1847 Oxford night caps (4th edition)

39

toasted brown into use. Sometimes a couple or three slices of lemon, and a few lumps of loaf sugar rubbed on the peeling of a lemon, are introduced. it, and it is fit for

this mixture, and in a few days it

Bottle

may be drank in a state of effervescence.

The Wassail Bowl, or Wassail Cup, was formerly prepared in nearly the same way as

present, excepting that roasted

apples, or

at

crab apples, were introduced instead of toasted

bread. And up to the present period, in some parts of the kingdom, there are persons who keep up the ancient custom of regaling their friends and neighbours on Christmas-eve and Twelfth-eve with a Wassail Bowl, with roasted

and which

generally

apples

floating in it,

is

ushered in with great ceremony. Shakspeare alludes to the Wassail Bowl when he says, in

Midsummer Night's Dream,

lis

Sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl, In very likeness of a roasted crab,

And when she drinks, against her lips 1 boh, And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.