Mostly though, wassailing is an excuse to sing, drink, and make merry in January.
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The British tradition of wassailing in exchange for a bowl of hot mulled cider goes back centuries, as does eggnog.
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The British tradition of wassailing in exchange for a bowl of hot mulled cider dates back centuries, as does eggnog.
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The celebration involved heavy eating, drinking and wassailing, in which peasants would arrive at the houses of the neighbouring gentry and demand to be fed.
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As the minutes fly by, beads of sweat dampen your paperback copy of Simon Reed's Wassailing: the British Midwinter Blessing Custom, and your heart beats faster than techno.
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"Traditionally, farm labourers for hire would go from house to house wassailing, like some people do with carol singing," explains Stephen Rowley, one of the organisers of the Stroud Wassail.
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Carols, and caroling, have been around in England since at least the Middle Ages, when people would go "a-wassailing" — singing Christmas songs in the streets in exchange for wassail, an alcoholic drink.
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Instead we get wizards, dragons and spider kings, the band meting out classic doom that merges high fantasy with a sense of atavistic classicism wassailing the glory days of Candlemass, Cirith Ungol and Pagan Altar.
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But for all the costumes, singing, parades, dancing, acting, and banging of drums, when you bring it back down to basics, wassailing is just another expression of the longest standing English tradition of all: the piss-up.
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" For example, you'd pop round to your neighbour and sing to him about his cow, or his wheat, or his apple tree—like they do in this Gloucestershire wassail: "So, here is to cherry and to his right cheek Pray God send our master a good piece of beef And a good piece of beef that may we all see With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee.
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Once inside, the entertainment continued with the Mari Lwyd running around neighing and snapping its jaws, creating havoc, frightening children (and perhaps even adults) while the Leader pretended to try to restrain it. The Merryman played music and entertained the householders. The folklorist Iorwerth Peate believed that in recorded examples from Glamorgan it was apparent that the Mari Lwyd custom had become "indistinguishable" from the practice of wassailing, although added that there were still some examples of wassailing that did not involve the Mari Lwyd. He added that links between Mari Lwyd and wassailing were also apparent from recorded examples in other part of Wales, thus opining that Mari Lwyd represented a variant of the wider wassailing custom that was found throughout Britain.
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Here We Come A-wassailing (or Here We Come A-caroling) is a traditional English Christmas carol and New Year song, dating from at least the mid 19th century,, but possibly much older. The old English wassail song refers to 'wassailing', or singing carols door to door wishing good health,"wassail." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2008. Merriam-Webster Online.
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The Pictish Trail appeared on James Yorkston's 2014 album, The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society, and toured live with Yorkston supporting the release.
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After this, some wassailing mice visit as is familiar to Mole, wishing well to the animals of the forest ("The Wassailing Mice"). As the choristers’ song ends, Badger bursts in to let Rat and Mole know that Mr Toad is now a criminal on the run. They set off again to save him from himself. Though free again, Mr Toad is pursued by the police.
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Wassailing was held on each 21 December until 1939. At this, the old ladies of the parish would visit the farmers and gentry to collect a shilling or a quart of tea.
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Carhampton is known for its wassailing celebration which was started in 1930s by the Taunton Cider Company. Wassailing in Carhampton takes place on 17 January in the orchard of the Butcher's Arms pub. This is preceded by a smaller event in the Community Orchard in the centre of the village next to the pub. The villagers from a circle around the largest apple tree, hang pieces of toast soaked in cider in the branches for the robin, who represent the 'good spirits' of the tree.
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Christmas carols in predominantly Catholic Philippines exhibit the influence of indigenous, Hispanic and American musical traditions, reflecting the country's complex history. Carollers () begin wassailing in November, with mostly children and young adults participating in the custom.
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The song was sung in parts of England during the days of wassailing. This historical setting and the nature of its lyrics make it similar to carols such as the aforementioned Here We Come A-wassailing. The current most common version of the song was first published in 1928 in the Oxford Book of Carols by one of the book's three authors, Ralph Vaughan Williams. The tune was sung to him in August or July 1909 at the Swan Inn, an inn in Pembridge, Herefordshire, by an old, as-of-yet unknown person from Gloucestershire.
