Divination by Virgilian, Homeric, or Bible Lots by the Erecting of Figures-Astrological Chiromancy, or Divination by Palmistry or Lines of the Hand 798 DINING WITH DUKE HUMPHREY THE MILLER'S THUMB TURNING CAT IN PAN PUTTING THE MILLER'S EYE OUT TO BEAR THE BELL TO PLUCK A CROW WITH ONE... OF CERTAIN OTHER OBSCure Phrases AND COMMON EXPRESSIONS Observations on Popular Antiquities. THE NEW YEAR'S EVE. 'HERE was an ancient custom, which is yet retained in many places, on New Year's Eve: young women went about with a Wassail Bowl of spiced ale,* singing some sort of verses from door to door. Wassail is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Aær Pæl, be in health. It were unnecessary to add that they accepted little presents on the occasion from the houses at which they stopped to pay this annual congratulation. Selden, in his Table-Talk (article Pope), gives a good description of it: "The Pope, in sending relics to Princes, does as wenches do to their Wassels at New Year's tide-they present you with a cup, and you must drink of a slabby stuff; but the meaning is, You must give them money, ten times more than it is worth." And in his Notes on "The Wassel Bowl," says Warton in his edition of Milton's Poems, "is Shakespeare's Gossips' Bowl in the Midsummer Night's Dream. The composition was ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples. It was also called Lambs' Wool." So it is referred to in Polwhele's Old English Gentleman "A massy bowl, to deck the jovial day, Flash'd from its ample round a sunlike ray. As, to the sons of sacred union dear, It welcomed with Lambs' Wool the rising year." It appears from Thomas de la Moore (Vita Edw. II.) and old Havillan (in Architren. lib. 2), that Was-haile and Drinc-heil were the usual ancient phrases of quaffing among the English, and synonymous with the "Come, here's to you," and "I'll pledge you," of the present day. Verstegan, in his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, gives this etymology of Wassail: "As was is our verb of the preter-imperfect tense, or preterperfect tense, signifying have been, so was, being the same verb in the imperative mood, and now pronunced Wax, is as much as to say grow, or become; and Washeal by corruption of pronunciation afterwards came to be Wassail." Wassel, however, is sometimes used for general riot, intemperance, or festivity. Ben Jonson personifies it thus: "Enter Wassel like a neat sempster and ngster, her page bearing a brown bowl, drest with ribbands and rosemary, before her." A Wassel candle was a large candle lighted up at a feast. Drayton's Polyolbion, we read: "I see 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." Herrick in his Hesperides treats "Of Christmas sports, the Wassell Boule, In the Antiquarian Repertory* is a woodcut of a large oak beam, the ancient support of a chimney-piece, on which is carved a large bowl, with this inscription on one side, "Wass-heil;" and the ingenious commentator upon this representation observes that it is the figure of the old Wassel-bowl, so much the delight of our hardy ancestors, who on the vigil of the New Year never failed to assemble round the glowing hearth with their cheerful neighbours, and then in the spicy Wassel-Bowl (which testified the goodness of their hearts) drowned every former animosity; an example worthy modern imitation. Wassel was the word; Wassel every guest returned as he took the circling goblet from his friend, whilst song and civil mirth brought in the infant year. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for May 1784 tells us, that "the drinking the Wassail Bowl or Cup was, in all probability, owing to keeping Christmas in the same manner they had before the Feast of Yule. There was nothing the Northern nations so much delighted in as carousing ale, especially at this season, when fighting was over. It was likewise the custom, at all their feasts, for the master of the house to fill a large bowl or pitcher, and drink out of it first himself, and then give it to him that sat next, and so it went round One custom more should be remembered; and this is, that it was usual some years ago, in Christmas-time, for the poorer people to go * Vol. i. p. 218, ed. 1755. from door to door with a Wassail Cup, adorned with ribbons, and a golden apple at the top, singing and begging money for it; the original of which was that they also might procure lambs' wool to fill it, and regale themselves as well as the rich."* In Ritson's Ancient Songs is given "A Carrol for a Wassel Bowl, to be sung upon Twelfth Day at night-to the tune of Gallants, come away;" taken from a collection of "New Christmas Carrols: being fit also to be sung at Easter, Whitsontide, and other Festival Days in the year;" no date, 12mo, b. l. in the curious study of Anthony à Wood, in the Ashmolean Museum. And after his good wife Our spiced bowl will try : For our Wassel. Some bounty from your hands, This is our merry night Of choosing King and Queen : That something may be seen It is a noble part To bear a liberal mind: And now we must be gone, Much joy betide them all, Our prayers shall be still: We hope and ever shall, In his History and Antiquities of Claybrook in Leicestershire (1791), Macaulay observes: "Old John Payne and his wife, natives of Milner (Archæologia, vol. xi. p. 420) informs us that "the introduction of Christianity amongst our ancestors did not at all contribute to the abolition of the practice of Wasselling. On the contrary, it began to assume a kind of religious aspect; and the Wassel Bowl itself, which in the great monasteries was placed on the Abbot's table, at the upper end of the Refectory or Eating Hall, to be circulated among the community at his discretion, received the honourable appellation of 'Poculum Charitatis.' This in our Úniversities is called the Grace-cup." |