Part 33

Among other valuable remarks that have already been made in some notes on this word by Messrs. Steevens and Malone, it has been observed that the _wassel_ bowl was particularly used at the season of Christmas, and that in process of time _wassel_ came to signify not only meetings of rustic mirth, but also general riot, intemperance, and festivity. In the eleventh volume of _Archæologia_, the learned Dr. Milner has exhibited and described an ancient oaken cup, formerly belonging to the abbey of Glastonbury, which with great probability he supposes to be of Saxon times, and to have been used for wasselling. In _The antiquarian repertory_, vol. i. p. 217, there is an account, accompanied with an engraving, of an oaken chimney-piece in a very old house at Berlen near Snodland in Kent, on which is carved a wassel bowl resting on the branches of an apple-tree, alluding, probably, to part of the materials of which the liquor was composed. On one side is the word ~was̀s̀heíl~, and on the other ~dríncheíle~. This is certainly a very great curiosity of its kind, and at least as old as the fourteenth century. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, in his will gave to Sir John Briddlewood a silver cup called _wassail_; and it appears that John Duke of Bedford, the regent, by his first will bequeathed to John Barton, his maitre d'hotel, a silver cup and cover, on which was inscribed WASHAYL. During the Christmas holidays these wassel-bowls were often carried from house to house by the common people with a view to collect money. There are, besides, other significations of the word _wassel_ that deserve to be noticed. These are, 1. A drinking song sung on the eve of Twelfth-day. 2. A custom of throwing toast to apple-trees for the purpose of procuring a fruitful year; which, says Mr. Grose, who has mentioned this practice in his provincial glossary, seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona. 3. The contents of the wassel-cup, which were of different materials, as spiced wine or ale, with roasted apples and sugar, mead, or metheglin, &c. There was also what was called _wassel_, or more properly _wastel-bread_, which may be deserving of particular notice, as there is much diversity of opinion among those who have mentioned it. Bishop Lowth, in his Life of William Wykeham, had supposed that the term was derived from the _wastell_, _vessell or basket in which the bread was made, or carried or weighed_; an etymology which is with great reason contested by Dr. Milner in his paper on the Glastonbury cup. The latter writer is of opinion, that during the times of wasselling a finer sort of bread was provided, which on that account was called _wassel-bread_; and other persons had already conceived that the bread in question took its name from being dipped in the wassel-bowl. As a preliminary objection to these conjectures, it must be observed that the genuine orthography of the word is _wastel_, and not _wassel_, which is undoubtedly a corruption, and has led to much misconception. The earliest instance in which mention is made of wastel-bread is the statute 51 Henry III., entitled _Assisa panis et cerevisiæ_; where it is coupled with the _simnel bread_, which was made of the very finest flour, and twice baked. It appears from the same statute that _wastel-bread_ was next in fineness to the simnel, and is described as _white bread well baked_. There does not seem therefore any reason for concluding that the wastel-bread was in _particular_, but in _general use at all seasons_. We are told by Hoveden the historian, that at an interview which took place between William king of Scotland and Richard the First, at Northampton, a charter was granted to the Scotish monarch, in which it was agreed, that, whenever he should be summoned to the English court for the performance of homage, his daily allowance, among other things, should consist of twelve simnels and as many _wastels_. In Matthew Paris's history of the abbots of Saint Alban's, p. 141, it is said of the abbot; "Solus in refectorio prandebit supremus, habens _vastellum_." It is surprising how Mr. Watts the editor should misconceive the meaning of this word so much as to call it a _canopy_; nor is it indeed much less extraordinary that Dr. Milner, who is so well skilled in ecclesiastical antiquities, should have supposed it to signify a _wassel-bowl_. The regulation is general, and it had escaped the learned writer's recollection that wasselling was of a particular season; for it could not be applied in its subordinate sense of revelling or rioting, to so grave a person as an abbot. The Doctor might have been misled by the authority of Mr. Blount in his edition of Cowel's law dictionary, where the conjecture on the part of Mr. Somner, that the wastel bread might have been derived from _pastillus_, is termed _unlucky_; but, as it is presumed, without sufficient reason, although it may not be the exact origin of the expression. Chaucer, speaking of his Prioress, says,

"Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde With rosted flesh, and milk, and _wastel-brede_."

