The Christmas Wassail

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‘It’s all very well him being called Marvell,’ Burl Hodge grumbled, ‘so long as the silly old sod doesn’t think he is one.’

We were sitting in a favourite corner of our favourite ale-house — the Green Lattis close by All Saints’ Church — about to start on a second beaker apiece of our favourite ale. These tasted all the sweeter because both our wives had strictly forbidden us to stay for more than one. Christmas was nearly upon us and our services were required at home.

The Feast of St Nicholas had already come and gone. All over the country the boy bishops had been chosen from among the youths of the choir and were now installed for the next week or two in Episcopal state, making up for all the cuffs, scoldings and general abuse they had suffered throughout the past year. In our household, it had, as usual, fallen to my lot to tell the saint’s stories to our children.

Needless to say, Adam and Nicholas, my son and stepson, clamoured for the tale of the two young boys on their way to Athens who stopped in Myra for the night and were murdered by the wicked innkeeper. They particularly relished the part where this evil man chopped the two bodies into bits and pickled them in a barrel of brine, intending to sell them as salted pork and so gain even further from his crime. But, the next day — much, I believe to Adam’s and his half-brother’s disappointment — Bishop Nicholas arrived at the inn, having had a vision of the two boys during the night, and restored them to life. The murderer then fell on his knees in floods of tears, confessed his sin and expressed his repentance, promising to lead an unblemished life in future. The saint immediately forgave him.

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