OBSERVATIONS

ON

POPULAR ANTIQUITIES.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

Enter Wassel, like a neat sempster and songster, her page bearing a brown bowl, drest with ribbons and rosemary, before her.-BEN JONSON.

THERE 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, with some sort of verses that were sung by them as they went from door to door. Wassail is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Wæs hæl, 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. "The Wassail Bowl," says Warton," is Shakspeare's Gossip's Bowl, in the Midsummer Night's Dream. The composition was ale, nutmeg, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs or apples. It was also called Lamb's Wool." (Warton's ed. of Milton's Poems, Lond. 1785, 8vo, p. 51, note.) See also the Beggar's Bush, act iv. sc. 4, and the following in Polwhele's Old English Gent., p. 117,—

"A massy bowl, to deck the jovial day,

Flash'd from its ample round a sunlike ray.
Full many a century it shone forth to grace
The festive spirit of th' Andarton race,
As, to the sons of sacred union dear,

It welcomed with Lamb's Wool the rising year."

It appears from Thomas de la Moore's Life of Edward II. 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.1 [These pledge-words were frequently varied in olden time. In the tale of King Edward and the Shepherd, MS. Cantab. Ff. v. 48, one says, Passilodion, and the other, Berafrynde; a strange kind of humour, the amusement of which is difficult to be comprehended, though “ I warrant it proved an excuse for the glass." In this tale the king says,—

"Passilodyon that is this,

Who so drynkes furst i-wys,
Wesseyle the mare dele:
Berafrynde also I wene,

Hit is to make the cup clene,

And fylle hit efte fulle wele."

But the best explanation of Wassail is that given by Robert de Brunne, in the following passage:

"This is ther custom and her gest
When thei are at the ale or fest.
Ilk man that lovis qware him think
Salle say Wosseille, and to him drink.
He that bidis salle say, Wassaile,
The tother salle say again Drinkhaille.
That says Wosseille drinkis of the cop,
Kissand his felaw he gives it up."

This explanation is stated to have been given on Vortigern's first interview with Rowena, or Ronix, the daughter of Hengist, the latter kneeling before him, and presenting a cup of wine, made use of the term. Vortigern, not comprehending the words of Rowena, demanded their meaning from one of the Britons. A fragment, preserved by Hearne, carries the origin of the term to a much earlier period.]

1 Verstegan gives the subsequent etymology of Wassail: "As was is our verb of the preter-imperfect tense, or preter-perfect tense, signifying have been, so was, being the same verb in the imperative mood, and now pronounced wax, is as much as to say grow, or become; and Waesheal, by corruption of pronunciation, afterwards came to be Wassail."-Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, ed. 1653, p. 101. Wassel, however, is sometimes used for general riot, intemperance, or festivity. See Love's Labour Lost, v. 2. A wassel candle was a large candle lighted up at a feast. See 2 Henry IV. i. 2.

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The learned Selden, in his Table Talk (article Pope), gives a good description of it: "The pope," says he, "in sending relicks 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." The following is a note of the same learned writer on the Polyolbion, Bong 9: "I see," says he, 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." In Herrick's Hesperides, p. 146, we read,

"Of Christmas sports, the Wassell Boule,
That tost up, after Fox-i-th' Hole;
Of Blind-man-buffe, and of the care
That young men have to shooe the Mare:
Of Ash-heapes, in the which ye use
Husbands and wives by streakes to chuse
Of crackling laurell, which fore-sounds
A plentious harvest to your grounds."

In the Antiquarian Repertory (i. 218, ed. 1775) is a woodcut of a large oak beam, the antient support of a chimneypiece, on which is carved a large bowl, with this inscription on one side, [Wass-heil, and on the other Drinc-heile. The bowl rests on the branches of an apple-tree, alluding, perhaps, to part of the materials of which the liquor was composed.] The ingenious remarker on this representation observes, that it is the figure of the old Wassel Bowl, so much the delight of our