"Wassail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thee," he said "men say thou art a prompt fellow in thy service, but too much given to brawling and to wassail to be trusted with things ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... care, such ever be The motto of thy revelry! Perchance of mine when wassail nights Renew those riotous delights, Wherewith the children of Despair Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care,' But not ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... excellent piece de resistance, and every other substantial appliance of ancient hospitality. Barrels of mighty ale were broached, and their nut-brown contents widely distributed, and the health of the bride and bridegroom was enthusiastically drunk in a brimming wassail cup of spicy wine with floating toast. Titus Tyrconnel acted as master of the ceremonies, and was, Mr. Coates declared, "quite in his element." So much was he elated, that he ventured to cut some of his old jokes upon the vicar, and, strange to say, without incurring the ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... other night. I tied it up in two splints cut out of a clothes-peg in a manner which I stated to be the most popular at the Hotel Dieu at Paris; and the old girl was so pleased that she has asked me to keep Christmas-day at her house, where she burns the Yule log, makes a bowl of wassail, and all manner of games. We are going to bore a hole in the Yule log with an old trephine, and ram it chuck-full of gunpowder; and Jack's little brother is to catch six or seven frogs, under pain of a severe licking, which are to be put into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 25, 1841 • Various
... wouldst make profit of thy time, begin by bringing hither for my supper good ale and wine, with sugar and spices; and I will brew thee such a horn as thou hast ne'er thought on before. And thou for each good turn shalt drink a wassail to thy buxom wench and shalt have money ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... day's wassail, most of the men went below at an early hour, leaving the deck to the steward and two of the men remaining on duty; the mate, with Baltimore and the Dane, engaging to relieve them at midnight. At that hour, the ship—now standing off shore, under short ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... then. One saluted the other, Hrothgar Beowulf, in rhythmical measures, 95 Wishing him well, and, the wassail-hall giving To his care and keeping, quoth he departing: [24] "Not to any one else have I ever entrusted, But thee and thee only, the hall of the Danemen, Since high I could heave my hand and my buckler. 100 Take thou in charge now the noblest of houses; Be mindful of honor, ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... propel a single ball! Resurgam. Dawns dread and red the fateful morn— Lo, Resurrection's Day is born! The striding sea no longer strides, No longer knows the trick of tides; The land is breathless, winds relent, All nature waits the dread event. From wassail rising rather late, Awarding Jove arrives in state; O'er yawning graves looks many a league, Then yawns himself from sheer fatigue. Lifting its finger to the sky, A marble shaft arrests his eye— This epitaph, in pompous ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... Blest be t' day that Christ was born, Guy Fawkes Day A Stick and a stake, Awd Grimey sits upon yon hill, Christmas I wish you a merry Kessenmas an' a happy New Year, Cleveland Christmas Song A Christmas Wassail Sheffield Mumming Song Charms, "Nominies," and Popular Rhymes Wilful weaste maks weasome want A rollin' stone gethers no moss Than awn a crawin' hen Nowt bud ill-luck 'll fester where Meeat maks The Miller's Thumb Miller, ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... and ale," as Maitland says, were eaten and drunk with the kitchen of a Cheviot hunger, and the sweetness of stolen things; and when the wild spirit of the daring outlaws, with Johnny at their head, made the old tower of the Armstrongs ring with their wassail shouts. This Border turret came—after the execution of Johnny Armstrong, and when the clan had become what was called a broken clan—into the possession of William Armstrong, who figured in the times ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... going on in the parlour waxed louder and wilder as the night wore on. There were unseen guests there, elate and inspiring, who sat with the revellers—phantoms who attend such wassail, and keep the ladle of the punch-bowl clinking, the tongue of the songster glib and tuneful, and the general mirth alive and furious. A few honest folk, with the gift of a second sight in such matters, discover their uncanny presence—leprous impurity, insane ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... was hung for an arch-mutineer, But a mystery cleaved, and the captain was blamed, And a rumpus too raised, though his honor it was clear. And Tom he would say, when the mousers would try him, And with cup after cup o' Burgundy ply him: "Gentlemen, in vain with your wassail you beset, For the more I tipple, the tighter do I get." No blabber, no, not even with the can— True to himself and loyal to ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... "by way of compromise, and to secure for us inward as well as outward warmth, let us have a Christmas wassail-cup, and toast Old England here, on ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... building, for every inch of progress was a matter of interest to them. As they came through the village, they perceived that Farmer Huet was holding his apple feast; for he was carrying from his house into his orchard a great bowl of spiced ale, and was followed by a merry company, singing wassail as they poured a little at the ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... forbidden! But men must be far more or far less than mortal ere they can blind their eyes, and dull their senses, and forswear their nature, and obey the dreariness of the commandment; and there is little need to force the sackcloth and the serge upon us. The roses wither long before the wassail is over, and there is no magic that will make them bloom again, for there is none that renews us—youth. The Helots had their one short, joyous festival in their long year of labour; life may leave us ours. It will be ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... their wassail bowls, About the streets are singing; The boys are come to catch the owls, The wild mare in is bringing. Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box, And to the dealing of the ox Our honest neighbors come by flocks, And ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... trampled out of life, but past and forgotten in the rush, made a little happy, and soothed in her hours of unrest by this penny legacy. Let me think as I write. (The next month's sermon, thank goodness! is safe to press.) This discourse will appear at the season when I have read that wassail-bowls make their appearance; at the season of pantomime, turkey and sausages, plum-puddings, jollifications for schoolboys; Christmas bills, and reminiscences more or less sad and sweet for elders. If we oldsters are not merry, ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... a wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out; Often our midnight shout Set the cocks crowing, As we the Berserk's tale Measured in cups of ale, Draining the oaken ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... provided that you see our good will and will join us in this banquet." Whereupon he distributes among his guests according to the order of their standing the array of presents, after which all squat down and begin to eat, the visitors giving an extra dose of wassail to their friends in order that under its warming influence they may soften ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... said the little Prince, bowing low with true courtier-like grace and suavity, "I will, with your permission, crave my boon as a Christmas favor at wassail time ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... and Lord Mayor's Days. Lord! how he laid about him! Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him—to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow, plying him the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hiccup'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-cri-tical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great custard that stood ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... gossip,—solitary, shady, cool, and quiet,—surely I can rest here. Forked tongues of scandal can not penetrate through those rock-ribbed hills yonder, nor dart across that defying sea; and neither wail nor wassail of men or women can disturb me more. But how do I know that it will not prove a mocking cheat like Baiae and Maggiore, or Copais and Cromarty? I have fled in disgust and ennui from far lovelier spots ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels; And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... exultant with success, encamped that night in the woods not far from Marlborough, and kept the forest awake with the uproar of their barbarian wassail. The colonists immediately assembled a small band of brave men, fell upon them by surprise in the midst of their carousals, shot ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... audience having dispersed in a state like the afflatus of laughing-gas, the poet and a privileged clique proceeded to the house of the Baptist elder, to prolong the night with metaphysical wassail. From the froth of poetry, they rose to a contemplation of the old classics; Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Virgil, rising grandly from their dust, ensphered ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... friends from west and east And other foreign parts, Come share the rapture of our feast, The love of loyal hearts; And in the wassail that suspends All matters burthensome, We'll drink a health to good old friends And good friends yet to come. Clink, clink, clink! To fellowship we drink! And from the bowl No genial soul In such an hour will shrink. Clink, clink, clink! Merrily let us ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Edward; but, as to a "wretched village in Greece," bestowing its name upon the British monarch, the writer must be aware, according to his own account, that in ancient times Clarentza was no more a poor village, than Clare is what it was, when the wassail bowl cheered the baronial hall of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... was quarrelsome and loud, And impatient of control, Boisterous in the market crowd, Boisterous at the wassail-bowl, Everywhere Would drink and swear, Swaggering Thangbrand, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the Percy was even a worse tale, since it was an eternal blight on the name of Douglas. Well, we got to Blair Adam in due time, and our fine company began to separate, Lord Chief Baron going off after dinner. We had wine and wassail, and John Thomson's delightful flute to help ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... us up regularly for the night, the "Lady Anastasia" withdrew, followed by Dinah; and I would hear, later, sounds of festivity, in which her well-known laugh was blended, in the dining-room below, where, with Bainrothe and his friends, she held wassail, frequently, until after midnight. The groans of Mrs. Clayton would then commence, and, with little ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the wassail-bowl passed round till boisterous mirth drowned oftentimes the minstrel's song, but Ederyn missed no word. Scarce knowing what he did, he crept so close he found himself with upturned face against ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... still customary in many parts of England to hand round the wassail, or health-bowl, on New-Year's Eve. The custom is supposed to be of Saxon origin, and to be derived from one of the observances of the Feast of Yule. The tune of this song is given in Popular Music. ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Darrell Standing, born in Minnesota and soon to die by the rope in California, surely never loved daughters of kings in the courts of kings; nor fought cutlass to cutlass on the swaying decks of ships; nor drowned in the spirit-rooms of ships, guzzling raw liquor to the wassail-shouting and death-singing of seamen, while the ship lifted and crashed on the black-toothed rocks and the water bubbled ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... over the old story, and tell of the songs of the gleemen, the music of the harpers, of wine and wassail, of healths and acclaims, which made the roof, the oaken roof, ring again and again? Nay, we have tired the reader's patience with scenes of that ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... Templar, filling his goblet, "drink wassail to the fair Rowena; for since her namesake introduced the word into England, has never been one more worthy of such a tribute. By my faith, I could pardon the unhappy Vortigern, had he half the cause that we now witness, for making shipwreck of his ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... of pensioners, and barons of beef, and yule-logs, and bay, and rosemary, and holly boughs cut upon the hillside, and crab-apples bobbing in the wassail bowl, and masques and mummers, and dancers on the rushes, that we need not here describe a Christmas Eve in olden times. Indeed, this last half of the nineteenth century is weary of the worn-out theme. But one characteristic of the age of Elizabeth may be mentioned: that is its love of music. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth, And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink, Spiced to the brink. Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand That soils my land, And giv'st me for my bushel sown Twice ten ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... was the vessel out of which our Saxon ancestors took such copious draughts, that legislative measures were adopted with the view of enforcing temperance. Wassail not only refers to a certain liquid preparation, but it is a term applied to drinking songs, which in the cider-producing counties were sung on the eve of the Epiphany, when libations were poured out to the apple-trees for a fruitful season—a custom ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... bachelor sway, unrivalled by its potent enemy the tea-kettle. The old hall in which we dined echoed to bursts of robustious fox-hunting merriment, that made the ancient antlers shake on the walls. By degrees, however, the wine and wassail of mine host began to operate upon bodies already a little jaded by the chase. The choice spirits that flashed up at the beginning of the dinner, sparkled for a time, then gradually went out one after another, or only emitted now and then a faint ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... Tiberias town: we arrived at Baghdad ten days ago; and, alighting at the merchants' caravanserai, we sold all our merchandise. Now a certain trader invited us to an entertainment this night; so we went to his house and he set food before us and we ate: then we sat at wine and wassail with him for an hour or so when he gave us leave to depart; and we went out from him in the shadow of the night and, being strangers, we could not find our way back to our Khan. So haply of your kindness and courtesy you will suffer us to tarry ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... their wassail bowls About the streets are singing; The boys are come to catch the owls; The wild mare in is bringing; Our kitchen-boy hath broke his box; And to the dealing of the ox Our honest neighbours come by flocks, And here they ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... The First of September; The Introduction of Tobacco; The Biter Bit; The Romance; and Satisfaction. For Mr. Hogarth, of the Haymarket, he painted four small subjects illustrative of Christmas, entitled, The Waits; Bringing in the Boar's Head; The Yule Log, and The Wassail Bowl; all afterwards engraved. For Mr. James Haywood, M.P., he executed a series of drawings illustrative of student life at Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, London, and Paris; while two vast subjects, The ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the thirst of the colony was made. But the brothers were far from content with such home-made liquors for their own drinking, but imported from England and the Netherlands and Spain great stores of ale and rum and wines, and held therewith high wassail with some choice and kindred ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... Francisco cried, chill, sleepy, pale. No bat through night-wastes wheeling, whirring; No trumpet's shrill, no rocket's roar. And here all seems as calm and quiet As on the heights of Elsinore,— Save for far sounds of wassail riot. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... heavy, and its gems Stud the luxuriant, grassy stems. The happy night with wassail rings; So ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... great supper therefore was prepared by Hengist, at the which it pleased the king to be present, and appointed his daughter, when euerie man began to be somewhat merrie with drinke, to bring in a cup of gold full of good and pleasant wine, and to present it to the king, saieng; Wassail. Which she did in such comelie and decent maner, as she that knew how to doo it well inough, so as the king maruelled greatlie thereat, and not vnderstanding what she ment by that salutation, demanded ...
— Chronicles 1 (of 6): The Historie of England 5 (of 8) - The Fift Booke of the Historie of England. • Raphael Holinshed
