“Wassayle, wassayle out of the mylke payle, Wassayle, wassayle as white as my nayle, Wassayle, wassayle in snowe, froste, and hayle, Wassayle, wassayle with partriche and rayle, Wassayle, wassayle that muche doth avayle, Wassayle, wassayle that never wylle fayle.” In Caxton’s Chronicle the account of the death of King John represents the cup to have been filled with good ale; and the monk bearing it, knelt down, saying, “Syr, wassayll for euer the dayes so all lyf dronke ye of so good a cuppe.” The loving-cup, at city and other feasts, may be considered as an offshoot of the wassail-bowl, drinc-heil being converted into drink-all. In after times the term became applied almost exclusively to Christmas, perhaps from wassailing being more common at that period, and there was a custom in many places of carrying the bowl round, generally by young women, from door to door, with an appropriate song, the bearer expecting a small gift in return. Selden, in his ‘Table Talk,’ alluding to this custom, says, “The Pope, in sending relics to princes, does as wenches do by their wassails at New Year’s tide, they present you with a cup, and you must drink of a slabby stuff; but the meaning is, you must give them moneys ten times more than it is worth.” The days generally chosen for the wassail bowl were Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve or Twelfth Night, which in some places was called Wassail eve. Machyn, in his Diary, mentions his being at supper at Mrs. Lentall’s, at Henley-on-Thames, on Twelfth Eve, 1556, when there came in “xij wessells with maydens syngyng with their wessells, and after cam the cheyff wyffes syngyng with their wessells; and the gentyll-woman had hordenyd a grett tabull of bankett, dyssys of spyssys and frut, as marmelad, gynbred, gele, comfett, suger plat, and dyver odur.” Master Machyn is somewhat arbitrary in his spelling, even allowing for the eccentricities in this art at the time in which he wrote. In the seventeenth century the wassail bowl was carried round to the houses of the gentry and others, the bearers expecting a gratuity:— “Good dame, here at your door Our wassel we begin; We are all maidens poor, We pray now let us in With our wassel. Our wassel we do fill With apples and with spice, Then grant us your good will To taste here once or twice Of our good wassel.“ The custom is still partially extant. Many great houses had, and no doubt still have, wassail bowls of massive silver. Wassail, in Ben Jonson’s mask of Christmas, is described as a neat sempster and songster; her page bearing a brown bowl, dressed with ribbons and rosemary, before her.