelfth Night (17 January) as a ritual to ask the gods for a good apple harvest. The villagers form
420-640: The Israeli Eurovision contestant Dana International , the Sealed Knot English Civil War re-enactment society, and also to the skier Vreni Schneider , the meaning of the song's title in this context is a little obscure. In 2013 Folk Rock musician Wojtek Godzisz created an arrangement of the traditional Gloucestershire Wassail words with original music for the Pentacle Drummers' first Annual Wassail festival (2013), called "Wassail". For
450-581: The Italian language the word "strofa" is more commonly used. In music, groups of lines are typically referred to as verses . The stanza in poetry is analogous with the paragraph in prose : related thoughts are grouped into units. This short poem by Emily Dickinson has two stanzas of four lines each: I had no time to hate, because The grave would hinder me, And life was not so ample I Could finish enmity. Nor had I time to love; but since Some industry must be, The little toil of love, I thought,
480-465: The Pentacle Drummers' second Wassail festival (2014), the pagan rock band Roxircle also wrote a Wassail song especially for the event called "Wassail (Give Thanks to the Earth)". The Pentacle Drummers encourage their headline acts to write a song centered around wassailing, a way to keep the tradition alive. The English progressive rock band Big Big Train released an EP entitled "Wassail" in 2015, named for
510-462: The cider-producing counties in the South West of England (primarily Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire) or South East England (Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Suffolk), as well as Jersey, wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony that involves singing and drinking to the health of trees on Twelfth Night in the hopes that they might better thrive. The purpose of wassailing
540-505: The clayen cup as a gift to the tree spirits (and to show the fruits created the previous year). In some counties, the youngest boy or "Tom Tit" will stand in for the Queen and hang the cider-soaked toast in the tree. Then an incantation is usually recited. A folktale from Somerset reflecting this custom tells of the Apple Tree Man , the spirit of the oldest apple tree in an orchard, and in whom
570-416: The drinking phrases in a specifically English context comes from a manuscript of 1275, preserving a 12th-century text which has Old English : Þat freond sæiðe to freonde...Leofue freond wæs hail Þe oðer sæið Drinc hail . [That friend said to [the other] friend..., "beloved friend, wassail!"; the other said, "drinkhail!"] By c. 1300, the sense had extended from a toast to the drink itself, especially to
600-476: 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 reveals to him the location of buried gold. British folk rock band Steeleye Span opened their third album Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again (1971) with an extended, minor-key version of " Gower Wassail ", Tim Hart singing
630-463: The main characters of the special Rex and Herb talk about the term "wassail" regarding a specific Christmas carol, which is comically mis-sung by varying groups that show up throughout the show. Mulling spices Mulling spices are a spice mixture used in drink recipes. The spices are usually added to hot apple cider , mulled wine , glögg , wassail , hippocras , and other drinks (such as juices) during autumn or winter. A "mulled" drink
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#1732851670739660-401: The mix, and some recipes also call for beaten eggs to be tempered into the drink. Great bowls turned from wood, pottery or tin often had many handles for shared drinking and highly decorated lids; antique examples can still be found in traditional pubs. Hence the first stanza of the traditional carol Gloucestershire Wassail ; variations of which were known to have been sung as far back as
690-627: The spiced ale used in Twelfth-night and Christmas Eve celebrations. By 1598 it was being applied to the custom of drinking healths on those nights. Shakespeare's 1603 use of "Keep wassel" in Hamlet i. iv. 10 was the first record of the term's use in a more general sense of " carousal " or "revelling". Wassail is a hot, mulled punch often associated with Yuletide, often drunk from a ' wassail bowl '. The earliest versions were warmed mead into which roasted crab apples were dropped and burst to create
720-727: The term "lambswool" is a corruption of the name of a pagan Irish festival, "Lamas Ubhal" , during which a similar drink was had. Alternatively, the name may derive from the drink's similar appearance to the wool of lambs . Ale is occasionally replaced by ginger ale for children, especially around Halloween and New Year . Here's to thee, old apple tree, That blooms well, bears well. Hats full, caps full, Three bushel bags full, An' all under one tree. Hurrah! Hurrah! Here's to thee, old apple-tree, Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow, And whence thou mayst bear apples enow! [enough] Hats-full! Caps-full! Bushel, bushel sacks-full! And my pockets full, too! Hurra! In
750-519: The title track. Yorkshire -based folk singer Kate Rusby included the track "Cornish Wassail" on her 2015 album, The Frost Is All Over . Wassail was mentioned in the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 . Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo ask Mike Nelson to provide some. When asked to explain further what exactly wassail is, they admit to having no idea. However, they offer a guess that it might be an "anti-inflammatory". Upon actually getting some, they describe it as "skunky", discovering it to be
780-402: The traditional verses and the others joining the chorus. The British rock band Blur released a song titled "The Wassailing Song", with each member taking a verse. The release was limited to 500 7-inch pressings, given out at a concert in 1992. The version of "The Wassailing Song" performed by Blur was later adapted in a recording by The Grizzly Folk , who have stated that the arrangement bears
810-456: The word "wassail" originated as a borrowing from the Old Norse salutation ves heill, corresponding to Old English hál wes þú or wes hál – literally meaning 'be in good health' or 'be fortunate'. It was initially used in the sense of 'hail' or 'farewell', without any drinking connotation. The English interjection " hail " is a cognate of the etymon of the second part of "wassail", and
840-656: Was featured on the BBC Two special Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas , aired in December 2009. Oz Clarke and Hugh Dennis sampled the drink and the wassailing party in Southwest England as part of their challenge to find Britain's best Christmas drinks. During the episode "We Two Kings" on the NBC sitcom Frasier , the title character's brother Niles asks to borrow his wassail bowl; when Frasier's father Martin asks why they can't just use
870-475: Was large enough for me. This poem by Andrew John Young has three stanzas of six lines each: Frost called to the water Halt And crusted the moist snow with sparkling salt; Brooks, their one bridges, stop, And icicles in long stalactites drop. And tench in water-holes Lurk under gluey glass-like fish in bowls. In the hard-rutted lane At every footstep breaks a brittle pane, And tinkling trees ice-bound, Changed into weeping willows, sweep
900-675: Was probably influenced by the Old English phrase. The expression later became part of the drinking formula " wassail ... drinkhail" which, the OED suggests, initially arose in England among the Anglo-Danes , and from there spread to the native population, being considered a specifically Anglo Saxon characteristic by the 12th century. The earliest record is of around 1140, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's telling of
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