Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/81

 Catalogue of Brand Material.

71

Rites : Cake or toast dipped in cider, put in branches or fork of tree, with rhyme ^ and shouts ; frequently guns fired

" Rough music " often added

Cider poured or sprinkled on trees ; dancing round them

Buckets of cider with roasted apples drunk in orchard, boy hoisted into branches, trees pelted with apples -

Trees struck or tapped with sticks while rhyme recited

Cow-horn blown at foot of trees -. - -

Unlucky to crop to omit Wassailing

LOCALITY.

Devon, Dorset, Somer- set. Dorset.

Cornwall, 1816.

Devon (Torquay).

Surrey (Warlingham), Sussex, Kent.

Surrey, Sussex (Chailey).

{?■) 2. Wassailing Com and Cattle,

Twelfth Eve - - - Herefdsh., Glos. Thirteen fires lighted on wheatfield ; farmer, men, and

friends toast each other in cider. Oxen in " wainhouse " severally toasted in ale. 2 Cake stuck on horn of leading ox, thrown off, becomes

perquisite of bailiff or of farmer's wife.

(j) 3. The Wassailing Bough, wessel- bob, wesley-bob.

Pray God send a good howling crop ! Hats full, caps full, dree bushel-bags full I
 * " Stand fast, root ! bear well, top !

{cresc.) Now, Now, Now !" (Firearms discharged).

( Dorset variant. )

-Toast. " Here's to thee, Benbow, and to thy white iiorn. God send thy master a good crop of corn, Of wheat, rye and barley, and all sorts of grain, Vou eat your oats and I'll drink my beer, May the Lord send us all a happy New Year I "

Cf. also Mrs. Leather's Herefordshire, p. 95.