to the orchard, and there encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three several times : "Here's to thee, old apple-tree, Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow! Hats full caps full! And my pockets full too! Huzza!" This done, they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are inexorable to all intreaties to open them till some one has guessed at what is on the spit, which is generally some nice little thing, difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it. The doors are then thrown open, and the lucky clodpole receives the tit-bit as his recompense. Some are so superstitious as to believe, that if they neglect this custom, the trees will bear no apples that year. See Gent. Mag. 1791, p. 403. On the eve of Twelfth Day, as a Cornish man informed me on the edge of St. Stephen's Down, October 28, 1790, it is the custom for the Devonshire people to go after supper into the orchard, with a large milk-pan full of cider, having roasted apples pressed into it. Out of this each person in company takes what is called a clayen cup, i. e. an earthenware cup full of liquor, and standing under each of the more fruitful apple-trees, passing by those that are not good bearers, he addresses it in the following words : "Health to thee, good apple-tree, Well to bear pocket-fulls, hat-fulls, And then drinking up part of the contents, he throws the rest, with the fragments of the roasted apples, at the tree. At each cup the company set up a shout. So we read in the Glossary to the Exmoor dialect :"Watsail, a drinking song, sung on Twelfth-day eve, throwing toast to the apple trees, in order to have a fruitful year, which seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona." [The following lines were obtained from this district, and probably form another version of the song above given, "Apple-tree, apple-tree, Apple-tree, apple-tree, Bear apples for me."] This seems to have been done in some places upon Christmas Eve; for in Herrick's Hesperides, p. 311, I find the following among the Christmas Eve ceremonies : "Wassaile the trees, that they may beare The same is done in Herefordshire, under the name of Wassailing, as follows: At the approach of the evening on the vigil of the Twelfth Day, the farmers, with their friends and servants, meet together, and about six o'clock walk out to a field where wheat is growing. In the highest part of the ground, twelve small fires, and one large one, are lighted up. The attendants, headed by the master of the family, pledge the company in old cider, which circulates freely on these occasions. A circle is formed round the large fire, when a general shout and hallooing takes place, which you hear answered from all the adjacent villages and fields. Sometimes fifty or sixty of these fires may be all seen at once. This being finished, the company return home, where the good housewife and her maids are preparing a good supper. A large cake is always provided, with a hole in the middle. After supper, the company all attend the bailiff (or head of the oxen) to the wain-house, where the following particulars are observed: The master, at the head of his friends, fills the cup (generally of strong ale), and stands opposite the first or finest of the oxen. He then pledges him in a curious toast the company follow his example, with all the other oxen, and addressing each by his name. This being finished, the large cake is produced, and, with much ceremony, put on the horn of the first ox, through the hole above-mentioned. The ox is then tickled, to make him toss his head: if he throw the cake behind, then it is the mistress's perquisite; if before (in what is termed the boosy), the bailiff himself claims the prize. The company then return to the house, the doors of which they find locked, nor will they be opened till some joyous songs are sung. On their gaining admittance, a scene of mirth and jollity ensues, which lasts the greatest part of the night.-Gent. Mag. Feb. 1791. Pennant, in his Tour in Scotland, giving an account of this custom, says, "that after they have drank a chearful glass to their master's health, success to the future harvest, &c., then returning home, they feast on cakes made of carraways, &c., soaked in cyder, which they claim as a reward for their past labours in sowing the grain. This," he observes, seems to resemble a custom of the ancient Danes, who, in their addresses to their rural deities, emptied on every invocation a cup in honour of them." 66 In the Gentleman's Magazine for February, 1784, p. 98, Mr. Beckwith tells us that "near Leeds, in Yorkshire, when he was a boy, it was customary for many families, on the Twelfth Eve of Christmas, to invite their relations, friends, and neighbours to their houses, to play at cards, and to partake of a supper, of which minced pies were an indispensable ingredient: and after supper was brought