Nature & Seasons

Wassailing the Apple Trees

Also called Apple tree wassail, Apple howling, Old Twelfth Night wassail

On Twelfth Night, villagers in the English cider country gather around the oldest apple tree, soak toast in cider for the robins, pour cider on the roots, sing to the tree and make a racket to drive off bad spirits so the orchard bears well.

TraditionEnglish West Country orchard custom

RegionSomerset, Devon and Herefordshire, England

Era17th century to present

Moon◐ Any moon

DayAny

ElementEarth

Difficulty●●○ Moderate

Time1 hour at dusk

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The working

Gather after dark on Twelfth Night, 5 or 6 January, or on Old Twelfth Night, 17 January, as Carhampton does.
Walk to the tree in a group with lanterns and the cider.
Choose a wassail king or queen to lift a piece of cider-soaked toast into the branches for the robins, who stand for the tree's good spirits.
Pour a splash of cider over the roots.
Sing a wassail song to the tree, or simply toast it: here's to thee, old apple tree, bear well this year.
Bang pots and pans, cheer and shout to scare off anything that would harm the crop.
Finish the cider together and go home.

Take care: Leave the shotguns to the custom's licensed participants; pots and pans work fine. Keep torches away from dry branches and hay. Serve non-alcoholic cider to children and drivers.

Versions across time and place

Carhampton on Old Twelfth Night

West Somerset · Recorded 1904; continuous since

Carhampton keeps the wassail on 17 January, the old date before the 1752 calendar change. Villagers circle the largest tree, hang cider toast for the robin, pour cider on the roots, sing the Carhampton wassail song and fire shotguns through the branches. Folklorists treat it as a rare survivor rather than a revival, and it has become the model for many new wassails.

Uses: Cider, Toast, Shotguns (licensed adults only)

Recorded in: Calendar Customs, 'Carhampton Wassail'; English Folk Dance and Song Society, 'Wassailing Apple Trees'

Herrick's couplet

Devon parish poetry · 1648

Robert Herrick, vicar of Dean Prior in Devon, told his readers to wassail the trees so they would bear plums and pears. It is among the earliest literary records of the orchard custom and shows it was ordinary enough by the 1640s to need no explanation.

Recorded in: Robert Herrick, Hesperides (1648)

iii

Apple howling

Sussex and Surrey · 18th to 19th century

In the south-east, boys went from orchard to orchard in the Christmas season beating the trees with sticks and chanting rhymes, then asking the owner for money or drink. Hutton places it among the many local forms of the orchard visit, closer to a begging custom than a solemn rite.

Recorded in: Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (1996)

History

Wassail comes from the Old English greeting 'wæs hæl', be well, used as a drinking toast. By the 17th century the word covered both house-to-house drinking visits at Christmas and the custom of toasting fruit trees, which Robert Herrick mentions in 1648. In the cider counties of Somerset, Devon and Herefordshire, farmers and their workers visited the orchard on Twelfth Night with cider, cake and guns, and sang to the trees to make them fruitful.

Ronald Hutton's The Stations of the Sun (1996) traces how the custom faded in the 19th century as farming changed, surviving in a few places like Carhampton. When the calendar shifted eleven days in 1752, some villages kept the old date, 17 January. Since the 1970s, community orchards, cider makers and folk clubs have revived wassails across England and beyond, often borrowing Carhampton's song and toast.

Sources

Wassailing Apple Trees · English Folk Dance and Song Society
Carhampton Wassail · Calendar Customs
The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain · Ronald Hutton, 1996

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