Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/18

 10

NOTES AND QUERIES. [iu"- s. m. JAN. 7, 1905.

And again :

The custom came to this The custom came to the

land, land,

Wivs hail and drlnc hceil. Wassayl and drmg-hayl.

As the older and better text has woes hail, i.e., " be thou hale," where the later one, written by a Norman scribe with frequent mistakes (observe his dring /), has wassail, I can see no more to be said. We thus have the most sure evidence in a first-rate authority (from a philological point of view) that the phrase which was intelligently written as wees hail by an Englishman was stupidly turned into ivassail by a Norman scribe who had something to learn.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

The wassail song, of which MR. ADDY quotes a very corrupt version from Sheffield, is well known in many parts of the country, and is published, with music, as No. 37 of Novello's ' Christmas Carols,' price Id. In the Bradford district I have heard the children sing :

Here we come a-wesselling Among the leaves so green ; An' here we bring our wesley-bob, The fairest to be seen. For it is the Christmas time, When we travel far an' near ; So God bless you, and send you A Happy New Year.

In Novello's version the third line is weak, Here we come a- wandering ;

and the Bradford version, though its wassail bowl is corrupted to "wesley-bob," points to the real original. In Bradford the wassailers are usually girls, and their "bob " consists of an elaborately dressed doll, sitting under an arch of flowers, ribbons, and " green " ; the whole coverea with a fair white linen cloth, which is raised from time to time for spectators who are likely to contribute. Presumably the doll was originally the Virgin and Child.

H. SNOWDEN WARD. Hadlow, Kent.

The following is part of a carol sung in Leicester by children, and the tune and the words, I am told, have not altered during the last fifty years :

I have a little whistlebob, Made out of holly tree The finest little whistlebob That ever you did see ; For it is a Christmas time, When we travel far and near, And I wish you good health and A Happy New Year.

The expression a " load " of holly or mistletoe

s still used in the market here every year, meaning a bunch, no matter how small.

HARRY H. PEACH.

Leicester.

CHRISTMAS CAROLS : WAITS: GUISERS (10 tu S. ii. 504) Mumming or guising was a custom maintained down to a comparatively late whether the custom still survives in Oxford- shire or other counties. A note in Brand's Antiquities,' 1853 (Sir Henry Ellis), says that it was in that year common in Oxford- shire, where at Islip the mummers either alacked their faces or wore masks, and dressed themselves up with haybands tied round their arms and bodies. Thesmaller boys Dlacked their faces and went about singing : A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Your pockets full of money, and your cellars full of
 * ime, and it would be of much interest to know

beer.

And the following lines were still sung at bhe Christmas mummings in Somersetshire : Here comes I, liddle man Jan ( ? January), With my zword in my han !

(? the keenness of winter) If you don't all do

As you be told by I, I '11 zend you all to York Vor to make apple-pie.

To this day, I believe, the (dis)guisers go about in the north of Scotland visiting their friends on both Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. The new-comer is, of course, on account of his disguise, treated as a stranger, but the hospitality of the host never fails on this account. A poor girl begging, a pedlar selling little wares, a farmer's wife who has lost her way, or any other personation which is at once likely to be credible and to afford occasion for clever acting or ready wit, is resorted to. Generally the guest reveals his ot- her true self before departing ; and in the remote islands of Shetland, where through the long winter the people are wholly depen- dent on " home-made '' interests and amuse- ments, this idea is worked out moreelaborately. The plan is for some of the young people of a neighbourhood to band themselves together disguised, and then, in a troop, to visit the houses of the lairds or the large farmers. See further The Osborne Magazine of some few years ago ; and there is a good deal of information on this curious subject in Brand's ' Antiquities,' 1853 (Ellis), vol. i. pp. 461-6.

J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL. " AN OLD WOMAN WENT TO MARKET '

(10 th S. ii. 502). An account of the sources whence have come the stories of ' The House that Jack Built' and of 'The Old Woman who couldn't get her Pig over the Stile' will