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More "Wassail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the familiar representation of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia meekly displaying the contents of her apron before her lord, the Landgrave—that heavy, sporadic type of whiskered ass whose only mission in life seems to be that of pulling the stars and all else down about his wassail-soaked head and ears through sheer avoirdupois and stupidity. Padre Antonio experienced a sudden thrill as he gazed at the picture. Clearly, it was the hand of God directing him. So did Saint Elizabeth deliberately ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... 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 forty and dispersed ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... 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 ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... Leonard's, ere even-fall, A fat fed beeve, and a two-shear sheep, With a firkin of ale that a monk in his sleep May hear to hum, when it feels the broach, And wake up and swig, without reproach!— And the nuns of the Fosse—for wassail-bread— Let them have wheat, both white and red; And a runlet of mead, with a jug of the wine Which the merchant-man vowed he brought from the Rhine; And bid Hugh say that their bells must ring A peal loud and long, While we chaunt heart-song, ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... hall, the serf and vassal Held, that night their Christmas wassail; Many a carol, old and saintly, Sang the minstrels ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... 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 with you this night, and Heaven will reward you!"[FN174] ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... great-grandson of Harold Fairhair. Leif 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, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... 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
... he sets the beakers For the guests at the wassail feast; Nor fills a flask from the oldest cask For ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... noggin, nipperkin, beaker, bumper, tankard, jorum, tig; pl. carousal, wassail, intoxication, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... were bright 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 ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... fair hue and its gentle languor on which there was not a single trace of the outrecuidance attributed to him. Both he and the Seraph could lead the wildest life of any men in Europe without looking one shadow more worn than the brightest beauty of the season, and could hold wassail in riotous rivalry till the sun rose, and then throw themselves into saddle as fresh as if they had been sound asleep all night; to keep up with the pack the whole day in a fast burst or on a cold scent, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... 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 pail, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... upon his herculean constitution; but of course that sort of thing does 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 ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... 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 ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... go 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 ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... them,—brain and brawn, and brain and brawn will yet carry the day over court and crown, in the name of the right, which shall overpower all things. We clamber down into arched passages, choked with debris, over floors tangled with briers, and join in the wild wassail of the bold outlaw, fired by his victorious career. We clamber up the rugged sides and wind around to the headland. Brilliant in the "morning-shine," exultant in the pride and pomp of splendid preparation, ardent for conquest ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Rutherford amused his declining years by teaching Charley to whistle "The king shall hae his ain again," and to gibber "Send the old rogue to Hanover;" for which he was always rewarded by a sugar-plum or a dole of wassail (Scotch short-bread). Those epicurean indulgences at length induced a state of obesity; and so depraved became the appetite of the bird, that, rejecting his natural food, he used to pluck out the feathers from those parts of the back within ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... 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
... mind there came a diversion in the guise of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were not many of them—perhaps a score—and there was wassail and things to eat, and speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. And when daylight threatened them the survivors prepared to depart. But some remained upon the battlefield. One of these was Trooper O'Roon, who was not seasoned ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... 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
... may be lord by day, But the monk is lord by night; Nor wine nor wassail would stir a vassal To question that ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... 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 root of ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... case was all cleared up, and the distant disappointed cousin, who had irrationally hoped to be the heir, was gladdened, if not satisfied, with a pension and a cantle of Glenmuir; and how all was joyfulness and feasting, when Amy Stuart was acknowledged in her rights—the bagpipes and the wassail, salmon, and deer, and black-cock, with a river of mountain dew: let others tell who know Dunstowr; for as I never was there, of course I cannot faithfully describe it. Should such an historian as I ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Lourre .—When Paris consisted only of the little island in the Seine, and kings and feudal lords, with wine and wassail were reveling in the saloons of China, a hunting-seat was reared in the the dense forest which spread itself along the banks of the river. As the city extended, and the forest disappeared, the hunting-seat was enlarged, strengthened, and ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... effect his 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, commenced his flight ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... the wharves, great steamers were disgorging. The rattle of their winches filled the air. On his side of the street, the sidewalk was thronged with stevedores, stokers, sailors, what not. Each of the innumerable saloons he passed possessed its wassail group, and rough ditties boomed out through swinging doors. Great loaded trucks rumbled by. It was a world that worked and played both night ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... divided the 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 ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and its gems Stud the luxuriant, grassy stems. The happy night with wassail rings; So feasted ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... the 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 ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... not, 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 ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Where 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
... 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
... meantime, Mr. Rutherford amused his declining years by teaching Charley to whistle "The king shall hae his ain again," and to gibber "Send the old rogue to Hanover;" for which he was always rewarded by a sugar-plum or a dole of wassail (Scotch short-bread). Those epicurean indulgences at length induced a state of obesity; and so depraved became the appetite of the bird, that, rejecting his natural food, he used to pluck out the feathers from those parts of the back within ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... says I, 'to drink the health of our brother monopolists, but don't overdo the wassail. You know our most eminent and loathed multi-corruptionists live on ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... low, and therefore announces, in a line of letters, that his establishment is the Pig and Whistle, just as his remote predecessor thought it was low, or slow, or old-fashioned to dedicate his ale-shop to Pigen Wassail or Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more genteel and secular form. In the public place were rows of booths arranged in streets forming imperium in imperio, a town within a town. There was of course the traditional gilt ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... 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 Origin of Music and The Triumph of Music (each ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... 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 ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... stir, for it always seemed to him 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. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gobbet^, morsel, sop, sippet^. drink, 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.]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hasty toilet, 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, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... bowl, filled with wine, that was one wondrous good. High-born men led her into the hall before the king, fairest of all things! Rouwenne sate on her knee, and called to the king, and thus first she said in English land: "Lord king, wassail! for thy coming I am glad." The king this heard, and knew not what she said, the King Vortiger asked his knights soon, what were the speech that the maid spake. Then answered Keredic, a knight most ...
— Brut • Layamon
... Yule-time, and the Isles' folk Sained[5] the children by their fires; Lit the yatlin,[6] filled the daffock,[7] As of ealdon did their sires. There was wassail in each dwelling, And the song and dance went round; And the laugh, the jest, the music, Rose above the ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... hats, the common sort, seem to be made 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, pointing out the mysterious influence ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... marvelled as the aged hind With some 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the 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 hill ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... 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. 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 ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... 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 I hope ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... 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 Field ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... "Wassail the trees, that they may bear You many a plum and many a pear; For more or less fruit they will bring, As you ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... two, crimson and blue; Two, three, treaclyness free; Three, four, gilding galore; Four, five, bogies alive; Five, six, spectres from Styx; Six, seven, angels from heaven; Seven, eight, big "extra plate"; Eight, nine, wassail and wine; Nine, ten, pencil and pen; Ten, eleven, commercial leaven; Eleven, twelve, "high-art" shelve; Thirteen, fourteen, pictures of sporting; Fifteen, sixteen, ghost-stories, fixt een; Seventeen, eighteen, advertisements great in; Nineteen, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... huge feeders also and deep carousers, and could not accommodate themselves to the sober diet of our troops, but must fain eat and drink after the manner of their own country. They were often noisy and unruly also in their wassail, and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the "pundonor," the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto in their disputes, but their ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... flowing tie for every day in the week. His habits were in complete conformity with his philosophy of extremes. He was apt to tell me when he had been sitting up all night, whether in study or what he called wassail; but I could always guess the fact from his appearance. His method of work was equally irregular, and he lived from hand to mouth. He would be idle as a forced peach on a hot-house wall (to use a simile of his own) for weeks at a time; and ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... 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 ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... of 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 a wine-glass, and sampled ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... 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 to have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... 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 strong, mad hands, "Nor say, "'Do this—be that!'" Were ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... the son of the warlike 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 its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Mumming Play is compiled from five versions—the "Peace Egg," the "Wassail Cup," "Alexander the Great," "A Mock Play," and the "Silverton Mummer's Play" (Devon), which has been lent ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... idle trifling," said young Chitterlings wildly. "Every moment is precious. Is this an hour to give to wine and wassail? Ha, we want action—action! We must strike the blow for freedom to-night—ay, this very night. The scow is already anchored in the mill-dam, freighted with provisions for a three months' voyage. I have a black flag in my pocket. Why, then, this ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... 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
