Wassail, Wassail, all over the town
Our bread it is white and our ale it is brown
Our bowl it is made from the good maple tree
We be good fellows all; I drink unto thee
The Gloucestershire Wassail
The spirited old custom of drinking communally from a big wooden bowl carried from house to house for refills by Carol singers, hails from the Anglo Saxon toast of Waes Heil (Good Health).
Householders tended in days of old to fill the wassail bowl with a warming beverage called "Lamb's Wool". According to the mid-17th Century records of one Mistress Watkinson's Book, to make Lamb's Wool, one would heat a pint of white wine with a quart of good ale, adding cinnamon, grated nutmeg and sugar, topped with floating, roasted crab apples.
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