Subscribe to our Newsletter

Wassail Song (Hardwicke)

Back to browse page
Place Collected: Hardwicke
Date collected: 1943 (Oct)
Roud Number: 209

On 25 October 1989, Gwilym Davies had a phone conversation with Mr J Stowell of Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire.  Mr Stowell was born abut 1907 and was originally from Hardwicke.  He told Gwilym that he remembered wassailers before World War I visiting Lanes Farm, Hardwicke, where he lived.  After 1917, he moved with his family to Church Farm, but doesn’t recall the wassailers visiting there.  Mr Stowell said that there were about 10 wassailers, possibly with a concertina, and carrying carried a bowl decorated with flowers to collect money in.  The wassailers were from Longney and came around on “Old Christmas Day” (6th January).  He remembered snatches of the song:

Waysail, waysail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our rayment is brown

Here’s a health unto Polly and to her right horn
Wishing our master a good crop of corn

,………………………..jolly fat pig that we may all see

[A verse about the butler]

…………………………………. lift up the pin
And let the jolly waysailers in.