Skip to content
CiderHQ
Search

Glossary · Culture

Wassail

Also written wassailing, apple wassail. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.

Definition

A midwinter orchard custom in which people gather round a chosen apple tree to drink its health, make noise, and pour or hang cider and soaked toast in its branches, traditionally to secure the coming crop.

Subject
Culture
Also written
wassailing, apple wassail

In more detail

The name comes from Old English wes hál, "be healthy", a drinking salutation. Two related traditions carry it: house-visiting wassails, which are the ancestor of carol singing, and orchard wassails, which are the cider one. Orchard wassailing is generally held around Twelfth Night, and where old-style dates are kept, on 17 January.

The elements are consistent across the West Country and the three counties — a wassail king or queen, toast soaked in cider placed in the tree for the robins, cider poured on the roots, shouting and shotguns or pans to drive off harm, and a wassail song. What they meant originally is not recoverable; the surviving documentation is largely from the eighteenth century onwards, and much of the "ancient pagan ritual" framing around them is later interpretation rather than evidence.

Many present-day wassails are conscious revivals dating from the later twentieth century, run by orchard groups and cider houses. That does not make them inauthentic; it makes their history shorter than is often claimed.

Where this is covered properly

The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.

Related terms

Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.

Where to go next

Sources

What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.