We cannot suppose that these animals would have been regaled with a food which was set apart for particular festivities, but rather with what was to be procured at all times, though of a more delicate and expensive nature. In short, what seems to be the most probable original of this much disputed word is the French _gasteau_, anciently written _gastel_, in the Picard language _ouastel_ or _watel_, and signifying _a cake_; a name which might with great propriety have been applied to this sort of bread on account of its superior quality, in like manner as the _simnel_ bread was so termed from the Latin _simila_, the finest part of the flour. The cake-like form, too, of this kind of bread seems to be alluded to in the following extract from the register of William of Wykeham, which has been quoted by Bishop Lowth for a very different, but, as it is submitted, inapplicable purpose: "Octo panes _in wastellis_, ponderis cujuslibet wastelli unius miche conventualis," i. e. eight loaves in the form of _wastels_ or cakes, the weight of each being that of a conventual manchet. And to conclude this part of the subject, in the old French language the term _wastelier_ is used for a pastry-cook or maker of _wastiaux_, where it is not likely that there could have been any connection with our _wassel_ in its Saxon and legitimate construction. What the heralds call _torteauxes_, in reality little cakes, from the French _tourte_, were likewise termed _wastels_, as we learn from the old book on coat armour ascribed to Dame Juliana Bernes, the celebrated abbess of Sopewell near Saint Albans.

The _wassel songs_ were sung during the festivities of Christmas, and, in earlier times, principally by those itinerant minstrels who frequented the houses of the gentry, where they were always certain of the most welcome reception. It has indeed been the chief purpose in discussing the present subject, to introduce to the reader's notice a composition of this kind, which is perhaps at the same time to be regarded as the most ancient drinking song, composed in England, that is extant. This singular curiosity has been written on a spare leaf in the middle of a valuable miscellaneous manuscript of the fourteenth century, preserved in the British Museum, Bibl. Reg. 16, E. viii. It is probably more than a century older than the manuscript itself, and must have been composed at a time when the Norman language was very familiar in England. In the endeavour to translate it, some difficulties were to be encountered; but it has been an object to preserve the whole and sometimes literal sense of the original, whilst from the nature of the English stanza it was impossible to dispense with amplification.

AN ANGLO-NORMAN SONG.

Seignors ore entendez a nus, De loinz sumes venuz a wous, Pur quere NOEL; Car lem nus dit que en cest hostel Soleit tenir sa feste anuel A hi cest jur. Deu doint a tus icels joie d'amurs Qi a DANZ NOEL ferunt honors.

Seignors jo vus di por veir Ke DANZ NOEL ne velt aveir Si joie non; E repleni sa maison, De payn, de char & de peison, Por faire honor Deu doint a tuz ces joie damur.

Seignors il est crié en lost, Qe cil qui despent bien et tost, E largement; E fet les granz honors sovent Deu li duble quanque il despent Por faire honor. Deu doint a.

Seignors escriez les malveis, Car vus nel les troverez jameis De bone part: Botun, batun, ferun gruinard, Car tot dis a le quer cuuard Por faire honor. Deu doint.

NOEL beyt bien li vin Engleis E li Gascoin & li Franceys E l'Angevin: NOEL fait beivre son veisin, Si quil se dort, le chief enclin, Sovent le jor. Deu doint a tuz cels.

Seignors jo vus di par NOEL, E par li sires de cest hostel, Car bevez ben: E jo primes beurai le men, Et pois apres chescon le soen, Par mon conseil, Si jo vus di trestoz _Wesseyl_ Dehaiz eit qui ne dirra _Drincheyl_!

TRANSLATION.

Lordings, from a distant home, To seek old CHRISTMAS we are come, Who loves our minstrelsy: And here, unless report mis-say, The grey-beard dwells; and on this day Keeps yearly wassel, ever gay, With festive mirth and glee.

To all who honour CHRISTMAS, and commend our lays, Love will his blessings send, and crown with joy their days.[23]

Lordings list, for we tell you true; CHRISTMAS loves the jolly crew That cloudy care defy: His liberal board is deftly spread With manchet loaves and wastel-bread; His guests with fish and flesh are fed, Nor lack the stately pye.[24]

Lordings, you know that far and near The saying is, "Who gives good cheer, And freely spends his treasure; On him will bounteous heaven bestow Twice treble blessings here below, His happy hours shall sweetly flow In never-ceasing pleasure."

Lordings, believe us, knaves abound; In every place are flatterers found; May all their arts be vain! But chiefly from these scenes of joy Chase sordid souls that mirth annoy, And all who with their base alloy Turn pleasure into pain.

CHRISTMAS quaffs our English wines,[25] Nor Gascoigne juice, nor French declines, Nor liquor of Anjou: He puts th' insidious goblet round, Till all the guests in sleep are drown'd, Then wakes 'em with the tabor's sound, And plays the prank anew.

Lordings, it is our host's command, And CHRISTMAS joins him hand in hand, To drain the brimming bowl: And I'll be foremost to obey; Then pledge me sirs, and drink away, For CHRISTMAS revels here to day, And sways without control.

Now WASSEL to you all! and merry may ye be! But foul that wight befall, who DRINKS not HEALTH to me!

SCENE 4. Page 60.

HAM. This heavy-headed revel, east and west, Makes us traduc'd, and tax'd of other nations: _They clepe us drunkards_.

Dr. Johnson has noticed the frequent allusions in this play to the king's intemperance, a failing that seems to have been too common among the Danish sovereigns as well as their subjects. A lively French traveller being asked what he had seen in Denmark, replied, "rien de singulier, sinon qu'on y chante tous les jours, _le roy boit_;" alluding to the French mode of celebrating Twelfth-day. See De Brieux, _Origines de quelques coutûmes_, p. 56. Heywood in his _Philocothonista, or The drunkard opened, dissected, and anatomized_, 1635, 4to, speaking of what he calls the _vinosity of nations_, says of the Danes, that "they have made a profession thereof from antiquity, and are the first upon record that brought their wassell-bowles and elbowe-deep healthes into this land."

SCENE 4. Page 68.

HAM. That thou, dead corse, again, in _cómplete_ steel----

This word is accented in both ways by our old poets as suited the metre. Thus in Sylvester's _Du Bartas_, edit. folio, 1621, p. 120:

"Who arms himself so cómplete every way."

But in _King John_, Act II., we have,

"Such as she is, in beauty, virtue, birth, Is the young Dauphin, every way compléte: If not compléte, oh say, he is not she."

SCENE 4. Page 68.

HAM. Say why is this, wherefore, _what should we do_?

This interrogation is perfectly consistent with the opinions entertained by our forefathers concerning ghosts, which they believed had some particular motive for quitting the mansions of the dead; such as a desire that their bodies, if unburied, should receive Christian rites of sepulture; that a murderer might be brought to due punishment, as in the present instance; with various other reasons. On this account Horatio had already thus invoked the ghost:

"If there be any good thing to be done, That may _do ease to thee_ and grace to me, Speak to me."

Some of the superstitions have been transmitted from the earliest times. It was the established opinion among the ancient Greeks, that such as had not received the funeral rites would be excluded from Elysium, and that on this account the departed spirits continued in a restless state until their bodies underwent the usual ceremony. Thus the wandering and rejected shade of Patroclus appears to Achilles in his sleep, and demands the performance of his funeral. The Hecuba of Euripides supplies another instance of a troubled ghost. In like manner the unburied Palinurus complains to Æneas.[26] In Plautus's _Mostellaria_, the cunning servant endeavours to persuade his master that the house is haunted by the ghost of a man who had been murdered, and whose body remained without sepulture. The younger Pliny has a story of a haunted house at Athens, in which a ghost played many pranks on account of his funeral rites being neglected. Nor were ghosts supposed to be less turbulent, even after burial, whenever the party had died a premature death, as we learn from Tertullian, in his treatise _De anima_, cap. 56, where he says, "Aiunt et immatura morte præventos eousque vagari isthic, donec reliquatio compleatur ætatis qua cum pervixissent si non intempestivé obiissent."

SCENE 5. Page 72.

HAM. Speak, I am bound to hear.

GHOST. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear.

These words have been turned into ridicule by Fletcher in his _Woman-hater_, Act II.;

"LAZ. Speak, I am bound.

"COUNT. So art thou to revenge when thou shalt hear the fish-head is gone, and we know not whither." #/

SCENE 5. Page 72.

GHOST. And for the day, confin'd _to fast in fires_. 'Till the foul crimes, &c.

A member of the church of Rome might be disposed to regard this expression as simply referring to a _mental_ privation of all intercourse with the Deity. Such an idea would remove the inconsistency of ascribing corporeal sensations to the ghost, and might derive support from these lines in an ancient Christian hymn. See _Expositio hymnorum_, sec. usum Sarum.

"Sic corpus extra conteri, Dona per abstinentiam, _Jejunet ut mens sobria A labe prorsus criminum_."

The whole of the ghost's speech is remarkable for its terrific grandeur.

SCENE 5. Page 75.

GHOST. And _duller_ should'st thou be than the fat weed That rots itself in ease on _Lethe's_ wharf.

The plant here alluded to might have been _henbane_, of which Gerarde says that it causes drowsiness, and stupefies and _dulls_ the senses.

SCENE 5. Page 76.

HAM. O, my prophetick soul! my uncle!

Copied, perhaps maliciously, in Beaumont and Fletcher's _Double marriage_, Act II.

"SES. Oh my prophetique soul!"

SCENE 5. Page 77

GHOST. But soft, methinks I scent the morning air-- The glow-worm shows the matin to be near.

It was the popular belief that ghosts could not endure the light, and consequently disappeared at the dawn of day. This superstition is derived from our northern ancestors, who held that the sun and every thing containing _light or fire_ had the property of expelling demons and spirits of all kinds. With them it seems to have originated in the stories that are related in the Edda concerning the battles of Thor against the giants and evil demons, wherein he made use of his dreadful mallet of iron, which he hurled against them as Jupiter did his thunderbolts against the Titans. Many of the _transparent_ precious stones were supposed to have the power of expelling evil spirits; and the flint and other stones found in the tombs of the northern nations, and from which fire might be extracted, were imagined, in like manner, to be efficacious in confining the manes of the dead to their proper habitations. They were called Thor's hammers.

SCENE 5. Page 77.

GHOST. With juice of cursed _hebenon_ in a vial, And in the porches of mine ear did pour, &c.

Dr. Grey had ingeniously supposed this word to be a _metathesis_ for _henebon_ or _henbane_; but the best part of his note on the subject has been omitted, which is his reference to Pliny, who says that the oil of henbane _dropped into the ears_ disturbs the brain. Yet it does not appear that henbane was ever called _henebon_. The line cited by Mr. Steevens from Marlow's _Jew of Malta_, shows that the _juice_ of _hebon_, i. e. _ebony_, was accounted poisonous; and in the English edition by Batman, of _Bartholomæus de proprietatibus rerum_, so often cited in these observations as a Shakspearean book, the article for the wood ebony is entitled, "Of _Ebeno_, chap. 52." This comes so near to the text, that it is presumed very little doubt will now remain on the occasion. It is not surprising that the _dropping into the ears_ should occur, because Shakspeare was perfectly well acquainted with the supposed properties of henbane as recorded in Holland's translation of Pliny and elsewhere, and might apply this mode of use to any other poison.

SCENE 5. Page 77.

GHOST. ... it doth posset And curd, like _eager_ droppings into milk.

Many readers may require to be told that _eager_ means _sour_, from the French _aigre_. In the preceding Scene it is used in the sense of _sharp_, and is there properly so explained; but the quotation of the present passage on that occasion seems misapplied.

SCENE 5. Page 79.

GHOST. ... and sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head.

Heywood, a contemporary writer, has imitated this in his play of _A woman kill'd with kindness_;

"... and send them, laden With all their scarlet sins upon their backs Unto a fearful judgment."

SCENE 5. Page 81.

HAM. My tables,--meet it is, I set it down.

It is remarkable that neither public nor private museums should furnish any specimens of these table-books, which seem to have been very common in the time of Shakspeare; nor does any attempt appear to have been made towards ascertaining exactly the materials of which they were composed. Certain it is, however, that they were sometimes made of slate in the form of a small portable book with leaves and clasps. Such a one is fortunately engraved in Gesner's treatise _De rerum fossilium figuris_, &c. Tigur. 1565, 12mo, which is not to be found in the folio collection of his works on natural history. The learned author thus describes it: "Pugillaris è laminis saxi nigri fissilis, cum stylo ex eodem." His figure of it is here copied.

To such a table-book the Archbishop of York seems thus to allude in _The second part of King Henry IV._, Act IV. Scene 1:

"And therefore will he _wipe his tables clean_ And keep no tell-tale to his memory----"

In the middle ages the leaves of these table-books were made of ivory. Montfaucon has engraved one of them in the third volume of his "Antiquities," plate cxciv., the subject of which clearly shows that the learned writer has committed an error in ascribing them to remoter times. In Chaucer's _Sompnour's tale_ one of the friars is provided with

"A pair of tables all of _ivory_, And a pointel ypolished fetishly, And wrote alway the names, as he stood, Of alle folk that yave hem any good."

The Roman practice of writing on wax tablets with a stile was continued also during the middle-ages. In several of the monastic libraries in France specimens of wooden tables filled with wax and constructed in the fourteenth century were preserved. Some of these contained the household expenses of the sovereigns, &c., and consisted of as many as twenty pages, formed into a book by means of parchment bands glued to the backs of the leaves. One remaining in the abbey of St. Germain des préz at Paris, recorded the expenses of Philip le Bel, during a journey that he made in the year 1307, on a visit to Pope Clement V. A single leaf of this table-book is exhibited in the _Nouveau traité de diplomatique_, tom. i. p. 468.

SCENE 5. Page 85.

HAM. Swear by my sword.

In consequence of the practice of occasionally swearing by a sword, or rather by the cross or upper end of it, the name of _Jesus_ was sometimes inscribed on the handle or some other part. Such an instance occurs on the monument of a crusader in the vestry of the church at Winchelsea. See likewise the tomb of John duke of Somerset engraved in Sandford's _Genealogical history_, p. 314, and Gough's _Sepulchral monuments_, Pref. ccxiii. Introd. cxlviii. vol. i. p. 171, vol. ii. p. 362.

ACT II.

SCENE 2. Page 115.

POL. Though this be madness, yet there's method in it.

This is precisely Horace's,

"Insanire paret certo ratione modoque."

SCENE 2. Page 121.

HAM. The clown shall make those laugh whose lungs are _tickled o' the sere_.

_Sere_ is _dry_. Thus in _Macbeth_,

"He is deformed, crooked, old and _sere_."

Among the Saxons June was called the _sere_ month. In the present instance _sere_ appears to be used as a substantive. The same expression occurs in Howard's _Defensative against the poyson of supposed prophecies_, 1620, folio: "Discovering the moods and humors of the vulgar sort to be so loose and _tickle of the seare_," &c., fo. 31. Every one has felt that dry tickling in the throat and lungs which excites coughing. Hamlet's meaning may therefore be, _the clown by his merriment shall convert even their coughing into laughter_.

SCENE 2. Page 131.

HAM. Buz, Buz.

Minsheu says, "To _buzze_, or hum as bees, _buzze, buzze_;" and again, in his Spanish dictionary, "when two standing or kneeling together, holding their hands upon their cheekes and ears, and so cry, _buzze buzze_, and hitting one another a good box on the eare, if he pull not his head away quickly." Selden in his _Table talk_, speaking of witches, says, "If any should profess that by turning his hat thrice, and crying _buz_, he could take away a man's life, (though in truth he could do no such thing) yet this were a just law made by the state, that whosoever should turn his hat thrice, and cry _buz_, with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death." The expression has already exercised the skill of the critics, and may continue to do so, if they are disposed to pursue the game through the following mazes: "Anno DCCCXL Ludovicus imperator ad mortem infirmatur, cujus cibus per XL dies solummodo die dominica dominicum corpus fecit. Cum vidisset dæmonem astare, dixit _buez, buez_, quod significat _foras, foras_."--Alberici monachi trium fontium _chronicon_, Leips. 1698. Ducange under the article _Buzi_, says, "Interpretatur despectus vel contemptus. Papias. [Ab Hebraico _Bus_ vel _bouz_, sprevit.]"

SCENE 2. Page 135.

HAM. Your ladyship is nearer to heaven, than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a _chopine_.