Wassail
Based on Wikipedia: Wassail
Picture a cold January night in a Somerset orchard, frost glittering on bare branches. A crowd gathers around the oldest apple tree, their breath visible in the torchlight. Someone fires a shotgun into the branches. The crowd roars. They're not hunting—they're waking up the trees.
This is wassailing, one of England's strangest surviving folk traditions, and it encompasses far more than shouting at fruit trees. The word "wassail" has traveled a remarkable journey through a thousand years of English history, shape-shifting from a Viking drinking toast to a Christmas carol to a hot spiced punch, picking up folklore, feudal customs, and a fair amount of rowdy behavior along the way.
The Words That Started Everything
The story begins with the Old Norse phrase "ves heill," which meant simply "be in good health" or "be fortunate." When Viking settlers brought this expression to England, it merged with the similar Old English phrase "wes hál" to create something new: a distinctly Anglo-Saxon drinking formula.
Here's how it worked. One person would raise a cup and call out "wassail!" The other would respond "drinkhail!"—essentially "drink and be healthy." Think of it as a medieval call-and-response, the ancestor of clinking glasses and saying "cheers."
By the twelfth century, the Norman chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth was recording this exchange in his history of Britain, treating it as a quaint native custom worth preserving for posterity. The spelling was wonderfully unstable in those manuscript-copying days—scribes wrote it as wassayl, wassaile, wessail, washail, wesseyl, and at least a dozen other variations. One scribe managed to render it as "whatsaile," which sounds less like a toast and more like a confused question.
The transition from greeting to beverage happened gradually. By around 1300, "wassail" had drifted from meaning the toast itself to meaning whatever drink you were toasting with. Specifically, it came to mean the spiced ale served during the Twelve Days of Christmas, that stretch between Christmas Day and Epiphany on January 6th. When Shakespeare has a character mention keeping "wassel" in Hamlet, written around 1603, he's using the word to mean general carousing and revelry—the toast had become the party.
Two Traditions Diverge
What we call wassailing today actually splits into two quite different customs that happen to share a name.
The first is house-visiting wassail. Groups of people would go door to door on Twelfth Night—January 5th, the eve of Epiphany—carrying a large bowl of hot spiced drink. They'd sing, offer you a drink from the bowl, and expect something in return. Food, coins, hospitality. If you've ever sung "Here We Come A-Wassailing," you've participated in the distant echo of this tradition, though modern carolers rarely show up with a communal punch bowl.
The second tradition is orchard-visiting wassail, and this is where things get strange and wonderful. In the cider-producing regions of England—Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and parts of Kent and Sussex—people would process out to their apple orchards, also on Twelfth Night, to perform rituals aimed at ensuring a good cider harvest.
These weren't quiet, reflective ceremonies. They involved drinking considerable amounts of cider, singing directly at trees, making as much noise as possible with pots and pans and drums, and often firing guns through the branches. The goal was twofold: wake up the sleeping trees (it being midwinter, after all) and frighten away any malevolent spirits that might be lurking about, planning to spoil the coming year's fruit.
The Apple Tree Man
Somerset folklore gives us one of the most charming figures associated with orchard wassailing: the Apple Tree Man. This is the spirit thought to inhabit the oldest apple tree in any orchard, a kind of genius loci—a protective spirit of place—in whom the entire orchard's fertility resides.
There's a folk tale about a poor farmer who had almost nothing left, just a single mug of mulled cider. Instead of drinking it himself, he carried it out to his orchard on a cold Twelfth Night and poured it at the roots of the oldest tree as an offering. The Apple Tree Man, moved by this generosity despite poverty, appeared and revealed the location of buried treasure on the man's land.
This story captures something essential about the wassailing tradition: the idea that generosity and respect toward the natural world—even when you have little to give—will be rewarded. The trees are not passive resources to be exploited but beings with whom you maintain a relationship of reciprocal obligation.
What the Wassailers Actually Sang
The incantations used in orchard wassailing have a wonderful, almost magical quality to them. Here's a traditional verse from Somerset:
Old apple tree, we wassail thee,
And hoping thou wilt bear:
For the Lord doth know where we shall be
Till apples come another year.
To bloom well, and to bear well,
So merry let us be:
Let every man take off his hat,
And shout to the old apple tree.
Notice the blend of Christian and pagan elements—invoking the Lord while also addressing the tree as "thee" in a direct, almost intimate way. This mixing of traditions is typical of English folk custom, where the old nature religions never quite vanished but merged with Christianity into something unique.
The songs often include specific, practical wishes expressed in charmingly concrete terms:
Hatfuls, capfuls, and three bushel bagfuls,
And a little heap under the stairs.
This isn't abstract fertility blessing—this is someone who knows exactly how many apples they want and where they're going to store them.
The Darker Side of Door-to-Door
Modern accounts often paint house-visiting wassail with a nostalgic glow, imagining rosy-cheeked carolers bringing warmth to cold winter nights. The historical reality could be considerably more fraught.
Wassailing bands were often groups of young men who felt entirely entitled to enter the homes of wealthier neighbors and demand food and drink. The song "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"—which everyone thinks of as harmlessly cheerful—actually preserves the implied threat in its lyrics: "We won't go until we get some, so bring some out here."
That's not a polite request. That's an ultimatum.
If the householder refused to provide figgy pudding and good cheer (the wassail drink itself), they might find their property vandalized or themselves on the receiving end of curses rather than blessings. The practice had much in common with modern Halloween trick-or-treating, except the "tricks" could be considerably more serious than toilet paper in the trees.
When English settlers brought wassailing customs to colonial America, these negative associations came with them. By the early 1800s, American merchants were actively working to promote what they called a more "sanitized" Christmas, one focused on family gatherings and gift-giving rather than bands of young men roaming the streets demanding hospitality from the well-to-do.
The Feudal Exchange
But wassailing wasn't originally about menacing your betters. In its medieval form, it represented a formalized social contract between lords and peasants.
The wassailers would arrive at the manor house not as beggars—they're quite insistent about this in the traditional songs—but as neighbors engaging in a ritual exchange. They brought blessings, good wishes for the new year, songs, and the magic of the midwinter season. In return, the lord of the manor provided food and drink.
This is what scholars call "recipient-initiated charitable giving." The wassailers initiated the exchange, but in a way that allowed both parties to maintain dignity. They weren't asking for alms; they were offering something valuable (their blessings, their songs, their participation in tradition) and receiving something valuable in return (the lord's hospitality, his food and drink).
The song "Here We Come A-Wassailing" makes this explicit:
We are not daily beggars that beg from door to door,
But we are friendly neighbours whom you have seen before.
And the blessing they offered in exchange was genuinely meant:
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too;
And God bless you and send you
A Happy New Year.
The Drink Itself
So what exactly is wassail the beverage?
The earliest versions were quite simple: warmed mead (honey wine) into which roasted crab apples had been dropped. The apples would burst from the heat, creating a fluffy, frothy texture that earned this drink the name "lambswool"—supposedly because it looked like lamb's fleece floating on top.
Some antiquarians have proposed a different origin for the name. Charles Vallancey, an eighteenth-century British-Irish scholar, suggested that "lambswool" might be a corruption of "Lamas Ubhal," the name of a pagan Irish festival. Others think it simply described how the drink looked. Either explanation is plausible; perhaps both contributed.
Over time, the drink evolved. Mead gave way to ale or cider, warmed and sweetened with sugar, flavored with cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Slices of toast were floated on top as "sops"—this is likely where the modern expression "to toast someone" comes from, as in drinking to their health. When you raise a glass to someone today, you're participating in a linguistic tradition that goes back to actual pieces of toast floating in ceremonial bowls.
The communal aspect was essential. Wassail bowls were large vessels, often made from turned wood (maple or sycamore being favorites), pottery, or even tin, with multiple handles so the bowl could be passed around a circle. Elaborate decorated lids kept the drink warm. The wealthy had silver-mounted bowls; the Worshipful Company of Grocers, one of London's ancient trade guilds, commissioned a seventeenth-century bowl so massive it had to be passed around for many members to drink from it, like a loving cup.
Modern wassail recipes are more flexible. Some start with wine, some with cider, some with ale. Brandy or sherry might be added. Apples or oranges bob in the bowl. Some recipes call for beaten eggs to be tempered in, creating a thicker, richer drink. What remains constant is warmth, spices, and sharing.
Old Twelfth Night
Here's a calendrical complication that reveals how deeply rooted these traditions are.
When Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752—catching up with the rest of Catholic and Protestant Europe—eleven days were "lost" from the calendar to correct accumulated errors from the old Julian system. September 2, 1752, was followed immediately by September 14.
Many rural communities didn't trust this newfangled calendar fiddling. If Twelfth Night had always been celebrated on what felt like a certain point in deep winter, why should a decree from Parliament change when the trees needed waking? So they continued celebrating on what they called "Old Twelfth Night" or "Old Twelvey Night"—January 17th by the new calendar, which corresponded to January 5th by the old one.
To this day, some traditional wassails, like those at Carhampton near Minehead and Whimple in Devon, take place on January 17th rather than January 5th. The trees, presumably, don't mind which calendar you use.
The Toast in the Trees
At Carhampton, the ceremony has a particularly beautiful detail. The villagers gather around the largest apple tree in the orchard, and someone hangs pieces of toast soaked in cider among the branches.
This toast isn't for the tree—it's for the robins. The small red-breasted birds are considered the good spirits of the orchard, and the cider-soaked bread is their reward for protecting the trees. After the toast is hung, a shotgun is fired up through the branches to scare away any evil spirits, and then the traditional wassailing song is sung.
The final verse at Carhampton asks for abundance in wonderfully specific terms:
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 a little heap under the stairs.
That "little heap under the stairs" always gets me. Even in their most optimistic wishes, these Somerset farmers maintained a certain modest realism. Not a mountain of apples—just a good harvest, enough to fill the practical storage spaces, with a little extra tucked away under the stairs for good measure.
Revival and Survival
For a while, it seemed like wassailing might fade entirely into historical curiosity. The agricultural practices that sustained it—small orchards, local cider making, tight-knit village communities—declined through the twentieth century. House-visiting wassail had largely been absorbed into the broader tradition of Christmas caroling, losing its distinctive character.
But traditions have a way of persisting, especially when they're this much fun.
The West Country—England's cider heartland—never entirely abandoned orchard wassailing. Historic wassails continue annually at Whimple in Devon and Carhampton in Somerset, both held on Old Twelfth Night, January 17th. These aren't museum recreations; they're living traditions maintained by people whose families have participated for generations.
Meanwhile, new "revival" wassails have sprung up throughout the region. Stoke Gabriel and Sandford in Devon hold annual events. Clevedon in North Somerset combines traditional wassailing at the Community Orchard with performances by the Bristol Morris Men, blending different strands of English folk tradition.
Even in Dartmoor, the Ashburton and Moorland Mission Community gathers in a barn at Newcombe Farm to sing wassailing songs and pray for God's blessing on the New Year—demonstrating how easily the tradition adapts to explicitly Christian contexts when communities wish to emphasize that aspect.
Wassail in Song
The wassailing tradition has left its mark on English music far beyond the folk songs sung around apple trees.
The "Gloucestershire Wassail," variations of which have been sung since at least the 1700s, gives us a vivid description of the communal experience:
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.
That reference to "white maple tree" is interesting—white maple doesn't grow natively in Europe. Scholars have suggested the lyric might refer to sycamore maple or field maple, both of which have pale wood. An account from the 1890s describes a Gloucestershire wassailing bowl made from "wooden sycamore or maple" of the kind used to hold boiled potatoes on a farm kitchen table. Other historical versions of the song have "maplin tree" or even "green maple," suggesting the words varied by region and the construction of actual wassail bowls varied considerably.
In 1971, the British folk rock band Steeleye Span opened their album "Ten Man Mop, or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" with an extended, minor-key arrangement of "Gower Wassail." The band Blur recorded their own "Wassailing Song" in 1992, pressing just 500 copies on seven-inch vinyl to give away at a concert. Kate Bush invoked the tradition in her 1978 song "Oh England My Lionheart," singing wistfully: "Give me one wish, and I'd be wassailing in the orchard, my English rose."
The Spirit of the Thing
What makes wassailing endure, I think, is that it addresses something real.
Winter is hard. The darkest, coldest months strain human communities in ways that electric lights and central heating have muted but not eliminated. Wassailing—both versions—is fundamentally about gathering together, making noise to push back the darkness, sharing warmth in the form of a communal bowl of something hot and spiced, and affirming relationships: between neighbors, between social classes, between humans and the land that sustains them.
The orchard wassail in particular preserves something we've largely forgotten—the sense that agriculture is a relationship, not just a process. You don't simply extract apples from trees; you participate in a cycle of mutual obligation. You honor the tree, thank the spirits that protect it, ask respectfully for abundance, and receive what the season provides. The gunfire and shouting aren't violence; they're protective magic, driving away whatever might threaten the coming harvest.
Modern environmentalism is rediscovering some of these ideas in secular language: that sustainable agriculture requires thinking of ecosystems as communities rather than resources, that human flourishing depends on maintaining reciprocal relationships with the natural world. The wassailers of Somerset were practicing this philosophy centuries before anyone called it ecology.
So the next time someone wishes you good health as you raise a glass, remember you're participating in a tradition that stretches back to Viking settlers calling "ves heill" across the cold northern sea. When you sing Christmas carols door to door, you're carrying forward what wassailing became after it stopped involving communal punch bowls and mildly threatening demands for figgy pudding. And if you ever find yourself in the English West Country on a January night, watching torchlight flicker through bare apple branches while someone fires a shotgun at the stars—well, then you've found wassailing in its oldest, strangest, most wonderful form.
The trees, one assumes, appreciate being remembered.