"Wassail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... England, the village maidens go from door to door with a bowl of wassail, made of ale, roasted apples, squares of toast, nutmeg, and sugar. The bowl is elaborately decorated with evergreen and ribbons, and as they go ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... 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, ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... 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 ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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 ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... crude Western town a few of the real sort could meet and make their own little quarter and talk about the big things, the lasting things! Everyone said yes, quite so; and they all tried to handle their wine like it was a rare old vintage. But you can't hold much wassail on the juice of the elderberry; it ain't the most jocund stuff the world ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... liegemen all rose 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 ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... household cares 100 That chatter loudest 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... barkeep's face, and bottles of goods on ice; the poor man's club is a place designed to brighten our darkened lives, and send us home, when we're halfway blind, in humor to beat our wives. So hey for the wicker demi-john and the free-lunch brand of grub! We'll wassail hold till the break of dawn, we friends of the poor man's club! It's here we barter our bits of news in our sweat stained hand-me-downs; it's here we swallow the children's shoes and the housewives hats and gowns. It's here we mortgage the house ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... occasion, the queen had a private pavilion for her female guests. But during the successive days of dissipation, the mirth waxed loud in the apartments of the king. The flashing goblet circulated freely, and his brain became wild with "wine and wassail." As the crowning display of his glory, Vashti, in her jeweled robes and diadem, must grace the banquet. The command was issued, and the messenger sent. This mandate, requiring what at any time was ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... 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 ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... forbidden pleasures of wine and wassail, loose talk and tales of women's wiles, a favourite subject with the lewder sort ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... past night, with its wassail and its mirth, its toasts and its loud-voiced bragging, might be called "the great night of Morristown," this, the girl promised herself, should more truly and more fitly be styled "the great day of Ireland." On this ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... 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! ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... all the other excellences of Hamlet's speech concerning the wassail-music—so finely revealing the predominant idealism, the ratiocinative meditativeness, of his character—it has the advantage of giving nature and probability to the impassioned continuity of the speech instantly directed to the Ghost. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... seem so, Sir Knight," he answered; "but I will wake them from their wassail." Springing from the dais lightly as a cat, he ran down the hall crying, "Air is what they need. Air!" Now coming to the door, he threw it wide open, and drawing a silver whistle from his robe, blew it long and loud. "What," he laughed, "do they still ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... within the old baronial banqueting hall of Percy Du Bois. The wassail had not yet begun, and there was a pause in the feast. All eyes were bent upon the travel soiled pilgrim,—for he was telling a stirring tale of the martial deeds done in Palestine. The valiant Percy bent forward his anxious visage,—seamed by many a scar, ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... he introduces us is, as before said, blackguardly and bleak. Paris swarms before us, full of famine, shame, and death; monks and the servants of great lords hold high wassail upon cakes and pastry; the poor man licks his lips before the baker's window; people with patched eyes sprawl all night under the stalls; chuckling Tabary transcribes an improper romance; bare-bosomed lasses and ruffling students swagger in the streets; the drunkard goes stumbling ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Here, Guta, take those monks a fee— Tell them I thank them—bid them pray for me. I am half mazed with trembling joy within, And noisy wassail round. 'Tis well, for else The spectre of my duties and my dangers Would whelm my heart with terror. Ah! poor self! Thou took'st this for the term and bourne of troubles— And now 'tis here, thou findest it the gate Of new sin-cursed infinities of labour, Where thou must do, or die! [aloud] ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... awaiting him hard by the ruined chateau—that is to say, on a park bench with rickety cast-iron legs. His honor was at stake. He had engaged to storm the castle single-handed and bring back the treasure that was to furnish them wassail and solace. And all that stood between him and the coveted dollar was his wife, once a little girl whom he could—aha!—why not again? Once with soft words he could, as they say, twist her around his little finger. Why not again? Not for years had he tried it. Grim poverty ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... 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, we shall be having a semblance ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... My readers expect a robin, and they shall have it. And a wassail-bowl, and a turkey, and ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... to fit these shallow crowns. In some parts they cook dates; others cook oranges, making them into dumplings and also stewing them. These are favourite sweets. To go out singing from door to door at Christmas is called wassailing—a relic of the ancient time when wassail was a common word. When I was a boy, among other out-of-the-way pursuits, I took an interest in astrology. The principal work on astrology, from which all the others have been more or less derived, is Ptolemy's 'Tetrabiblos,' and there, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... 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
... with the Rutulians of Ardea. Being unable to take the place by storm, he was forced to blockade it; and while the Roman army was encamped before the town the young men used to amuse themselves at night with wine and wassail. One night there was a feast, at which Sextus, the king's third son, was present, as also Collatinus, the son of Egerius, the king's uncle, who had been made governor of Collatia. So they soon began to dispute about the worthiness of their wives; and when each maintained ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... those other bits that be There placed by thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, Which of thy kindness thou hast sent; And my content Makes those, and my belovd beet, To be more sweet. 'Tis thou 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 for one; Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day; Besides, my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year; The while the conduits of my kine Run ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... some pallid face Look in upon the banquet, calling up Dread shapes of battle in the wassail cup, And trouble ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... The feast, where with wassail they drink and sing, For three days lasted, But they sought the fourth morning what answer they'd bring From Helge king,— For now their ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... suppose, in the British customs still—something that reminds one of their ancient condition when the Romans conquered them—when their supreme idea of enjoyment was to have an ox roasted whole before them while they drank "wassail" till they groveled under their own tables in a worse condition than overfed swine. Coarse and vulgar plenty is still the leading characteristic at the dinners of English or American parvenus; they have scarcely any idea of the refinements that can be imparted to the prosaic ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... orchards from which cider enough to slack 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 spirits, especially ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... "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 its now ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various |
