It seems that we can learn things even from Conrad. From -
Wassail Songs and Carols from Gloucestershire

Ref to Genner's Anthem.


And then Jack gave us both a tot of whisky, although he normally didn't touch the stuff. And I cannot remember if we continued with the driving lesson or not !


And so I come to the collecting of Wassail Songs. You'll remember that it was for that reason that I went to see Sally and Granny Frankcom. I had got an inkling that there were versions of this song to found in different places. I think that I had seen Alfred Williams's Thames Head Wassailers' Song by then and at least one other printed text, perhaps in the Gloucestershire Notes and Queries Vol 1, The main difference in collecting these songs was that they were songs that belonged to a community and were sung by groups. The differences weren't just the idiosyncrasies of an individual singer and I set myself to find out whether the versions could be said to be clearly identified as the tune and set of words which belonged to that locality. The variety might have been like Bill Davis's Badminton version, which had a variant tune for each verse, but I feel that, over the years, I have been able to establish this. The Tresham Wassail differs from the text with which most people will be familiar in the Oxford Book of Carols, in that there is only one animal, the Ox, which is being addressed. In wassailing the ox, a variety of good things are wished on the household which the group of wassailers is visiting. They are a group of men who expect to be given drink and food in return for their good wishes. Gran's father, William Chappell, born in 1845, was in a party of wassailers but it was called Mummying. They had an ox's head (made out of a hollowed out swede) on a pole and a small wooden bowl. We shall meet the ox's head again in a moment. The song also has a chorus. Vaughan Williams's version in The Oxford Book of Carols is a mixture of a variety of bits and pieces and the tune, which he collected in Pembridge in Herefordshire from Gloucestershire singers, also has a chorus in the original manuscript.


Ref to Tresham Wassail.


Now the ox was also known as Broad. In wills from the 16th century, local farmers leave their cattle by name to various members of the family. Broad is an ox name which goes back a good way. The Tresham Swede may not be very impressive, but other villages had more expensively constructed Bull's Heads. If you are interested in reading about this, you should refer to Ritual Animal Disguise by E.C.Cawte pp.142 – 8. I have given him all my material about the subject.


One village which had a well-made bull was Horton and the group of young men would bring it to Little Sodbury Manor where the Hatherell family were farming and they would sing their version of the wassail to the accompaniment of ribs of beef, tambourine, jew's harp and mouthorgan. The lad inside the bull would roar and go at the girls and make them scream.

This, however is the Wassail Ox/Broad/Bull not the Christmas Bull. I have found references to Christmas bull running which seems to be of Spanish origin and survives to some extent in the Lesser Antilles and Costa Rica. It does not involve costumes or heads fashioned from swedes but real live kicking and snorting and goring bulls.

Go for it Conrad.