I may add that I heard the above ditty sung in Welsh in several parts of South Wales, especially when I was a boy.
Another such custom was called “tooling,” and its purpose was beer. It consisted in calling at the farm-houses and pretending to look for one’s tools behind the beer cask. “I’ve left my saw behind your beer cask,” a carpenter would say; “my whip,” a carter; and received the tool by proxy, in the shape of a cup of ale. It was also customary for the women to practice what was called sowling, viz., asking for “sowl,” that is cheese, fish or meat.
It was also customary in parts of the counties of Pembroke and Carmarthen for poor people to proceed round the neighbourhood from house to house with their “Wassail bowls,” and singing outside each door something as follows—
“Taste our jolly wassail bowl,
Made of cake, apple, ale, and spice;
Good master give command,
You shall taste once or twice
Of our jolly wassail bowl.”
People who partook of the contents of the bowl were of course expected to pay, so that the invitation to “taste our jolly wassail bowl,” was not always accepted. In such cases the bearer of the bowl sung the following rhyme in disappointment:—
“Are there any maidens here,