... Chateau as he passed, but the lights which were visible there two hours before, were now extinguished, and the Governor was sleeping without a dream of the mischief that was riding out upon the city that night. He passed through the Square and overhead the wassail of the officers over their wine and cards. He answered the challenge of the sentinel at the gate which guarded the heights of Mountain Hill, and doubled his pace down that winding declivity. The old ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... widow, who, but newly desolate, Would grasp a hand, then start to find it gone; The spendthrift and the sordid usurer, Who knew no sentiment save lust for gold; The bloated drunkard, sinking 'neath the weight Of wassail inclination dissolute; The youth, who, following his baleful steps, Reeled for the first time from intemperance; And she who had forgot her covenant, In brazen infamy and unwept shame;— The good, the bad, the impious and unjust, The energetic and the indolent, The adolescent and the venerable, ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... he claimed a right to call for relief from the healthier purses of his friends. He was a scribbler for the newspapers, and latterly a dramatic critic, which had probably gained him an invitation to the dinner and reading. The wine and wassail, however, befogged his senses. Scarce had the author got into the second act of his play, when Hiffernan began to nod, and at length snored outright. Bickerstaff was embarrassed, but continued to read in a more elevated ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... escape. A large and splendid party was invited to the palace. A wilderness of rooms, brilliantly illuminated, were thrown open to the guests. Masked dancers walked the floor in every variety of costume. Wine and wassail filled the halls with revelry. When all were absorbed in music and mirth, the king, by a private passage, stole from the palace, and mounting a swift horse, which was awaiting him in the court-yard, accompanied by two or three friends, ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... in his Search for the Coppermine River and Northwest Passage—Hilarious Life of Wassail led by Governor Norton—The Massacre of the Eskimo by Hearne's Indians North of the Arctic Circle—Discovery of the Athabasca Country—Hearne becomes Resident Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but is captured by the French—Death of Norton and ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... his friends, vociferous though they were, and heated with anticipated triumphs, wine and wassail, heard the glorious din, learned its cause, and came reeling forth to embrace their puissant ally. Quitting as they did the fumes of buttocks and sirloins, gammons and hams, turkies and geese, wines, brandies, beers and tobacco, they all came reeking; ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... his altered look, And gave a squire the sign; A mighty wassail-bowl he took, And crowned it high with wine. "Now pledge me here, Lord Marmion: But first I pray thee fair, Where hast thou left that page of thine, That used to serve thy cup of wine, Whose beauty was so rare? When last in Raby towers we met, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... themselves to pillage and voluptuous indulgence. They found the tents filled with food, liquors of all kinds and a great quantity of precious commodities, and forgetting they were in the presence of an enemy, they plunged into the wildest excesses of festivity and wassail. ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... more or less injury to a man's mind, however comparatively harmless the form of his dissipation may be. There are very few men whom John Saltram cannot drink under the table, and rise with a steady brain himself when the wassail is ended; yet I believe, in a general way, few men drink less than he does. At cards he is equally strong; a past-master in all games of skill; and the play is apt to be rather high at one or two of the clubs he belongs to. He has a wonderful power of self-restraint when he cares to ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... in Cruachan Ai.[1] They pitched their camp and quarters that night, so that a thick cloud of smoke and fire rose between the four fords of Ai, which are, Ath Moga, Ath Bercna, Ath Slissen and Ath Coltna. And they tarried for the full space of a fortnight in Cruachan, the hostel of Connacht, in wassail and drink and every disport, to the end that their march and muster might be easier. [2]And their poets and druids would not let them depart from thence till the end of a fortnight while awaiting good omen.[2] And then it was that Medb bade her charioteer ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... speedily, and Magnus being the man he was. One would like to give the date of this remarkable Treaty; but cannot with precision. Guess somewhere about 1040: [17] actual fruition of it came to Magnus, beyond question, in 1042, when Harda-Knut drank that wassail bowl at the wedding in Lambeth, and fell down dead; which in the Saxon Chronicle is dated 3d June of that year. Magnus at once went to Denmark on hearing this event; was joyfully received by the headmen there, who indeed, with their fellows in Norway, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... invitation to go in to the feast of welcome, and a noble one it was, with music and minstrelsy, hospitality to all around, plenty and joy, wassail bowls going round, and the Atheling presiding over it, and with a strange and quiet influence, breaking up the entertainment in all good will, by the memory of his sweet sister Margaret's grace-cup, ere mirth had become madness, or ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agreement that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name, was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that time, if I had made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one thousand dollars. And then, to clinch ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... dropped his wassail cup And took the proffered bauble up, And cautiously he bit Its surface, but it would not yield, Which did convince the grand old ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... constant too, "And never flings her lovers from her arms— "Not Death, for she is still a fruitful wife, "Her spouse the Dead, and their cold marriage yields "A million children, born of mould'ring flesh— "So Death and Flesh live on—immortal they! "I mean the blank-ey'd queen whose wassail bowl "Is brimm'd from Lethe, and whose porch is red "With poppies, as it waits the panting soul— "She, she alone is great! No scepter'd slave "Bowing to blind creative giants, she; "No forces seize her in their ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... I proceeded to the parlour, which, however late events might have impressed upon my memory, I could scarcely recognise. Instead of the long oak table and the wassail bowl, there stood near the fire a small round table, covered with a snow—white cloth, upon which shone in unrivalled brightness a very handsome tea equipage—the hissing kettle on one hob was vis a vis'd by a gridiron with three newly taken trout, frying under the reverential ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... upon one as a weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put ...
