Would you like to go wassailing to celebrate the New Year? Maybe? If you knew how? Read on!

It was a British custom on New Year’s Eve to fill a large bowl with wassail, a warm spiced ale concoction. The wassail bowl decorated with holly and ivy was carried from door to door by the young women of the village. The women offered a drink to the master and mistress of each house, singing doggerel rhymes which wished health and prosperity. They hoped to receive a small present or gratuity in return.

Image from the Illustrated London News 22 December 1860 p.579

Sometimes the lord or squire assembled his tenants on New Year’s Eve. The wassail bowl was passed from lip to lip, and those who had quarrelled during the year made up their differences.

From John Mills, Christmas in the olden time or The Wassail Bowl (London, 1846)





There are many songs connected with wassailing. Here is one from Gloucestershire that was noted down in the 1840s:

Wassail, wassail, all over the town,

Out toast is white, our ale it is brown,

Our bowl it is made of a maplin tree,

We be good fellows, I drink unto thee.

Here’s to Dobbin and to his right ear,

God send our master a happy new year;

A happy new year as e’er I did see,

With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.

Be here any maids – I suppose there be some,

So they will not let young men stand on the cold stone,

Sing hey maids, come trole back the pin,

And the first maid in the house let us all in.

Come butler, come bring us a bowl of the best,

I hope your old soul in Heaven will rest:

But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,

Then down fall butler, bowl and all.

Young men and women also exchanged clothes on New Year’s Eve, a practice known as ‘mumming’ or ‘disguising’. Dressed in each other’s garments, they went between neighbours’ houses, singing and dancing.

Enjoy your New Year celebrations, whether or not they involve wassailing and mumming! I hope that you ‘end the old year merrily, and begin the new one well’.

Margaret Makepeace

Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:

William Hone, The Every-day Book (1826)

British Newspaper Archive Kentish Gazette 26 December 1843