Salut! Live

Andrew Curry writes: If you are going to write about winter folk songs, sooner or later you get to wassail songs. I talked about wassailing when I introduced this series, and Mike Waterson got a mention. And so here we are, with Here We Come A-Wassailing, the opening track of The Watersons’s pathbreaking record Frost and Fire, released in 1965 on Topic Records.

The line-up that recorded Frost and Fire included Norma Waterson, brother Mike, sister Lal, and their second cousin John Harrison. They are profiled the following year in Derrick Knight’s documentary Travelling for a Living, which we wrote about on Salut! Live earlier this year.

The record has a claim to have transformed the way we think about traditional song. Most of the songs are a capella, but they’re tough songs in tight arrangements. Frost and Fire, which was produced by A. L. Lloyd, was also something of a concept album: it started in winter and moved through the year, getting to Easter with The Pace-Egging Song and the harvest with John Barleycorn, before coming back to winter again to another wassailing song for the close.

In his sleeve notes, A.L Lloyd made the most of the record’s seasonal connections:

When the Christian church arose, it ranged itself against the beliefs and customs of the old nature worship, and prudently annexed many of the seasonal ceremonies.

“Thus the critical time of the winter solstice, a rich period for pagan ritual, became the season of the Nativity of the new god... So much is talked of myth and sun worship and such, that it’s necessary to recall that behind most of these calendar customs and the songs attached to them lies nothing more mysterious, nothing less realistic, than the yearly round of work carried out in the fields.”

What was wassailing? The custom goes deep into English history—the word comes from Old Norse—and it took different forms, according to local custom.

Sometimes it involved going to a local orchard and sing—a way of warding off bad spirits and wishing the trees a good harvest, as in this version. The owner would reward them. Sometimes, it was about singing door-to-door, while offering some drink, in exchange for some food and some money.

It’s also a reminder of the very different pattern of the pre-industrial Christmas. People would fast during Advent, up until Christmas Eve, and then celebrate 12 days of Christmas, ending with a feast on 12th Night, the fifth of January, which was also the wassailing day.

For me, Frost and Fire reminds me of driving to my father’s house on Christmas morning, a couple of hours away, for Christmas lunch. The traffic was always quiet, and we’d play Frost and Fire and that other great Christmas record, from Ze records, in the car.