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What the wassailing…!

There are two types of wassailing: the house-visiting wassail and the orchard-visiting
wassail. The house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing
and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts; this practice still exists,
but has largely been displaced by caroling.
The orchard-visiting wassail refers to the ancient custom of visiting orchards in cider-
producing regions of England, reciting incantations and singing to the trees to promote
a good harvest for the coming year.
In the cider-producing West of England (primarily the counties of Devon, Somerset,

Dorset, Gloucestershire and
Herefordshire wassailing also refers to
drinking (and singing) the health of trees
in the hopes that they might better
thrive.

An old wassailing rhyme goes:

Wassaile the trees, that they may beare

You many a Plum and many a Peare:

For more or lesse fruits they will bring,

As you do give them Wassailing.

FUSION – Hardwicke Church Airborne Forces Association
Youth group for children
There is an Airborne Forces Association
aged 11 to 18 serving Gloucestershire which meets
monthly at Gloucestershire Airport. All
Diary date for FUSION former members are welcome along.

Friday 13 November, 7.30 pm. The Association Chairman is Gordon
Mitchell and he can be reached on
Zoom meeting with pebble painting 01242 692357

Did you know…that the Cenotaph – the most influential and most copied war
memorial in history and unveiled a century ago on July 19 1919, was only ever
supposed to be temporary. Sir Edwin Lutyens’s masterpiece, originally built in timber
and plaster, was so immediately popular that, a year later, in 1920, a permanent copy in
Portland stone took its place on Whitehall – where it stands today, the focus of
commemoration rituals on Remembrance Sunday.
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