— Options • O. Henry
... was to the fur trade, the prospector was to the mining era that ushered civilization into the wilds with a blare of dance-halls and wine and wassail and greed. Ragged, poor, roofless, grubstaked by 'pardner' or outfitter on a basis of half profit, the prospector stands as the eternal type of the ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... sail—the tide of gayety refuses to float their barks from the shoal beside which they are moored. In their seasons of gayety the French are philosophers, for while they imbibe the mirth they discard the wassail, and wine instead of being the body of their feasts, as with other nations, it is but the spice used to add a flavor to the whole. I know not that these remarks of mine have aught to do with my story, but I throw them out by ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... reading of the "Christmas Carol," in the Music Hall at Edinburgh. His audience consisted of the members of, or subscribers to, the Philosophical Institution. At the close of the evening the Lord Provost, who had been presiding, presented to the Beader a massive and ornate silver wassail bowl. Seventeen years prior to that, Charles Dickens had been publicly entertained in Edinburgh,—Professor Wilson having been the chairman of the banquet given then in his honour. He had been at that time enrolled a burgess and guildbrother of the ancient ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... is no Denmark of the ninth century, Shakespeare has suggested the prevailing rudeness of manners quite enough for his purpose. We see it in the single combat of Hamlet's father with the elder Fortinbras, in the vulgar wassail of the king, in the English monarch being expected to hang Rosencrantz and Guildenstern out of hand merely to oblige his cousin of Denmark, in Laertes, sent to Paris to be made a gentleman of, becoming ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... A teetotaller! Well! He is the true Heautontimorumenos, the self-punisher, with a jug of toast-and-water for his Christmas wassail. So far his folly is merely pitiable, but his intolerance makes it offensive. He cannot enjoy his own tipple unless he can deprive me of mine. A fox that has lost his tail. There is no tyrant like a thoroughpaced reformer. I drink to his ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... must. My readers expect a robin, and they shall have it. And a wassail-bowl, and a turkey, and a Christmas-tree, ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... spent in palm-wine, rum, and wassail; one must begin by humouring Africans, under pain of being considered a churl; but the inevitable result is, that next day they will by some pretext or other shirk work to enjoy the headache. That old villain, "Young Prince," becoming very fou, hospitably offered me his daughter-in-law ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... his bedroom, in the second story of the large, inn-like mansion at the middle of the village, and he was just recovering from the effects of a long wassail. In his peculiar nervous condition he started at the sound of wheels, and, drawing his curtains, looked out upon the long shadow of an advancing figure crowned with a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the forbidden pleasures of wine and wassail, loose talk and tales of women's wiles, a favourite subject with ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... nipperkin, beaker, bumper, tankard, jorum, tig; pl. carousal, wassail, intoxication, orgies; cupping-glass, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... caught themselves. When they all tired of blind-man's buff, there was a great game at snap-dragon, and when fingers enough were burned with that, and all the raisins were gone, they sat down by the huge fire of blazing logs to a substantial supper, and a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an ordinary wash-house copper, in which the hot apples were hissing and bubbling with a rich look, and a jolly sound, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Wakefield, and even Mr. Pickwick himself, had never been more jovial at a Christmas party than were Miss Abingdon's guests. A silver bowl in the middle of the table suggested punch; Canon Wrottesley must brew a wassail bowl. A footman was sent for this thing and that, for lemons and boiling water—the water must boil, remember? And too much sugar would spoil the whole thing. The vicar stirred the ingredients with an air, and poured from time to time a spoonful of the punch into ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... "women, wine, and wassail, all to be had for little but the asking; and if you find it in your conscience to let a fat priest think he has some chance to convert you, gad he'll help you to these comforts himself, just to gain a little ground in your good affection. Where will you find a crop-eared ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "six poor travellers, not being rogues or proctors". It furnished the theme to the Christmas cycle of stories, The Seven Poor Travellers, the narrator, who treats the waifs and strays harboured one Christmas eve at the Charity to roast turkey, plum pudding, and "wassail", bringing up the number to seven, "being", as he says, "a traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... Yes, for masters, It might be unto those who long for novelty, Though made by a new grave: but, as for wassail, Methinks the old Count Siegendorf maintained His feudal hospitality as high As e'er ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their northern neighbours, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited.... In the tenth century, the Khalif Hakem II. had made beautiful Andalusia the paradise