A variety of the New Year’s Wassail-Bowl custom was, until a few years ago, practised in Scotland. What is called a hot pint (i.e., a great kettle full of hot sweetened ale), was prepared, and when the clock had sounded out the knell of the old year, each member of the family drank “A good health and a Happy New Year to all.” A move was then made by the revellers with what remained of the hot pint, and a store of short-bread and bun to visit their friends and neighbours, and to give them seasonable greeting. If the party were the first to enter a friend’s house since twelve o’clock had struck, they were called the first foot, and must come in with hands full of cakes, of which all the inmates must partake; and so they went from house to house until either their endurance or that long, long hot pint, failed. Even within this century the custom was so religiously observed that the streets of Edinburgh are described as having been more thronged at midnight than at mid-day. This old practice is said to have received its death-blow in 1812, when the descent of gangs of thieves and pickpockets upon the wassailers caused such scenes of rioting and violence that, after languishing for a few years, it came to an untimely end.
It was customary at the beginning of the present century for the inhabitants of the parish of Deerness, in Orkney, to assemble on New Year’s Eve, and pay a round of visits through the district, drinking their neighbours’ healths, and singing various old songs, of which the following may be taken as a specimen:—
This night it is guid New Year’s E’en night We’re a’ here Queen Mary’s Men; And we’re come here to crave our right, And that’s before our lady.
Gae fill the three pint cog o’ ale, The maut maun be aboun the meal. We houp your ale is stark and stout For men to drink the old year out.
The composition of the wassail-bowl has been dealt with elsewhere, and it only remains to be added that though the drinking of its spiced contents was very usual on New Year’s Eve, it was not peculiar to that day, but accompanied most occasions of mediæval festivity, and, indeed, was so common that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the wassail-bowl was frequently referred to by the writers of that Golden Age of English {238} literature as symbolical of feasting and good cheer in general. It is thus that Herrick mentions it in his beautiful little poem, entitled A Thanksgiving for his House:—
Lord, I confess too when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all those other bits that be There placed by Thee. The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, Which of Thy kindness Thou hast sent: And my content Makes those, and my beloved beet, To be more sweet. ’Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth; And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink, Spiced to the brink.
Twelfth Night was specially celebrated with wassailing, accompanied with the consumption of spiced cakes, the combination giving rise to the phrase “cakes and ale.”
“Cakes and Ale.”