Wassail Bowl.—Page 275.
The customs peculiar to Christmas Eve are numerous, and various in different parts of the British isles; the peculiarities, in most cases, arising from local circumstances or traditions, and determining the particular forms of a celebration which is universal. To enter upon any thing like an enumeration of these, it would be necessary to allow ourselves another volume. We must, therefore, confine ourselves to the general observances by which the Christmas spirit works, and each of our readers will have no difficulty in connecting the several local customs which come under his own notice with the particular feature of common celebration to which they belong.
But all men, in all places, who would keep Christmas Eve as Christmas Eve should be kept, must set the wassail-bowl a-flowing for the occasion. "Fill me a mighty bowl!" says Herrick, "up to the brim!" and though this fountain of "quips and cranks and wreathed smiles," belongs, in an especial sense, to Twelfth-night (Twelfth-night not being Twelfth-night without it), yet it should be compounded for every one of the festival nights, and invoked to spread its inspirations over the entire season.
"Honor to you who sit
Near to the well of wit,
And drink your fill of it!"
again says our friend Herrick (what could we do without him, in this Christmas book of ours?). And surely, judging by such effects as we have witnessed, Herrick must have meant the wassail-bowl. We are perfectly aware that there are certain other dwellers in that same bowl. Truth has been said to lie at the bottom of a well; and we have certainly seen him unseasonably brought up out of the very well in question, by those who have gone further into its depths than was necessary for reaching the abode of wit. No doubt, truth is at all times a very respectable personage; but there are certain times when he and wit do not meet on the best of terms, and he is apt, occasionally, to be somewhat of a revel-marrer. The garb and temper in which he often follows wit out of that bowl are not those in which he appears to the most advantage. We know, also, that there is yet a deeper deep, in which worse things still reside; and although there be pearls there, too,—and the skilful diver may bring treasures up out of that bowl, and escape all its evil spirits, besides,—yet it is, at any rate, not on this night of subdued mirth that we intend to recommend an exploration of these further depths. But still the bowl should be produced, and go round. A cheerful sporting with the light bubbles that wit flings up to its surface are perfectly consistent with the sacred character of the night, and, for ourselves, we will have a wassail-bowl this Christmas Eve.
The word "wassail" is derived from the Saxon was haile; which word, and drinc-heil (heil, health) were, as appears from old authors quoted by Brand, the usual ancient phrases of quaffing, among the English and equivalent to the "Here's to you," and "I pledge you," of the present day. "The wassail-bowl," says Warton, "is Shakspeare's gossip's bowl, in the Midsummer Night's Dream." It should be composed, by those who can afford it, of some rich wine highly spiced and sweetened, with roasted apples floating on its surface. But ale was more commonly substituted for the wine, mingled with nutmeg, ginger, sugar, toast, and roasted crabs. "It is," says Leigh Hunt, "a good-natured bowl, and accommodates itself to the means of all classes, rich and poor. You may have it of the costliest wine or the humblest malt liquor. But in no case must the roasted apples be forgotten. They are the sine qua non of the wassail-bowl, as the wassail-bowl is of the day (he is speaking of New Year's Day); and very pleasant they are, provided they are not mixed up too much with the beverage, balmy, comfortable, and different, a sort of meat in the drink, but innocent withal and reminding you of the orchards. They mix their flavor with the beverage, and the beverage with them, giving a new meaning to the line of the poet,—
'The gentler apple's winy juice;'
for both winy and gentler have they become by this process. Our ancestors gave them the affectionate name of 'lamb's wool;' for we cannot help thinking, in spite of what is intimated by one of our authorities, that this term applied more particularly to the apples and not so much to the bowl altogether; though if it did, it shows how indispensably necessary to it they were considered." With all deference to Mr. Leigh Hunt's pleasant and graceful trifling, lamb's wool was the title given to the composition itself, no doubt on account of the delicate and harmonious qualities, to which the apples contribute their share. Our readers will find an account of the alleged origin of this annual practice in a curious description of an old wassail-bowl, carved upon the oaken beam that supported a chimney-piece in an old mansion in Kent, which description is copied by Hone into his "Every-Day Book," from the "Antiquarian Repertory." In the halls of our ancestors, this bowl was introduced with the inspiring cry of "wassail," three times repeated, and immediately answered by a song from the chaplain. We hope our readers will sing to the wassail-bowl this Christmas-tide.