in, the Wassail Cup or Wassail Bowl, of which every one partook, by taking with a spoon, out of the ale, a roasted apple, and eating it, and then drinking the healths of the company out of the bowl, wishing them a merry Christmas and a happy new year. (The festival of Christmas used in this part of the country to hold for twenty days, and some persons extended it to Candlemas.) The ingredients put into the bowl, viz., ale, sugar, nutmeg, and roasted apples, were usually called Lambs Wool, and the night on which it used to be drunk (generally on the Twelfth Eve) was commonly called Wassail Eve." This custom is now disused. A Nottinghamshire correspondent (ibid.) says, "that when he was a schoolboy, the practice on Christmas Eve was to roast apples on a string till they dropt into a large bowl of spiced ale, which is the whole composition of Lambs' Wool." It is probable that from the softness of this popular beverage it has gotten the above name. See Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, "Sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab; In Vox Graculi, 4to. 1623, p. 52, speaking of the sixth of January, the writer tells us, "This day, about the houres of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10; yea, in some places till midnight well nigh, will be such a massacre of spice-bread, that, ere the next day at noone, a two-penny browne loafe will set twenty poore folkes teeth on edge. Which hungry humour will hold so violent, that a number of good fellowes will not refuse to give a statute marchant of all the lands and goods they enjoy, for halfe-a-crowne's worth of two-penny pasties. On this night much masking in the Strand, Cheapside, Holburne, or Fleet-street." Waldron, in his Description of the Isle of Man (Works, p. 155), says, "There is not a barn unoccupied the whole twelve days, every parish hiring fiddlers at the public charge. On Twelfth Day the fiddler lays his head in some one of the wenches' laps, and a third person asks who such a maid or such a maid shall marry, naming the girls then present one after another; to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during this time of merriment. But whatever he says is as absolutely depended on as an oracle; and if he happen to couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth. This they call cutting off the fiddler's head; for after this he is dead for the whole year." In a curious collection, entitled Wit a sporting in a pleasant Grove of New Fancies, by H. B. 8vo. Lond. 1657, p. 80, I find the following description of the pleasantries of what is there called St. Distaff's Day, or the Morrow after Twelfth-Day. "Partly worke and partly play, You must on St. Distaff's Day: From the plough soon free your teame; If the maides a spinning goe, Give St. Distaff all the right: Then give Christmas-sport good night. To his owne vocation." [In the parish of Pauntley, a village on the borders of the county of Gloucester, next Worcestershire, and in the neighbourhood, a custom prevails, which is intended to prevent the smut in wheat. On the eve of Twelfth-day, all the servants of every farmer assemble together in one of the fields that has been sown with wheat. At the end of twelve lands, they make twelve fires in a row with straw, around one of which, made larger than the rest, they drink a cheerful glass of cider to their master's health, and success to the future harvest; then, returning home, they feast on cakes soaked in cider, which they claim as a reward for their past labours in sowing the grain.] It may rather seem to belong to religious than popular customs to mention, on the authority of the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1731, p. 25, that at the Chapel-Royal at St. James's, on Twelfth Day that year, "the king and the prince made the offerings at the altar of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, according to custom. At night their majesties, &c., played at hazard for the benefit of the groom-porter." L Feb. 18, 1839, Edward Hawkins, Esq., of the British Museum, showed to the editor (Sir Henry Ellis) a silver token or substitute for money, marked to the amount of ten pounds, which appears to have passed among the players for the groom-porter's benefit at Basset. It is within the size of a half-crown, one inch and a half in diameter. In the centre of the obverse within an inner circle is : Legend round, AT. THE. GROOM. PORTERS. BASSETT. Mint-mark, a fleur-delis. On the reverse, a wreath issuing from the sides of, and surmounting, a gold coronet: the coronet being of gold let in. Legend, NOTHING. VENTURD. NOTHING. WINNS. Mint-mark, again, a fleur-de-lis. Brand Hollis had one of these pieces. They are of very rare occurrence. The groom-porter was formerly a distinct officer in the lord-steward's department of the royal household. His 1 This is also in Herrick's Hesperides, p. 374. |