... made hot, sweetened with sugar and spiced with grated nutmeg, and a hot toast is served in it. This is the wassail drink. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... deep carousers, and could not accommodate themselves to the sober diet of our troops, but must fain eat and drink after the manner of their own country. They were often noisy and unruly, also, in their wassail; and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the pundonor, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... it brought out that now forgotten expression of good-will. Many a feud was reconciled in the clinking of glasses; just as many another was begun when the cup was drained too deeply. The first quarter of the last century saw the end of all the social glories of the wassail in this country, and though men drank as much fifty years later, all its poetry and romance had ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... at Rochester, containing the signatures of "C. D." and Mark Lemon; the quill pen belonging to Charles Dickens, and used by him just previous to his death; a paper-knife formerly belonging to "C. D.," and the writing-desk used by "C. D." on his last American tour; silver wassail-bowl and stand presented to "C. D." by members of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in 1858; walking-stick formerly belonging to "C. D.;" a screen belonging to Moses Pickwick, of Bath—the veritable Moses Pickwick of Chap. XXXV. of "Pickwick Papers;" the oak balustrade ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... 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 ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... visible disgust. There is something barbaric, I 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 ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... wild steed leapeth, while his rider calmly sleepeth Beneath a rock which keepeth the entrance to the glen, Which standeth like a castle, where are dwelling lord and vassal, Where within are wind and wassail, and without are warrior men; But save the sleeping Maurice, this castle cliff had then No ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... launched the boats for the boardin' parties," broke in Jean Lafitte, standing on one leg in his excitement; "—an' so made her a prize. An' then we made 'em walk the plank amid scenes of wassail—all but ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... above date Mr. Dickens gave a reading of his Christmas Carol in the Music Hall, before the members and subscribers of the Philosophical Institution. At the conclusion of the reading the Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented him with a massive silver wassail cup. Mr. Dickens acknowledged the tribute ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... now and then I would break the thrall, I would yield to a pang of dumb regret, And steal to join them, and find them all, With the amber wassail near them yet,— ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... did! and bowels which would have stowed within them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards and wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you would ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 'Change. Having a great 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, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... 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
... may carry the impressions of the one fresh and active into the other. They are the two most representative buildings in the kingdom. Haddon is old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... [aside] 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 ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... a palmer 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 ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... which food was set on and they ate; and the doctors arose and withdrew; but Al-Maamun forbade the stranger to depart with them and, calling him to himself, treated him with especial-favour and promised him honour and profit. Thereupon they made ready the seance of wassail; the fair-faced cup-companions came and the pure wine[FN252] went round amongst them, till the cup came to the stranger, who rose to his feet and spake thus, "If the Commander of the Faithful permit me, I will say one word." Answered the Caliph, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia meekly displaying the contents of her apron before her lord, the Landgrave—that heavy, sporadic type of whiskered ass whose only mission in life seems to be that of pulling the stars and all else down about his wassail-soaked head and ears through sheer avoirdupois and stupidity. Padre Antonio experienced a sudden thrill as he gazed at the picture. Clearly, it was the hand of God directing him. So did Saint Elizabeth deliberately deny the truth, and yet the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... end there was the raised dais, on which in ancient times the host and his guests used to spread their table, while a descent of a couple of steps led to the lower part of the hall, where the vassals and retainers held wassail. The floor was uncovered by any sort of carpet, but a layer of rushes had been scattered over it by my direction. In the whole room there was nothing to remind one of the nineteenth century; except, indeed, my own solid ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... 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," ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 and lot, the ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... him 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 wear my heart ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... had failed. The two musty musketeers were 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 ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... 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
... Remsen's peace of mind there came a diversion in the guise of a reunion of the Gentle Riders of the city. There were not many of them—perhaps a score—and there was wassail and things to eat, and speeches and the Spaniard was bearded again in recapitulation. And when daylight threatened them the survivors prepared to depart. But some remained upon the battlefield. One of these was Trooper O'Roon, who was not seasoned to potent liquids. ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... viands the larders presented; Such wondrous confections the bakers invented: Such pasties and cates of eccentric design; Such sparkling decanters of rarest old wine; And ready at hand was the great wassail-bowl, And the jolly old boar's head, with lemon, so droll. The nook for musicians was carefully planned, And carols and glees would ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes, devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition, loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... A fat fed beeve, and a two-shear sheep, With a firkin of ale that a monk in his sleep May hear to hum, when it feels the broach, And wake up and swig, without reproach!— And the nuns of the Fosse—for wassail-bread— Let them have wheat, both white and red; And a runlet of mead, with a jug of the wine Which the merchant-man vowed he brought from the Rhine; And bid Hugh say that their bells must ring A peal loud and long, While we chaunt heart-song, For the birth of ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... 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, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... 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 on my ...
