Dowsing for Divinity

Happy wassailing to everyone in the UK who is wassailing the apple trees. Here in Ontario, Canada, we won’t be wassailing until February because right now the trees have hardly woken up yet, there’s still too much snow. I am looking forward to the Orange Peel Morris annual wassailing in February.

The custom of wassailing or blessing fruit trees is very widespread all around the world. In India they bless the durian fruit trees. In cider producing regions, it’s the apple trees.

Many wassail customs take the form of firing guns to scare the spirits away (Orange Peel have a cute wooden pop gun), singing, leaving toast soaked in cider for the robins (a different bird in North America but I’m sure they appreciate the thought), and of course Morris dancing.

There are two types of wassailing. In fruit growing regions we wassail the trees. In other areas, a wassail bowl was carried from house to house, bringing good cheer.

There were many such seasonal customs — in an age when social security was lacking, dressing up the very necessary act of begging with a pretty custom was essential. Think how many songs there are where the singers ask for food and drink (“oh bring us some figgy pudding”…)

The word wassail comes from “waes hael”, meaning “be healthy” and the correct reply when someone says “WASSAIL” is “DRINC HAEL”. That’s why the wassail bowl that I made in pottery class has wassail written on one side and drinc hael on the other side.

There are many different wassail songs — The Carhampton Wassail, The Gower Wassail (my favourite), and the Gloucestershire Wassail.

In this post I’ve used 19th century illustrations of wassailing (both kinds) and some 19th century wassail bowls.