“A pocketful of money, and a cellar full of beer / We wish you merrie and a happy new year.” 

“Enter Wassel, like a neat sempeter and songster, her page bearing a brown bowl, dressed with ribbons and rosemary, before her” (Ben Jonson). 

*Warning: Long read.  May strain eyes or tax attention spans.  Also contains traces of cultural history and old literature.  For the TL;DR crowd, there’s a recipe near the end for a holiday drink called wassail that you can make at home. 

With the cold weather upon us and the holiday season rapidly approaching, now’s a perfect time to revisit a theme I’ve written about occasionally over the years: spiced and heated drinks guaranteed to take the chill off any winter night.  I’ve written about the history of some of these drinks elsewhere and have also written a few posts introducing readers to Glühwein and Glühbier.  This time around it’s a-wassailing time. 

In his 1889 classic, The Curiosities of Ale and Beer, John Bickerdyke sheds light on “ancient merry makings, feasts and ceremonies peculiar to certain seasons, at which ale was the principal drink” (232).  He goes on to note that “these simple, hearty festivals of old […] served to light up the dull round of the recurring seasons.”  Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, Twelfth Night — all of these “served to make the labourer’s lot seem an easier one, and to vary the monotonous round of toil.”  These great festivals that closed out the old year and ushered in the new “were celebrated with feasting and hearty boisterous merriment.”  Indeed, the time “from Christmas Day to Twelfth Night was one long Saturnalia of feasting, dancing, and wassailing” (Bickerdyke, 259-260).  W.T. Marchant, author of another classic, In Praise of Ale, concurs: “It cannot be denied that our ancestors prolonged the festivities vigourously at Christmastide.  The fun went fast and furious, and wassail was put away — perhaps not wisely, but too well” (Marchant, 72). 

Wassail: An Old World in a Word

Wassail and wassailing.  A spiced winter drink, an ancient salutation, a cup or bowl, a merry song, a ritual. 

The tradition of wassailing has traveled far across time, dating back to the pre-Christian era in Europe.  By all accounts, the word “wassail” was a salutation of Saxon origin meaning “be healthy” or “be whole,” a sense that survives in the phrase “hale and hearty.”  Just like Oktoberfest, it all started with a wedding.  Bickerdyke recounts the story of Vortigern’s betrothal to the Saxon Rowena:

“Rowena, the daughter of Hengist, on being presented to Vortigern at a feast which her father had prepared for him, kneeled before him and offered him a bowl with the words ‘Louerd king woes hoeil,’ that is, ‘Lord King, your health’” (234). 

Marchant adds further shades to the story in noting that Vortigern’s kingdom fell to the Saxons when he married the Saxon Rowena: “Waesheil thus became the name of the drinking cups of the Anglo-Saxons; and those cups were afterwards in constant use” (Marchant, 63).  A kingdom for a cup. 

In time, the word wassail came to denote feasting in general, while the wassail-bowl meant both the cup and the spiced ale with which it was filled.  Eventually, the tradition of wassailing evolved into people going door to door on Twelfth Night, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts, a practice whose echo we hear in modern-day caroling. 

Many of us know about Twelfth Night through Shakespeare’s play of that name, or through the “Twelve Days of Christmas” carol.  What some of us might not know is that these twelve days extend from Christmas Day to the eve of the Epiphany (6 January), and what fewer of us know is that these twelve days were given over to feasting and revelry.  Drink flowed liberally, with wassail at the center of the festivities, often accompanied by spiced cakes. 

Lambswool: A Recipe for Your Wassail-Bowl

Ever the keen chronicler of forgotten tradition, Bickerdyke observes the following (378):

“Very few people, when warming themselves in the winter months with Mulled Ale, know that they are quaffing a direct descendant of that famous liquor known to our forefathers as the Wassail-Bowl, and near akin to Lambs-Wool, of which Herrick wrote in his Twelfth Night: Next crowne the bowle full With gentle Lambs Wooll, Adde sugare and nutmeg and ginger, With store of ale too And thus ye must doe, To make the Wassaile a swinger.’” 

