Although I was brought up with a lot of Pagan traditions, living in the city of Antwerp meant that some customs were harder to follow than others. As city dwellers far removed from any orchard or field, we were ignorant to the traditional rites surrounding harvest and sowing time. If there is no nature to honour, no field to gather around the cleansing fire, the feasting quickly becomes part of the past and forgotten.
Industrialisation has brought us wealth and the choice of matching shoes with handbags on a regular tuesday morning. It has brought the technical bits and bobs we all love and loathe. The big world has become smaller and the challenges bigger. The lucky few still live outside of the ever growing concrete cities. We follow their lives on Instagram with a sense of nostalgia, as if we have ever experienced living surrounded by trees and liberating fields and forests, and then tragically lost it.
But that is what it is, we have lost something, and most of us can feel it. There have never been more depressed people, nor have there ever been more people who are unhealthy because of their eating habits, eating too much rather than starving, but malnourished nonetheless. Our daily bread is soiled with adulteration, slowly making us ill. Animals are kept away from fields and live their ever shortening lives on the concrete floors of factory farms to keep the cost of your daily need low, fruit is left on the trees to rot because farmers can’t afford to harvest it, the price a farmer gets for his milk hasn’t gone up in 20 years (based on Belgian farms) so milk is being sprayed onto the soil of the farmland where the cows can no longer roam freely because of bureaucratic nonsense about fertilizer. Small scale generation long fishermen turn their boats into flower beds because the fishing quotas set out to protect fish stocks have made it so that only the big destructive factory fishing vessels can make a living, scooping up the fish only for part of it to be actually consumed and the rest turned into animal feed because their nets just catch too much for it all to be sold and cooked by us humans. The fisherman that could have made his day by catching one Dover Sole, now has to trow it back, while the big monsters take and take and kill the sustainable fishing industry.
We got lost as humans, because we lost part of our human nature.
Let today be an Epiphany.
The Epiphany is the Christian feast that concludes the twelve days of Christmas. In Pre-Christian pagan traditions this marks the time for Wassail. The practice of ‘wassailing’ meant singing and drinking in the apple orchards on the Twelfth Night to awaken the trees, to warn of the evil spirits and pray for a good harvest in the autumn. It could be that the feast of Wassail comes from the Celtic festival called ‘La Mas Ubhail’, the Feast of the Apple. Wassail comes from ‘waes hael’ meaning ‘be thou healthy’ or ‘be whole’, a salutation in Old English. During the feast these words would be addressed to each other and to the oldest apple tree in the orchard.
A drink traditional to Wassail is called ‘Lambswool’ and it is very possible that ‘La Mas Ubhail’ got phonetically Anglicised, to ‘Lamasool’ and later ‘Lambswool’. In historical books we often see that a lot of words were written down phonetically, resulting in a number of different ways to note down one single word.
Robert Herrick, a mid 17th century poet mentioned the custom of Wassailing and Lambswool in his poem about about Twelfth Night, we also get an idea of the recipe too:
Next crown the bowl full With gentle lamb’s wool Add sugar, nutmeg and ginger, With store of ale too; And thus ye must do To make a wassail a swinger
Give then to the king And queen wassailing : And though with ale ye be whet here, Yet part from hence As free from offence As when ye innocent met here.
The drink Lambswool is a mulled ale, poured over hot apple puree, although some people swear by whole apples, or apple pieces cooked in spiced cider or ale. However, as far as a drink goes, you can’t swallow a whole apple, nor can you swallow apple pieces so it is most probable that the recipe containing whole apples is just derived from the recipe made with apple puree. It is possible that the soft puree resembled a lambs fleece to people in the old days, resulting in giving it the name of what they associated it with, lambs wool.
Another reason for thinking that an apple puree was used it that this is the end of the season, so the apples which are left in times before refrigeration and fancy techniques to keep fruit from ripening, would not have been the prettiest of the bunch. An hot and spiced apple puree fortified with ale would be warming on a january evening, and would allow people to prepare it in a kettle rather than an oven which is used for the recipe with whole apples. Remember this is a country dish and ovens were a privilege for the well-to-do. But the sugar in the dish also tells us this wasn’t a drink for the poor, it could have been a special treat from the lord of the manor, or from the farmer to his farm labourers.
Last year I spoke to you about the intriguing Twelfth Cake, a fruit cake elaborately decorated with sugar or wax figurines which was also a privilege for the well-to-do. This cake, which is also mentioned by Herrick in his poem also started of as a humble ‘plum cake’ for the feast of Wassail. City folk picked up on it and adjusted the cake to their festive needs, making it the centrepiece of the table and causing queues in front of bakeries. Because it became popular in the city and with the wealthy, we get our first recipe for it in a 1803 book. A recipe for Lambswool is more difficult to find, as the drink remained in the countryside. So judging from the poem of Robert Herrick, I came up with this recipe for you.
