Grab your toast and gun – for wassailing

hael”, or drink well, and so the boozing would begin. But the drink could be ale, wine or cider, depending on the part of the country where the ceremony took place.

Nowadays wassailing is most closely linked with the West Country and cider. The generally accepted night for wassailing was January 5 – twelfth night – but even older tradition says it should be today sometimes known as “Old Twelvey, which was 12th night before the Gregorian calendar was introduced in 1792 and shifted the dates.

Historic UK reports: “There are two distinct variations of wassailing. One involves groups of merrymakers going from one house to another, wassail bowl in hand, singing traditional songs and generally spreading fun and good wishes. The other form of wassailing is generally practiced in the countryside, particularly in fruit growing regions, where it is the trees that are blessed.”

Done properly it should involve dressing up, soaking a piece of toast in cider and placing it in the tree to encourage new growth.

The shotgun, it seems, is optional, although banging pots and pans to awake sleeping good spirits and scare away the bad is sometimes tried and this verse sung:

“Apple tree, apple tree we all come to wassail thee, Bear this year and next year to bloom and blow, Hat fulls, cap fulls, three cornered sacks fills…”