Volume 1

Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain : chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar and provincial customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand ; arranged, revised, and greatly enlarged by Sir Henry Ellis.

  • John Brand
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain : chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar and provincial customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand ; arranged, revised, and greatly enlarged by Sir Henry Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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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 rehcks 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 fol- lowing is a note of the same learned writer on the Polyolbion, song 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 nostrum 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 Ceme 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 Houle, That tost up, after Fox-i’-ih’ 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 wood- cut of a large oak beam, the antient support of a chimney- piece, 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
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