Just in Time for Christmas

Not two nights ago, the temperature outside was so warm,

we nearly turned on the air conditioning.

Contrast that with yesterday which was so frigidly miserable

that we all wondered if it was going to snow--

December snow something of a rarity in this part of Virginia.

The air temperature wasn't really that cold--

I think it was 46 or 48 degrees, 

but the wind was viciously sharp,

forcing all of us to draw our coats near 

and keep our heads down 

as we hurried to get out of the weather.

Despite the winter-y chill, 

I went outside and hung the last outdoor Christmas wreath on my house.

And that was when I noticed the snowdrops 

nestled at the trunk of the river birch tree,

their gentle white arriving just in time for Christmas. 

I can't say how many times over the last decade 

I have glanced through the window 

at the forlorn landscape wrought by bleak winter days,  

 only to lay eyes on these delicate blossoms:

What a lovely feeling they give;
their appearance always surprises me.
And I can't help but feel optimistic when I see them.

Even though December is when all the poinsettias appear in stores,
thanks to our climate here in the Shire
we have outside flowers just coming into bloom at the same time.
Besides snowdrops, we enjoy pansies,
Lenten roses, and camellias through the winter. 

Here are some beautiful Lenten roses,
also called Christmas roses:

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring once wrote
that there is something
"infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--
the assurance that dawn comes after night,
and spring after winter."

And to that I would add,
flowers that bloom just in time for Christmas.
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Why we Come a-Wassailing and a-Caroling

In yesterday's post about the origins of a-wassailing,

I mentioned that the use of the prefix "a-" in many dialects

is a language feature with an interesting history,

one that is firmly tied to the suffix "-ing" and the word "on."

The word ending "-ing" is a relatively new suffix in English.

Although it appears in Old English as -ung or -unge,
 the suffix "-ende" was more often used during that language period

for signifying an action in progress.
By the Middle English period, "-ing" was still relatively rare.

 -ing 

But at the end of the 18th century, the use of  "-ing" endings 

to indicate continuing actions takes off and becomes very popular.

Why these kinds of changes occur, no one can say with certainty;

it is one of the mysteries of language.

But by the 1800s and 1900s, words using "-ing"
to express a short term progressive action  

like "building" or "coming" had become frequent.

 on 

The origin of the "a-" prefix with an "-ing" word,
as in a-coming or a-going,

comes from one of the ways the preposition "on" was once used.

 "On" was once paired with "-ing" nouns derived from verbs

that indicated continuing action with a clear start and finish, 

as in the "-ing" nouns "crying" or "swimming."

The Oxford English Dictionary includes citations that speak of "on huntynge"

(on hunting), "on redynge" (on reading),

 and another that says a person was "on slepe" (on sleep).

With those examples in mind, Albert C. Baugh, a noted historical linguist,

tells us that expressions would have sounded like this:

"he's out on building," "they are out on hunting," or "they are on sleep"

--all of which sound completely awkward to today's speakers.

 a- 

Yet, it was a common word arrangement for its time.

And once "on" followed another word in an expression,

it was easy for people to start pronouncing it like "un,"

the same way the pronunciation of  "interest"
shifted from  inter-est to inter-ust by many speakers.

So "on" becomes pronounced "un." 

Historically, when that happens 

the "-n" sound at the end of a word often drops eventually,

leaving us with the sound "uh," spelled "a."
For example, out on hunting became pronounced out un-hunting.
That became out uh-hunting, then simply uh-hunting,
or in writing, a-hunting.

And that's how we ended up with asleep, 

a-building, a-wassailing, and a-caroling.

So if someone says, "Christmas is a-coming,"
that's not incorrect grammar...
it's history.

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Here we Come A-Wassailing

The Wassail Song has been a popular Christmas carol 

for over a century now,

but its roots had little to do with Christmas.

Tracing the history of the term "wassailing" 

leads one on a fascinating trip through British history.

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

After the Romans departed the Island,

its Celtic inhabitants were beset by Germanic and Scandinavian invaders.

By the 9th century, the Danes, who had besieged the Island

 after the Anglo-Saxons settled there,

were defeated for a time and permitted to establish permanent settlements 

along Britain's east coast in an area then known as the Danelaw.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) attributes wassail to the Danes

since there are no indications of its root words 

in Old English or Old German.

In Old Norse, there is the correlated salutation sitheil or "sit in health."

Despite the mystery of its beginnings, 

what is known of the etymology of waissal 

provides a glimpse into politeness conventions of earlier centuries. 

According to the OED, the first reference to wassail or wes heil 

comes in Geoffrey of Monmouth's story of Rowena 

in his 12th-century work Historia Regum Brittaniae.

The terms are referenced again by Wace, 

a 12th-century Norman French poet and priest of Bayeux, in his Roman de Rou.

Wace relates that the night before the Battle of  Hastings,

the loss of which plunged Britain into 300 years of French rule,

the English allegedly passed the hours before battle in drinking and revelry;

 shouts of  "weissel" and "drincheheil" echoed across the night.

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

Weissel or weisse heil was used by the English as a salutation

when drinking to one's health or good fortune. 

Weissel was said when offering the drink, 

with the appropriate response being drincheheil, 

meaning drink good health and good fortune in turn.

In language, it's common to shift the part of speech of a word,

so the directive verb weissel 

was easily converted to the noun "waissal" 

and then back again to a verb by affixing the -ing ending.

But one might ask how the affix "a" became attached to waissaling,

so that carolers sing "here we come a-wassailing,"

or for that matter, why some dialects favor verbs like 

"a-going," "a-coming," or "a-fixing."

That is an interesting story of English as well.

I'll share it in tomorrow's blog.

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