— Options • O. Henry
... to whom he cannot show himself. She has built a doorless, windowless wall between them, and sees the husband of her youth no more. Outside her heart—that is the night in which he wanders, while the palace-windows are flaring, and the low wind throbs to the wassail shouts: within, his murderer sits by the wife of his bosom, and in the orchard the spilt poison is yet gnawing at the roots of ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... said young Chitterlings, mildly. "Every moment is precious. Is this an hour to give to wine and wassail? Ha, we want action—action! We must strike the blow for freedom to-night—aye, this very night. The scow is already anchored in the mill-dam, freighted with provisions for a three months' voyage. I have a black flag in my pocket. Why, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... must. My readers expect a robin, and they shall have it. And a wassail-bowl, and a turkey, ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... Haddon Hall should be seen the same day if possible; so that you may carry the impressions of the one fresh and active into the other. They are the two most representative buildings in the kingdom. Haddon is old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket the Magnificent used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that exceeded regal munificence in those days,—even ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... 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, pointing out the mysterious influence ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... 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 than this, and what right have I to suppose that contentment ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... velveteen coat, and a different-colored flowing tie for every day in the week. His habits were in complete conformity with his philosophy of extremes. He was apt to tell me when he had been sitting up all night, whether in study or what he called wassail; but I could always guess the fact from his appearance. His method of work was equally irregular, and he lived from hand to mouth. He would be idle as a forced peach on a hot-house wall (to use a simile of his own) for weeks at a time; and yet when he was seized with a desire to work, ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... 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 in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... foes; but there is good stock in them,—brain and brawn, and brain and brawn will yet carry the day over court and crown, in the name of the right, which shall overpower all things. We clamber down into arched passages, choked with debris, over floors tangled with briers, and join in the wild wassail of the bold outlaw, fired by his victorious career. We clamber up the rugged sides and wind around to the headland. Brilliant in the "morning-shine," exultant in the pride and pomp of splendid preparation, ardent for conquest and glory, Abercrombie ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... in this way, and the sounds of mirth and wassail had long been strangers to the castle, when Sir Robert requested his lady, to her great astonishment, to invite some twenty or thirty of their friends to spend the Christmas, which was fast approaching, at the castle. Lady Ardagh gladly complied, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the shadows of the bordering oaks and beeches and encephalopathed Easy Money to keep to the center of the lane. And, as "before," no one was abroad. Probably King Pelles' wassail was already in progress, or, if not, the goodly knights and gentlewomen were still at evensong. In any event, he reached the lane that led to the castle of ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... not some pallid face Look in upon the banquet, calling up Dread shapes of battles in the wassail cup, And trouble ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... which he termed impecuniosity, and against which 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 ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... and low, and therefore announces, in a line of letters, that his establishment is the Pig and Whistle, just as his remote predecessor thought it was low, or slow, or old-fashioned to dedicate his ale-shop to Pigen Wassail or Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more genteel and secular form. In the public place were rows of booths arranged in streets forming imperium in imperio, a town within a town. There was of course the traditional gilt gingerbread, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... back into shape, and went inside it for a peg of something and a consultation. Next evening William called on the Heavies' commander and decoyed him up to dine. We regaled him with wassail and gramophone and explained the situation to him. The Lord of the Heavies, a charming fellow, nearly burst into tears when he heard of the ill he had unwittingly done us, and was led home by William at 1.30 A.M., swearing to withdraw his infernal machines, or beat them ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... Norseman calls, the anchor falls, The mariners hurry a-strand: They wassail with fore-drunken skals Where prophet wild grapes stand; They lift the Leifsbooth's hasty walls They stride ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Harold," 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
