"Wassail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now togged themselves out in all the gay regimentals of the Russian officers. Salutes of triumph were fired from the cannon. A Te Deum was sung. Feast and mad wassail filled both day and night till the harbor cleared. Even the Cossacks caught the madcap spirit of the escapade, and helped to load ammunition on the St. Peter and Paul. Nor were old wrongs forgiven. Ismyloff ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... and therefore announces, in a line of letters, that his establishment is the Pig and Whistle, just as his remote predecessor thought it was low, or slow, or old-fashioned to dedicate his ale-shop to Pigen Wassail or Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more genteel and secular form. In the public place were rows of booths arranged in streets forming imperium in imperio, a town within a town. There was of course ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... friends from west and east And other foreign parts, Come share the rapture of our feast, The love of loyal hearts; And in the wassail that suspends All matters burthensome, We'll drink a health to good old friends And good friends yet to come. Clink, clink, clink! To fellowship we drink! And from the bowl No genial soul In such an hour will shrink. ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... freeborn nostril of the king, We send to you; but here a jolly Verse, crown'd with ivy and with holly, That tells of winter's tales and mirth, That milkmaids make about the hearth, Of Christmas sports, the wassail-bowl, That['s] tost up, after fox-i'-th'-hole; Of blind-man-buff, and of the care That young men have to shoe the mare; Of Twelfth-tide cakes, of peas and beans, Wherewith you make those merry scenes, Whenas ye choose your king and queen, And cry out: Hey, for our town green; Of ash-heaps, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... impression of the one fresh and active into the other. They are the two most representative buildings in the kingdom. Haddon is old English feudalism edificed. It represents the rough grandeur, hospitality, wassail and rude romance of the English nobility five hundred years ago. It was all in its glory about the time when Thomas-a-Becket, the Magnificent, used to entertain great companies of belted knights of the realm in a manner that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... so much of pensioners, and barons of beef, and yule-logs, and bay, and rosemary, and holly boughs cut upon the hillside, and crab-apples bobbing in the wassail bowl, and masques and mummers, and dancers on the rushes, that we need not here describe a Christmas Eve in olden times. Indeed, this last half of the nineteenth century is weary of the worn-out theme. But one characteristic of the age of Elizabeth may be mentioned: that is its love of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ye did! and bowels which would have stowed within them all the plate on board of a galleon. If tankards and wassail-bowls had stuck between your teeth, you ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... his invitation to go in to the feast of welcome, and a noble one it was, with music and minstrelsy, hospitality to all around, plenty and joy, wassail bowls going round, and the Atheling presiding over it, and with a strange and quiet influence, breaking up the entertainment in all good will, by the memory of his sweet sister Margaret's grace-cup, ere mirth had become madness, ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... California, surely never loved daughters of kings in the courts of kings; nor fought cutlass to cutlass on the swaying decks of ships; nor drowned in the spirit-rooms of ships, guzzling raw liquor to the wassail-shouting and death-singing of seamen, while the ship lifted and crashed on the black-toothed rocks and the water bubbled ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... quarrelsome and loud, And impatient of control, Boisterous in the market crowd, Boisterous at the wassail-bowl, Everywhere Would drink and swear, Swaggering Thangbrand, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... exultant with success, encamped that night in the woods not far from Marlborough, and kept the forest awake with the uproar of their barbarian wassail. The colonists immediately assembled a small band of brave men, fell upon them by surprise in the midst of their carousals, shot forty ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... the boats for the boardin' parties," broke in Jean Lafitte, standing on one leg in his excitement; "—an' so made her a prize. An' then we made 'em walk the plank amid scenes of wassail—all but ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... made hot, sweetened with sugar and spiced with grated nutmeg, and a hot toast is served in it. This is the wassail drink. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... been cursing their stars and his own, ever since the receipt of solemn notification to this effect." But very grateful, when it came, was the enthusiasm of the greeting, and welcome the gift of the silver wassail-bowl which followed the reading of the Carol. "I had no opportunity of asking any one's advice in Edinburgh," he wrote on his return. "The crowd was too enormous, and the excitement in it much too great. But my determination ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Hearne in his Search for the Coppermine River and the Northwest Passage—Hilarious Life of Wassail led by Governor Norton—The Massacre of the Eskimo by Hearne's Indians North of the Arctic Circle—Discovery of the Athabasca Country—Hearne becomes Resident Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, but is captured by the French—Frightful Death of Norton ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... EXHAUSTED by the day's wassail, most of the men went below at an early hour, leaving the deck to the steward and two of the men remaining on duty; the mate, with Baltimore and the Dane, engaging to relieve them at midnight. At that hour, the ship—now standing off ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... was Yule-time, and the Isles' folk Sained[5] the children by their fires; Lit the yatlin,[6] filled the daffock,[7] As of ealdon did their sires. There was wassail in each dwelling, And the song and dance went round; And the laugh, the jest, the music, Rose above ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... with his doll. He fancied that as a mummer at the feast of Saturn he might earn a few drops from the wassail cup. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... green velveteen coat, and a different-colored flowing tie for every day in the week. His habits were in complete conformity with his philosophy of extremes. He was apt to tell me when he had been sitting up all night, whether in study or what he called wassail; but I could always guess the fact from his appearance. His method of work was equally irregular, and he lived from hand to mouth. He would be idle as a forced peach on a hot-house wall (to use a simile of his own) for weeks at a time; and yet when he was seized ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... fruitful wife, "Her spouse the Dead, and their cold marriage yields "A million children, born of mould'ring flesh— "So Death and Flesh live on—immortal they! "I mean the blank-ey'd queen whose wassail bowl "Is brimm'd from Lethe, and whose porch is red "With poppies, as it waits the panting soul— "She, she alone is great! No scepter'd slave "Bowing to blind creative giants, she; "No forces seize her in their strong, mad hands, "Nor say, "'Do this—be that!'" Were there a God, "His ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... knew that I was doomed that day to give up the bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery. But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my ...
— Options • O. Henry
... novice I have brought to learn the noble art of merrymaking, of wine and wassail. We have both been literally starved at the palace—I should say monastery—of Monk Edred today. It is Friday, and we have been splendidly dining upon salt fish served up on golden salvers. My goodness! the flavour of that precious cod is yet ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... and Turanian origin. What passion for vast conquests! "These rugged tribes, devoted to their chiefs, led by Cyrus from their herds and hunting-grounds to startle the pampered Lydians with their spare diet and clothing of skins; living on what they could get, strangers to wine and wassail, schooled in manly exercises, cleanly even to superstition, loyal to age and filial duties; with a manly pride of personal independence that held a debt the next worst thing to a lie; their fondness for social graces, their feudal dignities, their chiefs giving counsel to the king even while submissive ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... hasty toilet, I proceeded to the parlour, which, however late events might have impressed upon my memory, I could scarcely recognise. Instead of the long oak table and the wassail bowl, there stood near the fire a small round table, covered with a snow—white cloth, upon which shone in unrivalled brightness a very handsome tea equipage—the hissing kettle on one hob was vis a vis'd by a gridiron with three ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... thee; The worts, the purslain, and the mess Of water-cress, Which of thy kindness thou hast sent; And my content Makes those, and my beloved beet, To be more sweet. 'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering hearth With guiltless mirth, And giv'st me wassail-bowls to drink, Spiced to the brink. Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand That soils my land, And giv'st me, for my bushel sown, Twice ten for one; Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day; Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year; The while the conduits ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells |
