Here We Go a Wassailing...

 

Wassailing one of our younger apple trees

'Here we go a Wassailing' every year, sometimes around other people's orchards, sometimes just covering our own, which is a small, L-shaped space that surrounds the polytunnel on two sides and has about twenty productive fruit trees.

Wassailing may not have had much to do with apple trees originally. The word Wassail  is  most likely from Old Norse – ves heill – meaning  a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, and used an integral part of  an Anglo Saxon Yuletide drinking ritual. 

At the beginning of each year, the lord of the manor would greet the assembled villagers with the toast waes hael, meaning “be well” or “be in good health”, to which his followers would reply 'drink hael,' or “drink well”, and so the Yule celebrations would commence! 

The word Wassail also makes an appearance as a toast that occurred right before the battle of Hastings began in 1066 CE. An Anglo-Norman poet wrote that in the last feast before the battle he heard a cry of:

Rejoice and wassail

Pass the bottle and drink healthy

Drink backwards and drink to me

Drink half and drink empty.

Wassil can refer to the act of toasting, the journey around village or orchard, and it can also represent the beverage that was drunk during the toast. Traditionally  drunk in a bowl, with pieces of toasted bread dipped in the bowl or floated on top, this practice has lead to the word “toast” to mean the lifting of a glass to honour f a person or thing. Beyond just being a drink and phrase, wassail is also a verb and “to go wassailing” is a tradition that likely has some fascinating Pagan origins, especially in the western region of England. 

By the Middle Ages, it had become a Twelth Night custom in England and Wales to go around the village with a bowl of wassail and sing carols, but in cider-producing areas, there would also be a blessing of the orchards, which involved drinking and singing before the blossom arrived, to toast the health of the trees in the hope that they'd provide a bountiful harvest in the autumn.  This ancient custom is still practised across the country today, revived in many areas, where there are now Wassail Queens to lead the procession.

Mari Lwyd is the name given to a Welsh wassailing folk custom that involves a giant horse’s skull carried from house to house. It takes place in parts of Wales during the festive season. Its popularity has waxed and wained over the centuries, but modern pagans in Wales keep this tradition very much alive, using a horse’s head cloaked and decorated with ribbons. The person carrying the head is hidden under the cloak, and has a pole which controls the horse’s jaw. Sometimes the horse’s eyes are baubles, or lights.Mari Lwyd is a Welsh tradition with its origins clouded in mystery, but back before street lights and telly it must have been pretty awe-inspiring to have a knock on your door, or a tap on your window in the long January night and find the silhouetted skeleton of a horse’s head peering in at you!

We go a-wassailing  dressed outrageously, drink deeply, sing loudly and have a great time blessing our fruit trees (and ourselves) with cider, making a good deal of noise. Originally, the fruit farmers would have taken shotguns into the orchard to scare away evil spirits – we make do with drums,  party poppers and leftover Christmas Crackers, while we sing ancient wassailing songs and rhymes. asking for a good harvest. 

Here we come a-wassailing

Among the leaves so green;

Here we come a-wand'ring

So fair to be seen.

 Ronald Hutton's Stations of the Sun moves through the seasons looking at traditions of the British Isles and  this year his account inspired us to Wassail our apple trees with apple juice from the October juicing of our apples. I'm particularly happy with that as I don't like cider! We chanted this wassail rhyme Hutton had included in his book...

Here’s to thee, old apple-tree,

Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst blow,

And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!

Hats-full! Caps-full!

Bushel, bushel sacks-full!

And my pockets full, too! Hurrah!

We like to follow the idea that there is also a spirit called the Apple Tree Man who is honoured during the Wassailing. The Apple Tree Man is the name for the oldest tree in the orchard and it is believed that the fertility of the orchard as a whole derives from this tree spirit. We give extra attention to the two eldest trees in our orchard, a Discovery apple and a cooker (not sure what!) which are now a hearty twelve years of age. We hang clouties in the branches, and often place the Yule wreath on a heavier branch, then  pour cider into their roots.

We are hoping for a mammoth crop of apples after all that hard work!