Page:Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern.djvu/70

 New Year’s Eve was observed as a convivial and cordial meeting, as it still continues in some places, and the wassail-bowl was again brought into requisition, and occasionally carried about by young women from door to door with an appropriate song. The following is given in Hone’s “Every-day Book,” vol. ii. p. 14, as a Wassail Song, sung in Gloucestershire on New Year’s Eve, in which I have taken the liberty of introducing the names of the horses, instead of cutting them out into little stars as Juliet wished Romeo to be.

Croker, in his “Researches,” (p. 233.) states a custom in the South of Ireland on this night of a