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In the cider-producing West of England (primarily the counties of Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire) wassailing also refers to drinking (and singing) the health of trees in the hopes that they might better thrive. Wassailing is also a traditional event in Jersey, Channel Islands where cider (cidre) made up the bulk of the economy before the 20th century. The format is much the same as that in England but with terms and songs often in Jèrriais An old rhyme goes: An apple sapling, hung with toast, placed in a handcart and pushed around the streets during the Chepstow Mari Lwyd, 2014 The purpose of wassailing is to awake the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements.
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A pot of wassail Wassail (, ; Old Norse "ves heil", Old English was hál, literally: be hale) is a beverage of hot mulled cider, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, a Medieval Christmastide English drinking ritual intended to ensure a good cider apple harvest the following year.
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"Here we come a-wassailing" performed by the U.S. Army Band The tradition of wassailing (alt sp wasselling)Sussex Entymology Doreathea Hurst, History and Antiquities of Horsham, Farncombe & Co, 1889 falls into two distinct categories: the house-visiting wassail and the orchard-visiting wassail. The house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts; this practice still exists, but has largely been displaced by caroling. The orchard-visiting wassail refers to the ancient custom of visiting orchards in cider-producing regions of England, reciting incantations and singing to the trees to promote a good harvest for the coming year.
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This would be given in the form of the song being sung. Wassailing is the background practice against which an English carol such as "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" can be made sense of.We Wish You a Merry Christmas Lyrics The carol lies in the English tradition where wealthy people of the community gave Christmas treats to the carolers on Christmas Eve such as 'figgy puddings'.English Christmas Carols - Christmas Songs of England Although wassailing is often described in innocuous and sometimes nostalgic terms—still practiced in some parts of Scotland and Northern England on New Years Day as "first-footing"—the practice in England has not always been considered so innocent.
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The Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society is a studio album by James Yorkston. The album was released on 17 August 2014 and is the seventh studio album by Yorkston. It was produced by Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip in London's Livingston studio. KT Tunstall, The Pictish Trail and Taylor feature on the album.
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The older stone bridge dates to around the 15th century, while the newer concrete bridge was built in 1926. The older bridge is closed to traffic, and is often used for village events including wassailing at Christmas. St Michael and All Angels' church to the west of the village is a Grade I listed building.
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A variant of the melody "A-Hunting We Will Go" is a popular folk song and nursery rhyme composed in 1777 by English composer Thomas Arne. The a- is an archaic intensifying prefix; compare "Here We Come A-wassailing/Here We Come A-caroling" and lyrics to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" (e.g., “Six geese a-laying”).
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Wassailing apple trees on the twelfth night to ensure a good harvest, a tradition in Maplehurst, West Sussex Roscón de reyes, or Kings' ring. This size, approx. diameter, usually serves 8 people. This pastry is just one of the many types baked around the world for celebrations during the Twelve Days of Christmas and Twelfth Night.
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Winterbourne has a Non-League football club Winterbourne United F.C. who play at Parkside Avenue and a popular village cricket club that fields 5 senior sides - Winterbourne CC - who share the same ground. Winterbourne Down Border Morris performs during the year at events such as wassailing, and especially on Boxing Day when they perform a Mummers play.
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Even excluding Sussex and London, South-east England has been one of the key areas of English folk music and collection. It had retained a strong tradition of wassailing, and seafaring songs were important in the coastal counties of Kent and Hampshire. Arguably the published collection of oral material was made in this area by John Broadwood, as Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex (1843).J. Broadwood, Old English Songs, As Now Sung by the Peasantry of the Weald of Surrey and Sussex, and Collected by One Who Has Learnt Them by Hearing Them Sung Every Christmas from Early Childhood, by the Country People, Who Go About to the Neighbouring Houses, Singing, or 'Wassailing' as It Is Called, at that Season.
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There are parallels here with wassailing where the Wassail Queen is lifted up into the boughs of the apple tree, where she places toast that has been soaked in Wassail from the Clayen Cup as a gift to the tree spirits to ensure good luck for the coming season's crop and to show them the fruits of what they created the previous year.
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He was the last man out. With a large lead on first innings, Australia dismissed the opposition for a low score to win a crushing victory. After some post-win wassailing, Waugh retired to bed in his cricket whites, socks and baggy green. "[Y]ou could say that Steve's legacy gained a lot of momentum from his efforts at Jamaica", wrote Reiffel.
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In one story a man offers his last mug of mulled cider to the trees in his orchard on Christmas Eve (a reflection of the custom and ritual of apple wassailing). He is rewarded by the Apple Tree Man who reveals to him the location of buried gold, more than enough to pay his rent.Thomas, Taffy (2014). Midwinter Folk Tales.
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Clevedon (North Somerset) holds an annual Wassailing event in the popularly attended Clevedon Community Orchard, combining the traditional elements of the festival with the entertainment and music of the Bristol Morris Men and their cantankerous Horse. Private readings about people in Somerset in the 1800s revealed that inhabitants of Somerset practised the old Wassailing Ceremony, singing the following lyrics after drinking the cider until they were "merry and gay:" A folktale from Somerset reflecting this custom tells of the Apple Tree Man, the spirit of the oldest apple tree in an orchard, and in whom the fertility of the orchard is thought to reside. In the tale a man offers his last mug of mulled cider to the trees in his orchard and is rewarded by the Apple Tree Man who reveals to him the location of buried gold.Briggs, Katharine (1976).
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The Apple Wassail is a traditional form of wassailing practiced in the cider orchards of southern England during the winter. There are many well recorded instances of the Apple Wassail in the early modern period. The first recorded mention was at Fordwich, Kent, in 1585, by which time groups of young men would go between orchards performing the rite for a reward. The practice was sometimes referred to as "howling".
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The carol's lyrics discuss various seasonal festivities during Christmastide, which is directly mentioned in the verse "When Christmastide comes in like a bride…Twelve days in the year, much mirth and good cheer." During the Elizabethan era (from which the song originates), the majority of Christmas celebrations occurred during the Twelve Days of Christmas. Traditional Elizabethan Christmas festivities alluded to in the carol include wassailing, feasting, and theatre performances.
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It is one of the band's rarer promotional singles, along with "The Wassailing Song", "Death of a Party" and "Bugman". According to Damon Albarn, when a box of these vinyls were going through customs, one of the boxes was labeled "bomb". This led to the boxes being handed over to the police and being destroyed in a controlled explosion. The track was included in the band's Blur 21 box set in 2012.
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The song "Soul Cake" from British rock musician Sting's 2009 album If on a Winter's Night... seems to be an adaptation of the Peter, Paul, and Mary version, in that both depart from historical accuracy by referring to Christmas rather than All Saints' Day or All Souls' Day. But the 1893 version of the song already shares lines from similar Christmas carols: "Here We Come A-Wassailing" and "Christmas is A-Coming".
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The Broad was usually featured as part of a wassailing team, but in some cases is recorded as appearing on its own, or as part of a hero-combat play. Those who accompanied it were reported as being dressed in ordinary clothing. Sometimes they carried a wooden wassail bowl which was decorated with ribbons and sprigs of evergreen. The tradition was located in a triangular area bounded by Stroud, Cricklade, and Chipping Sodbury.
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Antiquarians in the 19th-century rediscovered early carols in museums. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, about 500 have been found. Some are wassailing songs, some are religious songs in English, some are in Latin, and some are "macaronic" — a mixture of English and Latin. Since most people did not understand Latin, the implication is that these songs were composed for church choristers, or perhaps for an educated audience at the Royal courts.
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300px The Mari Lwyd (, ) is a wassailing folk custom found in South Wales. The tradition entails the use of an eponymous hobby horse which is made from a horse's skull mounted on a pole and carried by an individual hidden under a sackcloth. It represents a regional variation of a "hooded animal" tradition that appears throughout Great Britain. The custom was first recorded in 1800, with subsequent accounts of it being produced into the early twentieth century.
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This was spread across the eastern end of the southern Cotswolds as well as an area just east of the Cotswolds itself. Within this area, it was reported as existing in ten villages in Gloucestershire, and three in Wiltshire. The historian Ronald Hutton suggested that the custom might have developed out of older wassailing traditions. The earliest recorded examples of the Broad came from Kingscote circa 1835, and in West Gloucestershire from between 1830 and 1840.
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In the cider-producing counties in the South West of England (primarily Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire) or South East England (Kent, Sussex, Essex and Suffolk) as well as Jersey, Channel Islands; wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony that involves singing and drinking to the health of trees on Twelfth Night in the hopes that they might better thrive. The purpose of wassailing is to awaken the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen lead the song and/or a processional tune to be played/sung from one orchard to the next; the wassail Queen is then lifted into the boughs of the tree where she places toast soaked in wassail from the clayen cup as a gift to the tree spirits (and to show the fruits created the previous year).
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Similar traditions have also been traced to Greece and the country of Georgia. Wassailing was associated with rowdy bands of young men who would enter the homes of wealthy neighbours and demand free food and drink (in a manner similar to the modern children's Halloween practice of trick-or- treating). If the householder refused, he was usually cursed, and occasionally his house was vandalized. The example of the exchange is seen in their demand for "figgy pudding" and "good cheer", i.e.
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Possibly related, the Yule Goat is one of the oldest Scandinavian and Northern European Yule and Christmas symbols and traditions. Yule Goat originally denoted the goat that was slaughtered around Yule, but it may also indicate a goat figure made out of straw. It is also used about the custom of going door-to-door singing carols and getting food and drinks in return, often fruit, cakes and sweets. "Going Yule Goat" is similar to the British custom wassailing, both with roots.
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In January, the ancient custom of wassailing takes place in Tarring to bless the apple trees. A flaming torchlit procession takes place down Tarring High Street culminating in hundreds of people gathering around an apple tree to shout, chant and sing to drive away evil spirits. The apple trees are toasted with wassail, apple cider and apple cake, followed by fireworks. On May Day, a procession and dancing takes place in Worthing town centre, culminating in the crowning of the May Queen.
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As of 2013, the song was slated to be included on his next album. For the Pentacle Drummers second Wassail festival (2014) the Pagan rock band Roxircle also wrote a Wassail song especially for the event called 'Wassail (Give Thanks to the Earth)'. The Pentacle Drummers encourage their headline acts to write a song centered around wassailing, a way to keep the tradition alive. The English neo-progressive rock band Big Big Train released an EP entitled 'Wassail' in 2015, named for the title track.
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In 2004, the alternative Christmas message was presented by The Simpsons who close out with a cup of "traditional British wassail". When the director cuts, they spit it out in disgust, with Bart remarking that it tasted "like hurl". Wassail was featured on the BBC Two special Oz and Hugh Drink to Christmas, which aired in December 2009. Oz Clarke and Hugh Dennis sample the drink and the wassailing party in Southwest England as part of their challenge to find Britain's best Christmas drinks.
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The western British tradition of wassailing the apple trees and making an offering of cider and bread in Autumn to protect the fertility of the orchard appears to be a relatively ancient tradition, superficially dating back to the pre- Christian Early Medieval period. The autumn tradition of 'bobbing' for apples is due to the abundance of fruit at this time. A modern cider festival is an organised event that promotes cider and (usually) perry. A variety of ciders and perries will be available for tasting and buying.
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In album order: #Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas #Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow #Little Drummer Boy #It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas #Away in a Manger #Jingle Bells #White Christmas #Frosty the Snowman #Santa Claus is Coming to Town #Blue Christmas #Here We Come a Wassailing #Up on the Housetop #God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen #I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus #Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer #Do You Hear What I Hear? New lyrics by Bill Strauss, Elaina Newport and Mark Eaton.
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Singing carols in church was instituted on Christmas Eve 1880 in Truro Cathedral, Cornwall, (see article on Nine Lessons and Carols), and now seen in churches all over the world. The songs that were chosen for singing in church omitted the wassailing carols, and the words "hymn" and "carol" were used almost interchangeably. Shortly before, in 1878, the Salvation Army, under Charles Fry, instituted the idea of playing carols at Christmas, using a brass band. Carols can be sung by individual singers, but are also often sung by larger groups, including professionally trained choirs.
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Detail, southern wall - Mary with the infant Jesus The images in the murals depict the wassailing song "As I Sat Under A Sycamore Tree",A Local Setting for a European Text, Anglican Church of Australia website, retrieved 25 October 2011. Archived from the original on 13 November 2011. itself a variant of the carol "I Saw Three Ships", in which the Holy Family sail into Bethlehem with Saint Michael and Saint John as their boatmen. At that time, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was being built and it can be seen under construction from both sides of the chapel.
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In a Scandinavian custom similar to the English tradition of wassailing, held at either Christmas or Epiphany, young men in costumes would walk between houses singing songs, enacting plays and performing pranks. This tradition is known from the 17th century and still continue in certain areas. The group of Christmas characters would often include the Yule goat, a rowdy and sometimes scary creature demanding gifts.The Museum of Nordic History - Julbocksmask (Yule goat Mask) Att gå med stjärnan (To Walk with the Star) (The Museum of Nordic History) A 19th century Christmas card God Jul by Jenny Nyström.
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Mumming spread from the British Isles to a number of former British colonies. It is sometimes performed in the street but more usually during visits to houses and pubs. It is generally performed seasonally or annually, often at Christmas, Easter or on Plough Monday, more rarely on Halloween or All Souls' Day, and often with a collection of money, in which the practice may be compared with other customs such as those of Halloween, Bonfire Night, wassailing, pace egging and first- footing at new year.Peter Thomas Millington, The Origins and Development of English Folk Plays, National Centre for English Cultural Tradition, University of Sheffield, 2002, pp.
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Along with editor John Rutter, the compilers included many arrangements of carols derived from sources such as Piae Cantiones, as well as pieces by modern composers such as William Walton, Benjamin Britten, Richard Rodney Bennett, William Mathias and John Rutter. Today carols are regularly sung at Christian religious services. Some compositions have words that are clearly not of a religious theme, but are often still referred to as "carols". For example, the 16th-century song "A Bone, God Wot!" appears to be a wassailing song (which is sung during drinking or while requesting ale), but is described in the British Library's Cottonian Collection as a Christmas carol.
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The most famous survival of these early macaronic carols is "The Boar's Head". The tradition of singing carols outside of church services early in the 19th century is best illustrated by Thomas Hardy's novel "Under the Greenwood Tree" (1872). In England and other countries, such as Poland (kolęda), Romania (colinde) and Bulgaria (koledari), there is a tradition of Christmas caroling (earlier known as wassailing), in which groups of singers travel from house to house, singing carols at each, for which they are often rewarded with gifts, money, mince pies, or a glass of an appropriate beverage. Money collected in this way is now normally given to charity.
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British folk rock band Steeleye Span opened their third album "Ten Man Mop or Mr. Reservoir Butler Rides Again" (1971) with an extended, minor-key version of "Gower Wassail," Tim Hart singing the traditional verses and the others joining the chorus. The British rock band Blur released a cover of the song, with each member taking a verse. The release was limited to 500 7-inch pressings, which were given out at a concert in 1992. The version of 'The Wassailing Song' performed by Blur was later adapted in a recording by The Grizzly Folk, who have stated that the arrangement bears a close resemblance to the 'Gloucestershire Wassail'.
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Among the most famous wassail ceremonies are those in Whimple, Devon and Carhampton, Somerset, both on 17 January. There are also many new, commercial or "revival" wassails springing up all over the Westcountry such as those in Stoke Gabriel and Sandford, Devon. Clevedon (North Somerset) holds an annual Wassailing event in the popularly attended Clevedon Community Orchard, combining the traditional elements of the festival with the entertainment and music of the Bristol Morris Men and their cantankerous Horse. A folktale from Somerset reflecting this custom tells of the Apple Tree Man, the spirit of the oldest apple tree in an orchard, and in whom the fertility of the orchard is thought to reside.
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Causley hails from the village of Whimple in East Devon, Causley was born in Exeter and is a relative of the Cornish poet Charles Causley. Described by Mojo Magazine as "the finest singer of his generation", Causley grew up in an area rich in traditional music; his home village in the heart of Cider Country with its thriving wassailing tradition and its close proximity to Sidmouth and Dartmoor folk festivals. After studying Performing Arts and Jazz & Popular Music at Exeter College, Causley went on to study Folk and Traditional Music at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. It was during this time that he began gaining a reputation as talented singer on the wider UK folk scene.