of the world. Christians, Mussulmans, Jews, mixed together without ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... mail-coach by a relay; they let their spirits gallop away into the wilds of argument to which no one listened, began to tell stories which had no auditors, and repeatedly asked questions to which no answer was made. Only the loud voice of wassail could be heard, a voice made up of a hundred confused clamors, which rose and grew like a crescendo of Rossini's. Insidious toasts, swagger, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... persuasive style, and has commenced a system of moral instruction in detail, which, in our local history, constitutes an era. It has been written that "where vice abounds, grace shall much more abound," and St. Mary's may now be well included in the list of favorable examples. The lordly "wassail" of the fur-trader, the long-continued dance of the gay French "habitant," the roll of the billiard-ball, the shuffle of the card, and the frequent potations of wine "when it is red in the cup," will now, at least, no longer retain their places in the customs of this spot on ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... with revelry, The beakers red with wassail; And music's grandest symphony Rung thro' the ancient castle; And she, the brightest of the throng, With wedding-veil and roses, Seemed like the beauty of a song Between ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... some time. Christmas came and passed— Christmas, with its morning mass and evening carols, its nightly waits, its mummers or masked itinerant actors, its music and dancing, its games and sports, its plum-porridge, mince-pies, and wassail-bowl. There were none of these things for Alice Benden in her prison, save a mince-pie, to which she treated herself and Rachel: and there might as well have been none for her husband, for he was unable ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... Shakespeare, the peg tankard, a species of wassail or wish-health bowl, was still in use. Introduced to restrain intemperance, it became a cause of it, as every drinker was obliged to drink down to the peg. We get our expression of taking a man "a peg lower," or taking him "down ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... you raise the wassail bowl, And pledge your passion, soul to soul. You hear the sweet bells ring in rhyme, You wreath the room for Christmas time In vain. The solemn silence falls, The death watch ticks within the walls; The ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... informed the assemblies and jousts and feasting of the boyartry of medieval Russia, and made the guzli and bamboo flute to sound, had waked again in Borodin; and in this magnificent and lumbering music, these crude and massive forms, lifted its wassail and its gold and song once more. For the composer of such works, such evocations, it is patent that the past was the wonderful warrant of a wonderful future. For this man, indeed, the reliques, the trappings, the minaret-crowned monuments, the barbaric chants and gold ornaments, all the thousand ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... as they mean the least; Swift-willed is thrice-willed; late means nevermore; Impatient is her foot, nor turns again.' He ceased; upon his bosom sank his beard Sadly, as one who oft had seen her pass Nor stayed her: and forthwith the frothy tide Of interrupted wassail roared along. But Bioern, the son of Heriulf, sat apart Musing, and, with his eyes upon the fire, Saw shapes of arrows, lost as soon as seen. 110 'A ship,' he muttered,'is a winged bridge That leadeth every way to man's desire, And ocean the wide gate to manful luck.' And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... 'What I! 'tis thirteen years ago since I have done such a thing!'" "By Allah," quoth the Shaykh (and indeed he was abashed), "no sin of mine this, she forced me to do it." Nur al-Din laughed and they sat down again to wine and wassail, but the damsel turned to her master and said in a whisper, "O my lord, drink and do not press him, that I may show thee some sport with him." Then she began to fill her master's cup and he hers and so they did time after time, till at last Shaykh Ibrahim looked at them ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... antiquaries now visit, the Saxon earls and eldermen quaffed their ale, and drank "wassail" to King Egbert or Ethelwolf. In such dungeons as we now see with a shudder at the Tower, Saxon traitors and Danish prisoners ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... sing of wassail bowls, Their wines and barley bree; My ain wee house and winsome wife Are dearer far to me. To crack with her of joys to come, Of days departed long, When she was like a wee wild rose, And I a bird of song. When I come hame at e'en, When I come hame at e'en, How dear to me these ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... answered Hilda, quickly turning; "such was ever the ceremony due to Saxon king, when he slept in a subject's house, ere our kinsmen the Danes introduced that unroyal wassail, which left subject and king unable to hold or to quaff cup, when the board ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Christmas-eve,— The game of forfeits done—the girls all kiss'd Beneath the sacred bush and past away— The parson Holmes, the poet Everard Hall, The host, and I sat round the wassail-bowl, 5 Then half-way ebb'd: and there we held a talk, How all the old honour had from Christmas gone, Or gone, or dwindled down to some odd games In some odd nooks like this; till I, tired out ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... mummers cut up queer antics, servitors brought in the Boar's Head and Wassail Bowl, and finally it was announced that all present would participate in the old-fashioned dance of Sir ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... "Wassail the trees, that they may bear You many a plum and many a pear; For more or less fruit they will bring, ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... of Merrymount—unsanctified in the eyes of their Puritan neighbors, for were they not Episcopals, who had pancakes at Shrovetide and wassail at Christmas?