... Mounted Police hangin' t' m' tail till A scuttled the Boundary. Good days—rip roaring days for the makin' of strong men! We were none o' y'r cold blooded reptile calculatin' kind! May we fight valiant for God now as we wrestled for the Devil then! Oh, to be young again an' not spill life in wassail! to give the blows for right instead of wrong! Man, what a view y' have here—what a view! Minds me of the days A was bridge ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... of Hearne 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 ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... '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 and said, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... hind, With some strange tale bewitch'd my mind, Of forayers who, with headlong force, Down from that strength had spurr'd their horse, Their southern rapine to renew, Far in the distant Cheviots blue, And home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl. Methought that still with trump and clang The gateway's broken arches rang; Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, Glared through the windows' rusty bars; And ever, by the winter hearth, Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, Of lovers' slights, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... like post-horses from some 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, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... consideration of profit and loss, that in vain they spread a free 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... "Wissal, wassail through the town, If you've got any apples, throw them down. Up with the stocking, and down with the shoe, If you've got no apples, money will do. The jug is white, and the ale is brown, This is the best ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 217, December 24, 1853 • Various
... thou 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 for ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... 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 I hope ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... 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. It is a universal favourite in Gloucestershire, particularly ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... 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 a peg," ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... said, and laid a hand on the other's shoulder, "before you get busy on the wassail-bowl, my lad, I should like to remind you that the boat's crew will commence training for the Regatta at 7 A.M. to-morrow. No fatheads ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... more go 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 ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... FOLLIOTT. No wassail-bowl for me. Give me an unsophisticated bowl of punch, which belongs to that blissful middle period, after the Jacquerie was down, and before the march of mind was up. But, see, who is floundering in ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... date Mr. Dickens gave a reading of his Christmas Carol in the Music Hall, before the members and subscribers of the Philosophical Institution. At the conclusion of the reading the Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented him with a massive silver wassail cup. Mr. Dickens ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... stirring," 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
... 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 strong, mad hands, "Nor say, "'Do this—be that!'" Were there a God, ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... togged themselves out in all the gay regimentals of the Russian officers. Salutes of triumph were fired from the cannon. A Te Deum was sung. Feast and mad wassail filled both day and night till the harbor cleared. Even the Cossacks caught the madcap spirit of the escapade, and helped to load ammunition on the St. Peter and Paul. Nor were old wrongs forgiven. Ismyloff was bundled on the vessel in irons. The chancellor's secretary ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... 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
... Willies came into possession of what was to them a veritable wassail bowl, in the form of a small barrel, containing exactly six quarts of fine ale. One of the men possessed a five-pint jug and another a three-pint jug, and the problem for them was to divide the liquor equally amongst them without waste. Of course, they are not to use any other vessels or measures. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... resting-places, thirty of the thanes, and thence he rushed fain of his fell spoil, faring homeward, laden with slaughter, his lair to seek. Then at the dawning, as day was breaking, the might of Grendel to men was known; then after wassail was wail uplifted, loud moan in the morn. The mighty chief, atheling excellent, unblithe sat, labored in woe for the loss of his thanes, when once had been traced the trail of the fiend, spirit accurst: too cruel that sorrow, too long, too loathsome. Not late the respite; with night ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... in that young fellow's looks, Christie, and we want men of limbs and sinews so compacted—those thou hast brought to me of late are the mere refuse of mankind, wretches scarce worth the arrow that ends them: this youngster is limbed like Saint George. Ply him with wine and wassail—let the wenches weave their meshes about him like spiders—thou understandest?" Christie gave a sagacious nod of intelligence, and fell back to a respectful distance from his master.—"And thou, old man," said the Baron, turning to the elder ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Rome, and England no doubt was greatly benefited thereby; but, alas! "money matters became scarce," and the poor Briton was forced to associate with the delirium tremens and massive digestion of the Saxon, who floated in a vast ocean of lard and wassail during his waking hours and slept with the cunning little piglets at night. His earthen floors were carpeted with straw and frescoed ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... consisted only of the little island in the Seine, and kings and feudal lords, with wine and wassail were reveling in the saloons of China, a hunting-seat was reared in the the dense forest which spread itself along the banks of the river. As the city extended, and the forest disappeared, the hunting-seat was enlarged, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... said the 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 honour ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... party produced an image of the Virgin and Child, and another offered comfits in a box; a third presented the wassail-cup, into which Raby immediately poured some silver, and Coventry followed his example. Grace fumbled for her purse, and, when she had found it, began to fumble in ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... merchants from 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 ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... lies heavy, and its gems Stud the luxuriant, grassy stems. The happy night with wassail rings; So feasted here the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... "Many 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... banqueting hall that you have never heard described. You know all about the feast of Ahasuerus, where a thousand lords sat. You know all about Belshazzar's carousal, where the blood of the murdered king spurted into the faces of the banqueters. You may know of the scene of riot and wassail, when there was set before Esopus one dish of food that cost $400,000. But I speak now of a different banqueting hall. Its roof is fretted with fire. Its floor is tesselated with fire. Its chalices are chased with fire. Its song is a song of fire. Its walls are buttresses of fire. Solomon ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... Carolsingers are still with us, but often instead of the old carols they sing very badly and irreverently modern hymns, though in Cambridgeshire you may still hear "God bless you, merry gentlemen," and the vessel-boxes (a corruption of wassail) are still carried round in Yorkshire. At Christmas Cornish folk eat giblet-pie, and Yorkshiremen enjoy furmenty; and mistletoe and the kissing-bush are still hung in the hall; and in some remote parts ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... oh, 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 drink! ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... blue; Two, three, treaclyness free; Three, four, gilding galore; Four, five, bogies alive; Five, six, spectres from Styx; Six, seven, angels from heaven; Seven, eight, big "extra plate"; Eight, nine, wassail and wine; Nine, ten, pencil and pen; Ten, eleven, commercial leaven; Eleven, twelve, "high-art" shelve; Thirteen, fourteen, pictures of sporting; Fifteen, sixteen, ghost-stories, fixt een; Seventeen, eighteen, advertisements great in; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... herculean constitution; but of course that sort of thing does 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 ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... addition to 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. The momentum had been given to his mental ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... her, Here we coom at oor toon-end, Weel bun' an' better shorn 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, miller, mooter-poke Down i' yon lum we have a mill, Hob-Trush ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... jamboree [Slang], kantikoy^, nautch^, randy, squantum [U.S.], tear [Slang], Turnerfest^, yule log; fete, festival, gala, ridotto^; revels, revelry, reveling; carnival, brawl, saturnalia, high jinks; feast, banquet &c (food) 298; regale, symposium, wassail; carouse, carousal; jollification, junket, wake, Irish wake, picnic, fete champetre [Fr.], regatta, field day; treat. round of pleasures, dissipation, a short life and a merry one, racketing, holiday ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were o'er, the knight Was holding wassail high, And the valiant men that followed ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... that now forgotten expression of good-will. Many a feud was reconciled in the clinking of glasses; just as many another was begun when the cup was drained too deeply. The first quarter of the last century saw the end of all the social glories of the wassail in this country, and though men drank as much fifty years later, all its poetry and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... 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, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... 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 of the "Old Hearth Broom and the Kettle-Holder:"—With these ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... 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, ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... did not speak. He felt, in truth, somewhat incapable of quite incoherent speech. Not having expected any service till next day, he had foregathered with others of his ilk in the servants' bar, below-stairs, and had with wassail and good cheer very effectively put himself out ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... 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, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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
... castle must have thought old times had come back again, there was such a large and miscellaneous company beneath its roof. But where were the knights in armor, the courtiers in velvet and satin, the boars' heads, the venison pasties, the wassail-bowls? Where were the stately dames in stiff brocade, the shaven priests, the fool in motley, the vassals, the yeomen in hodden gray and broad blue bonnet? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... dying so 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, had been main ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... bright 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 ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... 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; ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... and would be a cheap sojourner. Was not this the language of a noble spirit? You look, Williams, as if you had a mystery to unfold. Come, tell all your tale as you would repeat it to gossips on a wassail night. The world is now forgotten by me, and I am forgotten ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... neighbors, no visitors, no news, no 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 than ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... newly-acquired ally, a surprise should be attempted by the French forces, and the unsuspecting city of Douay given over to the pillage of a brutal soldiery. The time appointed was the night of Epiphany, upon occasion of which festival, it was thought that the inhabitants, overcome with sleep and wassail, might be easily overpowered. (6th January, 1557.) The plot was a good plot, but the Admiral of France was destined to be foiled by an old woman. This person, apparently the only creature awake in the town, perceived the danger, ran shrieking through the streets, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... then," said Edward, as he put his lips to a gold goblet, wrought with gems, and passed it to Anthony the Bastard,—"here, count, we take the first wassail to the loves of ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... board the 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 ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... and fourpence each, to "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
... the boats for the boardin' parties," broke in Jean Lafitte, standing on one leg in his excitement; "—an' so made her a prize. An' then we made 'em walk the plank amid scenes of wassail—all but the ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... east, where behind the hills a waning moon was putting in an appearance. The electric lights of the town scintillated like artificial stars, and away down the long valley could be seen here and there the twinkle of a farmhouse light, showing where some held mild wassail or a convivial evening; for there were not many of the agriculturalists, tired from their heavy toil, who were otherwise out of bed at this ungodly hour of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... 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
... their cousin, L. Junius Brutus, they found the king at war 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 that his own wife ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... feeders also and deep carousers, and could not accommodate themselves to the sober diet of our troops, but must fain eat and drink after the manner of their own country. They were often noisy and unruly also in their wassail, and their quarter of the camp was prone to be a scene of loud revel and sudden brawl. They were, withal, of great pride, yet it was not like our inflammable Spanish pride: they stood not much upon the "pundonor," the high punctilio, and rarely drew the stiletto ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... 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 to enjoy one of them. The frosts and snows ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... heavy, and its gems Stud the luxuriant, grassy stems. The happy night with wassail rings; So feasted ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 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 tone. The louder ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... And now, grown old, must pay the penalty In wrinkles and uncourted loneliness; The 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 ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... "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 ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... carols, 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 ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... 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 of Charles I. He was called Christie's ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... 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 ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... 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 trail-maker ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... Morlischachen holds His bridal feast today: a wealthy man; Has half a score of glens i' th' Alps. They're going To fetch the bride from Imisee; tonight There will be mirth and wassail down at Kuessnacht. Come you! ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... swung to nightward, Night the abhorr-ed, night was a new dawning, Celestial dawning Over the ultimate marges of the soul; Dusk grew turbulent with fire before me, And like a windy arras waved with dreams. Sleep I took not for my bedfellow, Who could waken To a revel, an inexhaustible Wassail of orgiac imageries; Then while I wore thy sore insignia In a little joy, O Earth, in a little joy; Loving thy beauty in all creatures born of thee, Children, and the sweet-essenced body of woman; Feeling not yet upon my neck thy foot, But breathing warm of thee as ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... come. The clergy are now hunted in the streets! Plunder and rapine reign! Orgies and wild wassail hold a mocking sway in the courts of death. Unsexed women, liberated thieves, and bloodthirsty tramps prey on the unwary, the wounded, or the feeble. On April 3Oth, the great fort of Issy falls into the hands of the government. Blazing shells rain, in the murky night air, down on ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... as "wassail" was composed of warm ale or wine, sweetened with sugar and flavored with spices, and bearing upon its surface floating bits of toast and roasted crabs and apples. The huge bowl, gaily decorated with ribbons, was passed from hand to hand around ...
