Making sense of the cider soaked wassail

Last year’s apple crop pipped all the records: boughs groaned under the weight of ripe fruit and growers declared it the best season for decades. The abundance was credited to a frost-free spring and a warm summer, but perhaps there was another reason for the bumper harvest: the rise of the curious tradition of wassailing.

Often associated with a form of carol singing, midwinter wassailing is in fact a deeply rooted tradition that involves anointing an apple tree with cider and making a good deal of noise. At its core, it is a ritual to encourage a good apple harvest later in the year. It’s both reverent and uproarious and, in bringing people together outdoors, is just the thing to raise the spirits on a dark January night.

Gatherings to bless apple trees have seen a revival in recent years, surprising even those committed to the tradition, such as Morris man Bill Taylor, who has led a wassailing ceremony in Gloucestershire since the 1990s. ‘It began with a few dozen folk gathering in a farmer’s orchard and now there are up to 200 people wanting to take part,’ he explains. ‘Nobody is invited, it’s all word of mouth.’

Down in Somerset, numbers attending the wassail at Barley Wood Cider in Wrington are capped at 300, but those wanting to attend this ticketed event easily surpass 500, according to Martin Maudsley, a Dorset-based storyteller and author of the book Telling the Seasons. He acts as master of ceremonies for West Country wassails and is now in demand from early January to the first week of February.

The traditional date for apple-tree wassailing is Old Twelfth Night, January 17, although, like all folk customs, it can be adapted by local communities. Certainly, traditions vary from region to region and orchard to orchard, but the key ingredients are cider and audience participation, together with toasted bread. Although the cider will be drunk, its main purpose is to be poured on the roots of a selected apple tree as a libation. The toast is dunked into the cider then placed or hung on the branches of the tree. Some claim this to be the origin of the expression ‘to toast’.

At every ceremony, an Anglo Saxon cry will go up: ‘Waes hael!’ To be answered by: ‘Drink hael!’ Thus ‘wassail’ is an old exhortation to be healthy — as in hale and hearty. ‘The response is an encouragement to drink deep until you feel good, rather than any modern connotations of healthy moderation,’ notes Martin, with a reminder that, in the West Country, dry January is often known as ‘dry-cider January’.

Morris man Bill describes the dramatic start of the wassailing evening near the hamlet of Taynton, which was initiated by the late Eric Freeman, a pioneering conservationist farmer and lover of folk tradition. ‘We’d proceed to the orchard through the dark with flaming torches lighting the way, led by musicians playing fiddle, melodeon and whistles,’ he recalls. ‘There we’d light a hanging lantern made of straw that burns very quickly and brightly, representing the dying out of the old year. That’s the signal to light another 12 fires, representing the months of the year, around the chosen apple tree.’

Light is important and some Dorset ceremonies involve fire running, when participants grab a handful of hay, set fire to it from a burning brazier and run until they have to drop it on the wet ground. Each wassail has a master of ceremonies, sometimes known as the butler, a role that Bill performs wearing a mummer’s tatter coat made of rags. Martin in Dorset adopts a gold frock coat and a top hat wreathed in ivy. A wassail queen, occasionally with a king consort, may be chosen, perhaps with a blind toss of an apple — whoever catches it becomes queen for the night, perhaps being lifted into the branches to make a speech. Processing around the tree three times is also traditional, but this can become too time consuming with large crowds.

Next come the offerings. Although the benefits of feeding a tree with cider may not have been scientifically proven, there is a practicality in leaving nourishment in the branches to attract robins, symbols of seasonal hope and good cheer. The birds in turn will eat harmful pests and help to protect the apple tree.

Then comes the noise. This can start with singing one of the many regional versions of a wassail song. In Sussex, there may be ‘apple howling’, a cathartic release. Rough music, the banging of pots and pans or anything percussive, is also essential and, in some areas, shotguns will be fired into the air and the tree beaten with sticks.

Many say the cacophony is to wake up the tree and encourage it to start work, but Martin believes that is a misappropriation: ‘It should always be about scaring away dark spirits. The tree is dormant, and it is too early in the year for it to be woken up. All cider-apple varieties need a sustained cold, dark period for vernalisation [cold dormancy].’ He ensures that shooting is done at the start of the ceremony, so that the bad spirits are banished before the benefice starts.

The variations, old and new, are the essence of very local traditions. ‘Customs split, change, morph and evolve due to any number of factors such as geographic, economic or practicalities — that is folk!’ observes Lally MacBeth, a Cornwall-based artist, curator and author of The Lost Folk. ‘Wassail’ is itself a flexible term. It can be a noun or a verb. Wassail is the custom, the song, the ceremony and the cup, which is traditionally carved from white maple, with known examples dating back to the 16th century. It can also refer to the custom of going from house to house to sing and ask for ale, in which lie the roots of carol singing, and is the basis of the Gloucestershire Wassail, adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams and frequently sung at Christmas.

‘That version of wassailing is largely a Victorian invention, in an attempt to sanitise the raucous behaviour associated with midwinter customs involving lots of drinking, making merry and dancing,’ believes Lally. ‘The orchard variety, and seasonal customs of this nature, have more ancient roots. It would have been very important in times past to bless the crops to ensure a fruitful coming year and no crop failure.’

Wherever its modern form, wassailing is always a way of appreciating Nature. ‘It is about giving back and saying thank you for providing for us,’ says Bill. Meanwhile, the popularity of wassailing continues to grow. National Trust properties with orchards are adopting the tradition to make a family-friendly afternoon out. This year, ceremonies will be taking place at East Riddlesden Hall in West Yorkshire, Lyveden in Northamptonshire and Buckland Abbey in Devon, among others. ‘We’ve been hosting wassailing events for several years and they’re definitely growing in popularity,’ says Wanda Arden, marketing officer at the Trust’s Morden Hall Park in south London. ‘We’re very much a community hub and it brings people together.’

Wassailing is fast extending to city and town centres, with events held last year at community orchards in Manchester, Port Talbot and London. ‘When you gather in an urban orchard on a cold winter’s night, cider steaming, the element of fun in the air, it’s easy to feel something ancient stir,’ attests Kath Rosen, CEO of The Orchard Project, a national charity that helps communities to create, restore and maintain community orchards. ‘Wassailing in cities reminds us that we’re still part of the land even among tower blocks and traffic and, by reinventing one of our true land-based traditions in urban spaces, we can bring people together through creating new rituals and traditions that reflect and cele-brate the diversity of our communities.’

Martin thinks that the very timing holds a special appeal. ‘Unlike Christmas, wassailing is very much in tune with the seasonal year,’ he observes. ‘People want to do it because it is dark and cold, not in spite of it. They genuinely like a local and inclusive event. But it also feels a bit anarchic, visceral and taboo-breaking — I know of a group that does a naked wassail.’

Waes hael, how-ever you participate this January, and may your apples be plentiful