—were dancing about their May-pole one summer evening, for they tried to make it May throughout the year. Some were masked like animals, and all were tricked with flowers and ribbons. Within their circle, sharing in song ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their Northern neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited. The enchanting moonlight evenings of Andalusia were spent by the Moors in sequestered, fairy-like gardens or in orange-groves, listening to the romances of the story-teller, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Prudence might escape: 730 At times both wished for and implored, At times sought with self-pointed sword, Yet still a dark and hideous close To even intolerable woes, And welcome in no shape. And, strange to say, the sons of pleasure, They who have revelled beyond measure In beauty, wassail, wine, and treasure, Die calm, or calmer, oft than he Whose heritage was Misery. 740 For he who hath in turn run through All that was beautiful and new, Hath nought to hope, and nought to leave; And, save the future, (which is viewed Not quite as men are base or good, But as their nerves ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... summed up by one moralist in the aphorism, 'The Devil is the inventor and governor and disposer of dances and dancing.' Yet when we look into those accounts which Madame Eglentyne rendered (or did not render) to her nuns at the end of every year, we shall find payments for wassail at New Year and Twelfth Night, for May games, for bread and ale on bonfire nights, for harpers and players at Christmas, for a present to the Boy Bishop on his rounds, and perhaps for an extra pittance when the youngest schoolgirl was allowed to dress up and act as abbess of the ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... surrounding lands among his victorious followers, the Saxons had been driven out, slain, or enslaved, and the brutal and barbarous victors dwelt in peace and revelry on their new lands, spending the winter in riot and wassail, and waiting for the spring-time budding of the trees to renew the war with their ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... as if any movement would destroy the sacred act he witnessed, and when, in the pauses, he looked at the canvas and saw how swiftly and steadily the work progressed, he felt as if before his own eyes, he was being born again to a nobler existence. In the wassail-hall hung the portrait of a young Prince of Navarre, whose life had been saved in the chase by a Rappoltstein. Ulrich, attired in the count's clothes, looked exactly like him. The jester had been the first to perceive this strange circumstance. Every one, even Moor, agreed with him, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Mr. Brand, in 1790, that at Werington, on Christmas Eve, "it was then customary for the country people to sing a wassail or drinking song, and throw the toast from the wassail-bowl to the apple-trees, in order ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... and one o'clock Bat Wiley, wild-eyed and raging, burst into the barroom of the Admiral Dewey and startled with a tale of wrongs such part of wakeful Cobre as there made wassail. At the crossing of Largo Draw he had been held up at a gun's point by a single robber on horseback; Zurich's money had been taken from him, together with some seventy dollars of his own; his team had been turned loose; it had taken ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... over me, such as nurses tell us in childhood is caused by some one walking over our graves. I fancied I saw before me the ghost scene in "Hamlet." There was the castle platform,—the gloomy battlements,—the sound of distant wassail; and dimly defined by the vague light of my fancy, stood the sad young Danish prince, shivering in the "shrewd, biting" night-air, tortured with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... gobbet[obs3], morsel, sop, sippet[obs3]. drink, beverage, liquor, broth, soup; potion, dram, draught, drench, swill*; nip, sip, sup, gulp. wine, spirits, liqueur, beer, ale, malt liquor, Sir John Barleycorn, stingo[obs3], heavy wet; grog, toddy, flip, purl, punch, negus[obs3], cup, bishop, wassail; gin &c. (intoxicating liquor) 959; coffee, chocolate, cocoa, tea, the cup that cheers but not inebriates; bock beer, lager beer, Pilsener beer, schenck beer[obs3]; Brazil tea, cider, claret, ice water, mate, mint julep [U.S.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... long this morning. It was eight before I rose—half-past eight ere I came into the parlour. Terry and J. Ballantyne dined with me yesterday, and I suppose the wassail, though there was little enough of it, had stuck to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... voluptuousness &c. adj.; epicurism, epicureanism; sybaritism; drug habit. dissipation; licentiousness &c. adj.; debauchery; crapulence[obs3]. revels, revelry; debauch, carousal, jollification, drinking bout, wassail, saturnalia, orgies; excess, too much. Circean cup. [drugs of abuse: list] bhang, hashish, marijuana, pot [coll.], hemp [coll.], grass [coll.]; opium, cocaine, morphine, heroin; LSD[abbr], lysergic acid diethylamide[Chem][Chem]; phencyclidine, angel ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... I was in the nightmare's grasp. Fiends in the air around me laughed; But the dead man worked on all silently, Nor noticed the ecstacy of my fears; Yet he was a man I had known for years. A messmate at sea, a comrade on shore, And in jolly carouse, in wassail roar. My holiday time with him I spent When I was of life-blood innocent; But he never looked or spoke to me, But steered away from the open sea. Towards the shore beyond the desolate strait, Where suffering and ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... beverage, liquor, broth, soup; potion, dram, draught, drench, swill [Slang]; nip, sip, sup, gulp. wine, spirits, liqueur, beer, ale, malt liquor, Sir John Barleycorn, stingo^, heavy wet; grog, toddy, flip, purl, punch, negus^, cup, bishop, wassail; gin &c (intoxicating liquor) 959; coffee, chocolate, cocoa, tea, the cup that cheers but not inebriates; bock beer, lager