— Myths and Legends of Christmastide • Bertha F. Herrick
... 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 forty and dispersed ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... a word picture of metropolitan joys 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 the bargain, ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... Devonshire, and Cornwall, in England, the farmers and peasantry "salute the apple-trees on Christmas Eve," and in Sussex they used to "worsle," i.e. "wassail," the apple-trees and chant verses to them in somewhat of the primitive ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... faith may accomplish; the familiar representation of Saint Elizabeth of Thuringia meekly displaying the contents of her apron before her lord, the Landgrave—that heavy, sporadic type of whiskered ass whose only mission in life seems to be that of pulling the stars and all else down about his wassail-soaked head and ears through sheer avoirdupois and stupidity. Padre Antonio experienced a sudden thrill as he gazed at the picture. Clearly, it was the hand of God directing him. So did Saint Elizabeth deliberately deny the ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... did not stir, for it always seemed to him 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sets the beakers For the guests at the wassail feast; Nor fills a flask from the oldest cask For the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... saying, '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 and said, "What fashion ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... 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 sounds ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... forbidden pleasures of wine and wassail, loose talk and tales of women's wiles, a favourite subject with the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the kingdom's sick; No gin to catch 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, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... 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 ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... of banquet in the halls of Stowe, of wassail, and the dance. The messengers had sped, and Alice of the Lea would be there. Robes, precious and many, were unfolded from their rest, and the casket poured forth jewel and gem, that the maiden might stand before the knight victorious! It was the day—the hour—the time. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... black and his brown, he had a green velveteen coat, and a different-colored flowing tie for every day in the week. His habits were in complete conformity with his philosophy of extremes. He was apt to tell me when he had been sitting up all night, whether in study or what he called wassail; but I could always guess the fact from his appearance. His method of work was equally irregular, and he lived from hand to mouth. He would be idle as a forced peach on a hot-house wall (to use a simile of his own) for weeks at a time; and yet when he was seized with a desire to work, it ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... sir—revenge; which, if it be as gentle manlike a sin as wine and wassail, with their et coeteras, is equally unchristian, and not so bloodless. It is better breaking a park-pale to watch a doe or damsel than to ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... hand a golden bowl, filled with wine, that was one wondrous good. High-born men led her into the hall before the king, fairest of all things! Rouwenne sate on her knee, and called to the king, and thus first she said in English land: "Lord king, wassail! for thy coming I am glad." The king this heard, and knew not what she said, the King Vortiger asked his knights soon, what were the speech that the maid spake. Then answered Keredic, a knight most admirable; he was the best interpreter that ere came here: ...
— Brut • Layamon
... 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, pointing out the mysterious ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... was the raised dais, on which in ancient times the host and his guests used to spread their table, while a descent of a couple of steps led to the lower part of the hall, where the vassals and retainers held wassail. The floor was uncovered by any sort of carpet, but a layer of rushes had been scattered over it by my direction. In the whole room there was nothing to remind one of the nineteenth century; except, indeed, my own solid silver ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... irrationally hoped to be the heir, was gladdened, if not satisfied, with a pension and a cantle of Glenmuir; and how all was joyfulness and feasting, when Amy Stuart was acknowledged in her rights—the bagpipes and the wassail, salmon, and deer, and black-cock, with a river of mountain dew: let others tell who know Dunstowr; for as I never was there, of course I cannot faithfully describe it. Should such an historian as I ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... was quarrelsome and loud, And impatient of control, Boisterous in the market crowd, Boisterous at the wassail-bowl, Everywhere Would drink and ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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