Lambswool
serves 6-8
What do you need
- Bramley or Cox stewing apples, 500 gr (peeled and cored about 300 gr)
- water, 100 ml
- sugar 100 gr
- freshly grated nutmeg, 1 teaspoon
- ginger powder, 1 teaspoon
- a good ale, 750 ml
Method
Peel and cut your apples in small pieces and place in a pot along with 100 ml of water and the sugar and spices. Stew until soft and puree so there are no bits left.
When ready to serve, heat up the apple puree and add the ale while whisking. You should get a nice froth while doing so. Serve at ones.
Are you celebrating the Twelfth Night? Or are you having a slice of King cake, galette Du Roi or Driekoningen taart? Or are you wassailing and drinking Lambswool?
Ancient apple trees in Sussex |
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Rosa's Yummy Yums says
A beautiful and deep post. I totally agree with you.
Old traditions are wonderful and this one is no exception.
Cheers,
Rosa
Regula says
Thanks Rosa, as always! x
Claude Chahine Shehadi says
Thank you for a very interesting post and atmospheric pictures. I just thought that I'd share with you that in Lebanon people believe that olive trees kneel down on the night of the epiphany whilst yeast free dough is left to sour and rise.
Regula says
Hello there, thanks so much for sharing that story, I can't tell you how many times I have learnt amazing things from the comments on this blog!
Sally - My Custard Pie says
You write eloquently and powerfully about issues that I care deeply about and share your perspective. This post should be shared far and wide and not just for the beautiful images and interesting historical recipe. Let's hope we can all wake up in 2015, unite against big ag and change things even in some small way.
Regula says
Thank you Sally, very much. It means very much to me that people let me know that they have actually read the first part of this post. Many people these days don't want to know about the fact that we as humans have lost something important. These days many blogs are all about happy, happy, joy, joy. and I can't stand it anymore. We need to be realistic. Create beautiful things, but without forgetting there is work to be done in this world. And us foodies have a big responsibility in this, as much of our modern problems have to do with food. x
Melissa says
Very interesting, very beautiful and very moving…
Everything has changed so much in the last 100+ years. "Lost" is indeed the right word. I am so grateful we are starting to find our way back.
Thank you for doing your part, in such a lovely way, to make it so.
Regula says
Thank you Melissa, yes I do think many of us are finding their way back and that is a great thing. Let's hope more people become a little more realistic this year, and change a little part of their lives to start a change worldwide.
Saghar {Lab Noon} says
It's an immense joy each time reading the history of stuff you write about. I loved this one in particular because I am very fascinated by finding the pagan roots of modern and/or religious celebrations.
How true is it, without the connection to nature to celebrate all we've got is meaningless plastic packages to give to one another as presents.
In Italy la Befana (Epiphany) is a feast of an old witch bringing a stocking full of candy for good kids and carbon for bad kids! Of course once all these sweet treats were home made and genuine, now it's a huge feast for kinder.
Regula says
Ones you see all the pagan traditions religion has adopted, you start to doubt religion. Which is a good thing, as paganism follows nature, but religion does not. Religion is far more dangerous. Takes me hours, days to research most of this. 😉
Jane Sarchet says
Such a sad post Regula, although it makes me realise how lucky I am to be surrounded by fields and space and animals I love in life and on my plate.
Love the Wassail, it looks proper hearty 🙂
Janie x
Regula says
Sometimes you don't see what's in front of you, but I'm sure you do!
Anonymous says
Dear Regula, Thank you for highlighting some of the profound issues that we humans must address in order for our species to continue on this planet… with such somber yet beautiful photographs too.
I appreciate the history lesson on Wassail… there's not a lot of food history I know nothing about, but this was one! I had never heard of Lambswool either. Let us all pray that we, as a species, recapture our sanity in this coming year. Christina
Ondina Maria says
It's so true that we lost ourselves along the way. I wish I could live in a more sustainable way, but I do my best taking into account my surroundings! I just hope we can somehow return to old habbits and use the knowledge and technology in favour of sustainability! King cake and galette des rois were our treats ?
Frightful Kitchen says
Very interesting! England has a lot of cultural richness from the past however, most of the old customs and traditions associated to it has practically disappeared. I was born and bred in England (to Spanish parents) and never understood how the English are so disconnected to their past traditions; St George’s day is not even a public holiday- shock horror!
I probably noticed this more because on my Spanish side we are still connected to old traditions and customs; even city dwellers. I think part of this has to do with the Spanish psyche which is still rather connected to the rural (our rural to urban migration happened much later than in UK). Most city folk still have a village where they escape to during holidays or even to go back for harvest time; we are rural at heart still.
On the twelfth night we eat “roscón de reyes” (kings cake) and wait for the Three Kings to deliver our Christmas presents on camels (we don’t traditionally open presents on the 25th nor celebrate Father Christmas – although it has started to become more popular due to globalisation).
Regula says
Nice to hear about the spanish traditions thank you! In England they are not to blame themselves, this happened when England became protestant with the King at the head of the church. Then Saint days were no longer celebrated. It’s a shame
Maxolotl says
Loved your post – I’m trying to find out more information about ‘La Mas Ubhail’, but I’m struggling – where did you find the information in your post