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Traditionally, the wassail is celebrated on Twelfth Night (variously on either January 5 or 6). Some people still wassail on "Old Twelvey Night", January 17, as it would have been before the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. In the middle ages, the wassail was a reciprocal exchange between the feudal lords and their peasants as a form of recipient-initiated charitable giving, to be distinguished from begging. This point is made in the song "Here We Come A-wassailing", when the wassailers inform the lord of the house that The lord of the manor would give food and drink to the peasants in exchange for their blessing and goodwill, i.e.
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Whimple Wassail 1930 Whimple has a long tradition of wassailing which it celebrates every year on Old Twelvey Night - 17 January. The Whimple Wassail is an orchard-visiting wassail ceremony and was first mentioned by the Victorian author and folklorist; the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould in his book Devonshire Characters and Strange Events (published 1908). Later in 1931 the Whimple Wassail was given further mention in the Devon & Exeter Gazette describing how the Wassail was hosted at Rull Farm, Whimple by a Mr & Mrs Reynolds. The ceremony stopped during World War II but was revived by the Whimple History Society in 1980 and has grown into a very popular tradition attracting visitors from all over the country.
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Cawte concurred that it was "reasonable to accept" that the Mari Lwyd head had become attached to an independent wassailing tradition, but said that the connection to the Virgin Mary was unnecessary. Pearce also suggested the possibility that in parts of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire the Mari Lwyd tradition came under the influence of mystery plays, thus explaining why later recorded examples from those counties contained characters known as "the Sergeant" and the "Merryman". A Mari Lwyd at the 2013 St. David's Day festivities in Los Angeles. The folklorist Trefor M. Owen also suggested that the Mari Lwyd was a practice "which probably had a religious (if pre-Christian) origin", adding that by the time it had been recorded, it had become "emptied of its religious content".
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Bands and performers would gather at public places and perform for free, passing the hat to make money. The San Francisco Bay Area was at the epicenter of this movement – be-ins were staged at Golden Gate Park and San Jose's Bee Stadium and other venues. Some of the bands that performed in this manner were Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe and the Fish, Moby Grape and Jimi Hendrix. German street performers play for pedestrians in 1948 Dancers in Sutton High Street, Sutton, London, England Christmas caroling can also be a form of busking, as wassailing included singing for alms, wassail or some other form of refreshment such as figgy pudding.
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Food and drink are the centre of the celebrations in modern times, and all of the most traditional ones go back many centuries. The punch called wassail is consumed especially on Twelfth Night and throughout Christmas time, especially in the UK, and door- to-door wassailing (similar to singing Christmas carols) was common up until the 1950s. Around the world, special pastries, such as the tortell and king cake, are baked on Twelfth Night, and eaten the following day for the Feast of the Epiphany celebrations. In English and French custom, the Twelfth-cake was baked to contain a bean and a pea, so that those who received the slices containing them should be respectively designated king and queen of the night's festivities.
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Medieval French peasants enjoying a meal Barry Jean Ancelet, Cajun folklorist and retired professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, has explained the origins of the Courir in rural medieval France: These origins are found in the customs of Catholic medieval Europe, specifically the fête de la quémande ("feast of begging") of medieval France. During the fête, which was a time when begging from house to house was a socially acceptable behavior, disguised revelers would go through the countryside visiting households and performing for offerings. This is similar to other contemporary traditional European customs such as mumming and wassailing which usually occur around Christmas, New Year's, and Epiphany. These traditions originated in a time when most of the land and money was held by the upper classes.
