The Normans spent the night after a very different fashion—in prayer and in the confession of their sins—for they knew that many must fall on that eventful day. The Bishops of Coutances and Bayeux received their confessions, and recorded their vows on this Friday night that if they were spared on the morrow they would fast on Saturdays for the remainder of their lives. William, for his part, registered a solemn vow that if he gained the victory he would found a great church on the battlefield, in gratitude for the divine aid. The Normans, in short, made all due preparation; and as they prayed well, so did they fight, on that fatal morrow. Another, and a highly picturesque, chronicler tells us delightfully of the alleged actual Saxon debauch on the battlefield, on the night before the fray. This account is by Wace, the author of several romances and narrative-poems in Norman-French. Wace wrote his jingling metrical narrative about 1170, more than a hundred years after the battle was fought, but probably incorporated the floating traditions of that great occasion, doubtless still plentiful in his time. Here is his picture of the Saxon orgies: Quant la bataille dut joster, La nuit avant, ço oï conter, Furent Engleiz forment haitiez, Mult riant è mult enveisiez; Tote nuit mangierent è burent Unkes la nuit et lit ne jurent. Mult les véissiez demener, Treper, è saillir è chanter. The Norman-French in which Wace writes is somewhat puzzling, but the general sense of it is that “the night before the battle was fought, as I am told, the English were joyous, laughing much and skylarking. They ate and drank all night, refusing to take any repose, and skipped about, dancing and singing.” Then he gives us the English shouts, as heard by the Normans: _Bublie_ crient è _weissel_, E _laticome_ è drincheheil, _Drinc Hindrewart_ è _Drintome_, _Drinc Helf_ è _drinc Tome_. or, as we may put it, “Bubble it up!” they cried, and “Wassail!” and “Let it come,” and “Drink hail!” “Drink hinderwards and drink to me, drink health and drink to me!” Modernised, and applied to beer, which is to our times what mead or metheglin was to the Saxons, “Bubble it up!” would appear to mean “Froth it up,” or “Put a good head on it”; while “Let it come” and “Drink hail!” are simply “Pass the bottle” and “Here’s your health!” But how you drink “hinderwards,” unless it means “Pass the bottle back again,” I cannot conceive. At any rate, it is quite evident, by this account, that these English warriors had each a thoroughly good skinful of booze overnight. They seem to have almost wallowed in it, and were precisely the men who would have appreciated the bibulous spirit of that drinking ballad of modern times, which ran something after this style: