No. 21. WASSAIL SONG.
Sung by Mr. William Bayliss at Buckland (Gloucestershire).
The first six stanzas in the text are those that Mr. Bayliss gave me; they are printed without any alteration. The last three stanzas are from a variant sung to me by Mr. Isaac Bennett of Little Sodbury (Gloucestershire). The words are very similar to, but not identical with, those of "The Gloucestershire Wassailer's Song" quoted by Bell (Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 183).
Three Somerset variants of the Wassail Song are published in Folk-Songs from Somerset (Nos. 128–30) with explanatory notes, to which the reader is referred. The Gloucestershire Wassail song, of which Mr. Bayliss's version is I think a typical example, materially differs from that of Somerset and, I believe, from that of other counties as well.
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