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In her song 'Oh England My Lionheart', on the 1978 album Lionheart, Kate Bush sings "Give me one wish, and I'd be wassailing in the orchard, my English rose." The alternative rock band Half Man Half Biscuit from Tranmere, England included a song named 'Uffington Wassail' on their 2000 album 'Trouble over Bridgwater'. With its references to the Israeli transsexual Eurovision contestant Dana International, the Sealed Knot English Civil War re-enactment society, and also to the skier Vreni Schneider, the meaning of the songs title in this context is a little obscure. In 2013 Folk Rock musician Wojtek Godzisz (formerly of the band Symposium) created an arrangement of the traditional Gloucestershire Wassail words with original music for the Pentacle Drummers first Annual Wassail festival (2013), simply called 'Wassail'.
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Cawte similarly believed that "Grey Mare" was the most likely original meaning of the term, noting that the Mari Lwyd appeared to represent a horse and that similar hobby horse customs in neighbouring England, such as the hoodening tradition of East Kent, also made reference to horses with their name. Peate suggested that even if the term Mari Lwyd had originally referred to a "Grey Mare", it could still have come to be associated with Mary in popular folk culture following the Reformation, thus explaining why Mary is referred to in the lyrics of some surviving Welsh wassailing songs. A further suggestion is that Mari Lwyd derives from the English term Merry Lude, referring to a merry game. Peate opposed this idea, arguing that if the latter was converted into Welsh then the result would be merri-liwt or merri-liwd.
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In the book, which he called Recollections, he also recorded information about his family. It describes events such as the arrival in Norwich of news from London by mail coach; public celebrations after the announcement of the end of the Napoleonic Wars; the procession of the 'Gregorians' on the River Wensum; bull-baiting; the annual fair held north of the city; the public executions at the Castle; Norwich Guild Day and the procession of Snap the Dragon; prisoners transported by wagon to Thetford; pitched battles on Mousehold Heath; and lamplighting. Short's Recollections have provided modern historians with a link to the past and allowed the revival of previously forgotten traditions, such as wassailing. The Battle of Corunna (1809) According to his Recollections, Obadiah, who was known to his family as Oba, supplemented his parents' income by working as a small boy in the textiles industry.
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In his view, "the consequence is, Wales, which was formerly one of the merriest and happiest countries in the World, is now becoming one of the dullest". Reflecting such a view, in 1852 the Reverend William Roberts, a Baptist minister at Blaenau Gwent, condemned the Mari Lwyd and other related customs as "a mixture of old Pagan and Popish ceremonies... I wish of this folly, and all similar follies, that they find no place anywhere apart from the museum of the historian and antiquary." Owen suggested that the custom's decline was also a result of changing social conditions in South Wales. He argued that the Mari Lwyd wassailing custom "gave an approved means of entering the houses of neighbours in a culture in which there were few public assemblies - at least in the heart of winter - in which the convivial spirit of the season could be released".
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Positing the custom to be "the survival of some ancient popular rite or ceremony", in 1888 David Jones suggested that its origins were Christian, and that it had once been part of the festivities of the Feast of the Ass, a commemoration of the flight into Egypt of Mary and Saint Joseph that was historically marked on 14 January. According to Jones' idea, the Mari Lwyd itself represented the donkey on which Mary rode during the story. Peate was of the opinion that the Mari Lwyd was "no doubt a survival of a pre-Christian tradition" that had once been spread across Britain and other parts of Europe, and which - having survived the Christianisation of Britain - had been renamed Mari Lwyd in reference to the Virgin Mary during the Middle Ages. He expressed the view that the original custom had been "horrific in origin and intention" and that from an early date it had been connected to wassailing.
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In 2009, Fallon appeared as a guest vocalist on Jim Brickman's "It's a Beautiful World" tour and PBS special and released her second album Distant Shore in September of that year. This was followed in March 2010 with her third album Music of Ireland: Welcome Home. In December 2010, Fallon released a PBS Celtic Christmas special and tie-in CD, titled Órla Fallon's Celtic Christmas, the first time any former Celtic Woman member had starred in their own PBS special. In this special, as well as Fallon's own songs, there were also songs which featured a few guest singers, including former fellow Celtic Woman member Méav Ní Mhaolchatha, in which they sang a duet together ("Do you hear what I hear"), and American Idol runner up David Archuleta, who joined Fallon on stage to perform "Silent Night", "Pat a Pan", and the finale song of "Here we come A-Wassailing", which Ní Mhaolchatha was also featured in.
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