beer, Pilsener beer, schenck beer^; Brazil tea, cider, claret, ice water, mate, mint julep [U.S.]; near beer, 3.2 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... pass'd unseen a private gate, And stood within his hall at eventide; Meantime the lady and her lover sate At wassail in their beauty and their pride: An ivory inlaid table spread with state Before them, and fair slaves on every side; Gems, gold, and silver, form'd the service mostly, Mother of pearl and coral ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... became a Christian and was baptised, and when he returned to Greenland he took priests with him who converted many people, though old Eric, it is said, preferred to go in the way of his fathers, and deemed boisterous Valhalla, with its cups of wassail, a place of better cheer than the New Jerusalem, with ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... years sack-posset was drunk at weddings, sometimes within the bridal chamber; but not with noisy revelry, as in old England. A psalm preceding and a prayer following a Puritan posset-pot made a satisfactorily solemn wassail. Bride-cake and bride-gloves were sent as gifts to the friends and relatives of the contracting parties. Other and ruder English fashions obtained. The garter of the bride was sometimes scrambled for to bring luck and ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... veneration for old customs, he buys a boar's head there and boy to carry it; next, being taken with a crockery-shop-sign, "The Little Bason" (which, by-the-bye, was a very large one), he purchases that also, thinking it will do for a wassail-bowl; likewise some holly; and an old butcher's-block to serve as the yule-log; not forgetting the last new Christmas book of sympathy and sentiment, "The Black Beetle on the Hob," a faery tale of a register-stove, by the author ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... "Wassail, wassail, all over the town; Our toast it is white, our ale it is brown, Our bowl it is made of the mapling tree; With the wassailing bowl we ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... is the prickly, red-berried holly? Where, too, the mistletoe with its pearly berries? And where, most of all, queries your enforced member of a Blue Ribbon Army—where is the Wassail Bowl? ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... the state, or wring The freeborn nostril of the king, We send to you; but here a jolly Verse, crown'd with ivy and with holly, That tells of winter's tales and mirth, That milkmaids make about the hearth, Of Christmas sports, the wassail-bowl, That['s] tost up, after fox-i'-th'-hole; Of blind-man-buff, and of the care That young men have to shoe the mare; Of Twelfth-tide cakes, of peas and beans, Wherewith you make those merry scenes, Whenas ye choose your king and queen, And cry out: Hey, for our town green; Of ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... strange tale bewitched my mind, Of foragers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurred their horse, Their Southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue; And, home returning, filled the hall With revel, wassail-rout and brawl."—"Marmion." Introduction to Canto Third. See Lockhart for a description of the view from Smailholme, a propos of the stanza in "The ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... had a friend, we'll call him Brown; dearer than brothers were those two. When in the wassail Smith would drown, Brown would rescue and pull him through. When Brown was needful Smith would lend; so it fell as the years went by, Each on the other would depend: then at the last Smith came ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... hospitable welcome. Their brother freeman has been cursing their stars and his own, ever since the receipt of solemn notification to this effect." But very grateful, when it came, was the enthusiasm of the greeting, and welcome the gift of the silver wassail-bowl which followed the reading of the Carol. "I had no opportunity of asking any one's advice in Edinburgh," he wrote on his return. "The crowd was too enormous, and the excitement in it much too great. But my determination is all but taken. I must do something, or I shall ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that a hard matter in the autumn days; so that it is certain that many would not come of the men we most should like to see. So I will now make the offer, next summer at the Thing, to bid men to the feast, and I will bear one-third of the cost of the wassail." The brothers agreed to that, and Olaf now went home. Thorliek and Bard now share the goods between them. Bard had the estate and lands, which was what most men held to, as he was the most popular; but Thorliek got for his share more of the ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous
... Golden Bough. Surprising incidents. But this refusal of my new shipmate to drink with me was most surprising. Think of a sailor, a hard case, too, moping alone in his room on the day he shipped, when downstairs he could wassail away the day. I was surprised and resentful. It is hard for a nineteen-year-old man to stand alone, and I felt that Newman, my shipmate, should give me the moral support of ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... privily arrested and put to death—because the deceased, it is said, do not, like Baitals, tell tales. About nightfall, when he thought that the thieves, having finished their work of plunder, would meet together as usual for wassail and debauchery, he armed himself, marched out his men, and led them to the rock in ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... continued, and as, at last, the revelries drew to a close, still four dark chieftains remained in the inner chamber of the castle, "and sang, and drank, and shouted, right merrilie. The day broke, yet louder rang the wassail roar; the goblets were over and over again replenished, and the terrible oaths and ribald songs continued, and the dice rattled, and the revelry became louder still, till the many walls of the old castle shook and reverberated with the awful ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer |
