Wassail is a Middle English word meaning a festive song
or glee. This traditional Christmas Carol has an
alternative title and is also known as the
Gloucestershire Wassail. There are a large number of
Wassail songs in England and many adopt the title of
the region in which they were sung by carol singers, or
'Wassailers'. The author of the lyrics is unknown but
is believed to date back to the Middle Ages. The carol
was first published in the Oxford Book of Carols in
1928.
The Old Tra...(+)
Wassail is a Middle English word meaning a festive song
or glee. This traditional Christmas Carol has an
alternative title and is also known as the
Gloucestershire Wassail. There are a large number of
Wassail songs in England and many adopt the title of
the region in which they were sung by carol singers, or
'Wassailers'. The author of the lyrics is unknown but
is believed to date back to the Middle Ages. The carol
was first published in the Oxford Book of Carols in
1928.
The Old Tradition of Wassailing probably died out in
the country as recently as the 1960s, and consisted of
a group of people going go from house-to-house during
the Christmas period, singing the Wassail Song and
carrying a decorated wassail bowl.
The bowl was occasionally used to collect money or to
hold drink, but usually was a token decoration. In some
cases, a small Christmas tree was placed in the bowl,
held upright by metal supports. Furthermore, in a few
villages further south in the county, the wassailers
would also carry an effigy of a cow or bull, referred
to as the Broad or Bull. The Broad might be a
2-dimensional stylised face with horns and a piece of
sacking hanging down or it might have been something as
simple as a hollowed-out swede with a candle inside.
The wassailers would arrive and sing their song,
perhaps with a few other seasonal pieces, and then be
given money, food or drink in return. Nearly every
village in the south of Gloucestershire and even into
Wiltshire had their own version of the custom and the
song, many of which have been collected, but no one
version can be considered as the ‘original’. The
song was often called The Waysailing Bowl and the
pronunciation ‘Waysail’ must have been the
pronunciation that Sharp and other collectors heard but
they chose to note it as ‘Wassail’. We have adopted
the spelling Waysail as more reflective of the actual
pronunciation.
The custom was first noted in Gloucestershire early in
the 19th Century, the words being first published in
the Times Telescope in 1813. In December 1912, the
Cheltenham Onlooker wrote that the custom was observed
in Cranham, Painswick, Stroud and elsewhere in the
Cotswolds and “as recently as Boxing Day 1910, the
wassail bowl, prettily decorated with coloured ribbons,
fruit and evergreens, was carried round the parishes of
Witcombe and Bentham. According to custom, the houses
of the leading residents and farmers were visited and
this ancient folksong rendered.”
Although likely originally written for voices, I
created this arrangement for Woodwind Quartet (Flute,
Oboe, Bb Clarinet & Bassoon).
