Steyning Community Orchard: Wassail led by local Morris dancers - Mythago Morris

Imagine; a winter’s evening; dark, still, the smell of frost in the air, the streets empty and quiet, with darkened doorways, and pools of light spilling from the shop windows across the pavements. The town clock strikes the hour. In the distance a dog barks. The shops in Steyning High Street have tucked themselves in and gone to sleep.

Shadows shift. People in small groups, families, children, young, old, move across the car park, and along Charlton Street making for the Memorial Field and the Cricket Club. Leaving behind the street lights, the crowd collects on the edge of the field. The light from the club house picks out the cricket pitch glazed with frost and in the darkness beyond, across the park, the community orchard waits silently beneath the night sky. In the distance the dark ridge of the Downs holds its breath. For this is a special evening.

Here, beneath the cold winter stars, in the middle of January, people have left the warmth of their homes to gather together in our community orchard to celebrate, as our ancestors for hundreds of years have done, the old pagan custom of wassailing the orchard. They have come to ‘wake’ the sleeping fruit trees and to drive out evil spirits that might lurk within to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn.

This ancient tradition took place annually around twelfth night on January 5th (or in the old Julien calendar on the 17th January). In the last few years it has experienced a renaissance. Here in deepest, darkest Steyning the custom was revived by Steyning Community Orchard four years ago and we would like to invite everyone to join us again this year.

Dark figures with blackened faces, dressed in tatter jackets emerge from the shadows. Mythago, a group of local Morris dancers have arrived to begin the ceremony with dancing and wassailing songs. They lead the way across the Memorial field to the community orchard where candles glow amongst the trees. Once everyone is gathered around the oldest, most venerable apple tree, the tree is woken from its winter slumber with the banging of drums, kettles and pans, the blowing of whistles, music and dancing. Bring your own saucepan to frighten any evil spirits away.

An offering is made to the tree. People dip slices of toast in a wassail bowl filled with mead, crab apples, sugar, spices and egg and hang them in the branches of the tree, a token of thanks for the fruit it has borne in the previous year and a gift to the tree spirit living within it. With a final roar of noise, the celebration draws to a close as people drift back to the Cricket Club leaving the orchard in peace, surrounded by the night and the stars.

But the evening is not ended; for those who are hungry and cold there is hot, home-made soup and rolls in the club house and an evening of music with two local groups; the Cheer Up Mollies and The Gentlemen.

Do join us. 20th January. 6pm at the Cricket Club. Donations towards wassailing. Food and music in the cricket club ￡3 adults, ￡1.50 children.

Wassail or in Anglo Saxon Wæs þu hæl,  "be thou hale”.