This night it is guid New Year’s E’en night We’re a’ here Queen Mary’s Men; And we’re come here to crave our right, And that’s before our lady.
Gae fill the three pint cog o’ ale, The maut maun be aboun the meal. We houp your ale is stark and stout For men to drink the old year out.
The composition of the wassail-bowl has been dealt with elsewhere, and it only remains to be added that though the drinking of its spiced contents was very usual on New Year’s Eve, it was not peculiar to that day, but accompanied most occasions of mediæval festivity, and, indeed, was so common that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the wassail-bowl was frequently referred to by the writers of that Golden Age of English { 238} literature as symbolical of feasting and good cheer in general. It is thus that Herrick mentions it in his beautiful little poem, entitled _A Thanksgiving for his House_:—
Lord, I confess too when I dine, The pulse is thine, And all 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 beloved 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.
Twelfth Night was specially celebrated with wassailing, accompanied with the consumption of spiced cakes, the combination giving rise to the phrase “cakes and ale.”
From the “Good-Fellow’s Counsel, or the Bad Husband’s Recantation.”
The twelfth day after Christmas was celebrated in the old days in honour of the three Kings, as the Wise Men were called who came out of the East to worship the Messiah. One of the chief ceremonies connected with the day was the election of the King and Queen of the Bean. A large cake—the Twelfth Cake—had been previously made, in which a bean and a pea were inserted, the cake was cut up and distributed by lot among the company, and whoever got the piece which contained the bean was crowned King of the Bean, while the pea conferred the distinction of Queen upon its happy recipient.
Now, now the mirth comes, With the cake full of plums, Where beane’s the king of the sport here; Besides we must know, The pea also Must revell as queene in the court here.