Lambswool is thus a drink that has nothing to do with the wool of lambs, and plenty to do with roasted apples and the tradition of wassailing.  A stanza from “A Carol for a Wassail Bowl” provides the simplest rendition of this wassail drink (cited in Marchant, 73):

Our wassel we do fill With apples and with spice; Then grant us your good will To taste here once or twice Of our good wassel. 

Bickerdyke suggests preparing lambswool in a way that serves as the basis for the recipe that follows, minus the sweet cakes:

“To make this beverage, mix the pulp of half a dozen roasted apples with some raw sugar, a grated nutmeg, and a small quantity of ginger; add one quart of strong ale made moderately warm.  Stir the whole together, and, if sweet enough, it is fit for use.  This mixture is sometimes served up in a bowl, with sweet cakes floating in them” (Bickerdyke, 382). 

As for the curious name, Bickerdyke and others trace it back to an ancient harvest festival called La Mas Ubal (The Day of Apple-Fruit).  La Mas Ubal was pronounced lamasool, which the countryfolk pronounced as lambswool, the beverage for the feast day bearing its name. 

Without further ado, here’s what you’ll need to make your own lambswool punch for your wassailing adventures.  Adjust proportions according to how many people you’ll be serving. 

Ingredients :

6 12-oz bottles of malt-forward beer.  Sam Adams’ Irish Ale or Smithwick’s Irish Ale work well, as do beers like Bellhaven’s Scottish Ale. 

6 green cooking apples. 

8 tbsp (approx.  ½ cup) brown sugar or demerara … Add more or less, depending on how sour the apples are. 

1 nutmeg ball, freshly grated

1 tbsp chopped ginger

5 tsp cinnamon (optional). 

2-3 oz dark rum (optional).  As far as I can tell from reading through all the ballads and poems in Marchant and Bickerdyke that elegize wassail and lamb’s wool, this is not a traditional ingredient.  I find it adds a nice touch. 

Directions :

Preheat oven to 350F. Core the apples and place on a greased baking sheet, then bake for 45-60 minutes until they are soft and the skin peels away easily. 

Carefully peel the apples while they’re still warm, then pulp them into a smooth purée with a fork or potato masher.  Add the ginger and spices to this mix. 

Meanwhile, gently heat the beer in a thick-bottomed pot, adding about three quarters of the sugar to dissolve.  Simmer — don’t boil — for about 10 minutes, then whisk in the apple mixture.  Let this simmer gently for another 30 minutes or so.  Check sugar level and add more if need be. 

Remove from heat and stir in the rum, one ounce at a time till you get the taste where you want it.  At this point you could either strain the whole mixture and keep it warm on the stove, or serve it up old school whisked up foamy in a tankard, lumps and all. 

***

In closing, a toast from “A Selection of Christmas Hymns” (cited in Marchant).  The tune and chorus may well be familiar to you.  Here’s a YouTube link to put you in the spirit. 

Here we come a wessling, Among the leaves so green; Here we come a wandering, So fair to be seen.  Love and joy comes to you, And to your wessel too, And God send you a happy new year. 

May your tankard runneth over this holiday season with good fortune and good cheer. 

Sources:

John Bickerdyke, The Curiosities of Ale and Beer: An Entertaining History (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1889). 

W.T. Marchant, In Praise of Ale, Or, A Compendium of Songs, Ballads, Epigrams, and Anecdotes Relating to Beer, Malt, and Hops, with Some Curious Particulars Concerning Ale-Wives and Brewers, Drinking-Clubs and Customs (London: George Redway, York Street, Covent Garden, 1888). 

Wikipedia, “Twelfth Night.” 

Wikipedia, “Wassailing.” 

Oakden on Lambswool. 

Image Credits:

Roxburghe Ballads, Bickerdyke, p.238. 

Apples.  https://blog.hellofresh.com.au/guide-to-apples/

Simon A. Eugster, Cinnamon: sticks (ceylon cinnamon from Sri Lanka), powder, and flowers.  Created from 31 images stacked with CombineZP.  Wikimedia/Wiki Commons. 

Related Tempest Articles:

Spreading Good Cheer with a Tankard of Mulled Beer

Of Hearths and Heated Ales: A Taste of Drinking History

’Tis the Season for a Mug of Mulled Beer

Warming Beers for Cold Nights

© 2018 F.D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard.  All rights reserved.