By Madeline Ricks
Serving with Augusta Heritage Center
On Saturday, December 7th, I helped organize and uphold a unique and ancient English caroling tradition in Elkins, WV. As one of the AFNHA AmeriCorps members at the Augusta Heritage Center, I work to preserve and share traditional arts and culture through events, archive recordings, and other research avenues. One of the traditions I focused on recently was Wassailing, an English caroling practice that is over 1,000 years old. My interest was spurred in Augusta’s Lift Your Voice Choir, where our director, Emily Miller, gave us two Apple Tree Wassailing songs to sing this season. These two songs turned into an entire event, where the city of Elkins recreated this ancient English tradition at the Kump House in order to bless their apple trees, chasing out harmful spirits and waking the trees up for the coming winter so that they will have a bountiful harvest next fall. While this sounds strange, the event itself is more about bringing the wider Elkins community together in an evening of song and creating a fun tradition that will hopefully become a yearly event!
“Hedingham Fair’s first Wassail design; ‘Joy come to our Jolly Wassail’, 1997” (Cater 2013:4).
Now, you may still be confused as to what a Wassail is. Wassailing was traditionally practiced by rural English communities to bless their harvests and ask for charity from wealthy members of their communities in the approaching winter months. While there is not a solid date or place where the Wassail first appeared, the term can be traced back as far as the 5th century and possibly further. “Its oldest legend involves Rowena, daughter of Hengist, a Saxon mercenary, who presents the future King Vortigern with a bowl of mulled wine and the cheer ‘Waes Hael!’, to which Vortigern replies ‘Drinc Hael’, now recognized as the traditional reply.” … “The salutation ‘Wassail’ probably derives from the Anglo Saxon ‘Waes bu hael’ (originating from the Old Norse “ves heill”), meaning ‘Be of good health’ and consists of two Old English components, ‘waes’ and ‘hael’.” (Cater 2013: 15).
Our Wassail at the Kump House was specifically an Apple Tree Wassail, used to thank and bless apple trees that communities used to make cider and other goods. In September, I used the Kump House’s apple trees to make apple butter, so I wanted to bless the trees that so kindly provided their apples! The main goal of Apple Tree Wassailing is making as much noise as possible in order to scare the harmful spirits (or sometimes just bugs) away from the trees in order for them to have a bountiful harvest next fall.
As the Wassail began on Saturday night, I passed out songbooks and cider to around 50 Wassailers! We gathered around the largest tree in the Kump House orchard. One of the main traditions in Apple Tree Wassailing is pouring cider made from the apple trees onto the roots of the trees during the Wassail. Often, most of the singing and blessing is focused on the largest tree in the orchard called Old Man Apple.
As everyone had gathered around Old Man Apple, the Butler (our announcer for the night), Seth Young, guided the Wassailers through a few traditions. We first raised our cups of hot cider and cheered in the traditional manner. We first shouted, “Waes thu Hael!” (Be of Good Health!), and then replied, “Drinc Hael!” (Drink to Good Health!).
The Robin and the Apple Queen passing toast over Old Man Apple.
After cheering, we brought forward the youngest members of our group, Angus and Flora Miller (playing the roles of the Robin and the Apple Queen, respectively), to pass pieces of toast over Old Man Apple. This invited the spirit of the Robin to come to the tree and chase away evil spirits/bugs to ensure a good harvest next fall. As they passed the toast they yelled, “Twit, Twit, I want something to eat!”
The final tradition of the Apple Tree Wassail was pouring cider from the Wassail Bowl onto the roots of Old Man Apple. The Wassail Bowl is a large bowl, traditionally made of wood, is where cider is stored and the Wassailing party traditionally shares sips of cider from it throughout the night. We opted to have separate cups of cider for germ reasons, but we still poured cider out of the Wassail Bowl onto Old Man Apple. This tradition makes a full circle, usually using the cider that was made from Old Man Apple and other trees in the orchard, the trees “blood” is returned at its roots in the winter so that it may be used to grow more apples the next fall.
Pouring cider from the Wassail Bowl onto Old Man Apple’s Roots.
Throughout the night we sang Apple Tree Wassails and carols to scare off the harmful spirits. As we wrapped up the orchard portion of the Wassail, everyone left with red cheeks from the cold and travelled to Big Timber to celebrate further with a square dance and fundraiser for the Augusta Scholarship Fund. It is exciting to see how my time and research culminated in such a uniquely fun event. The Augusta Heritage Center and Lift Your Voice Choir provided me with the spark to start looking into Wassailing and I was supported throughout my research and planning by the staff at Augusta, who have all helped to make an Elkins Wassail happen! I also wrote a blog post on the Augusta Heritage Center’s website if you want to read more about the history of Wassailing!
A special thank you to Kump House for allowing us to hold a Wassail in their orchard!
WORKS CITED
Cater, C. & Cater, K. 2013. Wassailing: Reawakening an Ancient Folk Custom, Hedingham Fair, Great Britain.
