by an interpreter, that the purport of these words was to wish him health, and that he should reply by the expression drinc-heil, or "Drink the health;" accordingly, on his so doing, Rowena drank, and the king receiving the cup from her hand, kissed and pledged her.[128:A] Since this period, observes the historian, the custom has prevailed in Britain of using these words whilst drinking; the person who drank to another saying was-heil, and he who received the cup answering drinc-heil.
It soon afterwards became a custom in villages, on Christmas-Eve, New Year's Eve, and Twelfth Night, for itinerant minstrels to carry to the houses of the gentry, and others, where they were generally very hospitably received, a bowl of spiced wine, which being presented with the Saxon words just mentioned, was therefore called a Wassail-bowl. A bowl or cup of this description was likewise to be found in almost every nobleman's and gentleman's house, (and frequently of massy silver,) until the middle of the seventeenth century, and which was in perpetual requisition during the revels of Christmas. In "The Antiquarian Repertory, vol. i. p. 217," relates Mr. Douce, "there is an account, accompanied with an engraving, of an oaken chimney-piece in a very old house at Berlen, near Snodland in Kent, on which is carved a wassel-bowl resting on the branches of an apple-tree, alluding, probably, to part of the materials of which the liquor was composed. On one side is the word wassheil, and on the other
drincheile."[129:A] "This is certainly," he adds, "a very great curiosity of its kind, and at least as old as the fourteenth century. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, in his will gave to Sir John Briddlewood a silver cup called wassail: and it appears that John Duke of Bedford, the regent, by his first will bequeathed to John Barton, his maitre d'hotel, a silver cup and cover, on which was inscribed Washayl."[129:B]
In consequence of the Wassail-bowl being peculiar to scenes of revelry and festivity, the term wassail in time became synonymous with feasting and carousing, and has been used, therefore, by many of our poets either to imply drinking and merriment, or the place where such joviality was expected to occur. Thus Shakspeare makes Hamlet say of the king "draining his draughts of Rhenish down," that he
"Keeps wassel:"[129:C]
and in Macbeth, the heroine of that play declares that she will convince the two chamberlains of Duncan
"With wine and wassel."[129:D]
In Anthony and Cleopatra also, Cæsar, advising Anthony to live more temperately, tells him to leave his
"Lascivious wassals."[129:E]
And lastly, in Love's Labour's Lost, Biron, describing the character of Boyet, says,