Rebecca Williams, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Wassailing Helps Singers In Asheville Connect To Ancestral Roots

On a cold December night in Asheville, North Carolina, a group of about 20 people gather on a stranger’s front porch. Some of them have come together for the past decade to celebrate the holidays, build community, and, most important, wassail.

This story originally aired in the Dec. 24, 2023 episode of Inside Appalachia.

A Holiday Custom With English Roots

One of the wassailers knocks on the door. A woman opens it. “We’re wassailers and we would like to sing you songs,” said the leader of the wassailing group. “I’d be delighted,” the homeowner replies. The group burst into laughter and began to sing “Apple Tree Wassail” in four part harmony.

O lily-white lily, O lily-white pin,
Please to come down and let us come in.
Lily-white lily, O lily-white smock,
Please to come down and pull back the lock.
(It’s) our Wassa-ail jolly wassail
Joy come to our jolly wassail
Apple Tree Wassail, Traditional, England

Saro Lynch-Thomason leads the Asheville group. At 36 years old, Lynch-Thomason wears her dark hair short on one side and long on the other. She sports a bright red scarf and a cluster of bells that ring when she walks. She explains that wassailing is a centuries-old tradition with English roots.

“The term ‘wassail’ comes from an Anglo-Saxon phrase that meant good health, so it was a toast to good health,” Lynch-Thomason said. “Wassail itself was a drink, usually made from ale and cooked apples and a lot of spices that would be served in households, often around Twelfth Night or Christmastime or New Year’s. And coincided with a tradition in the Middle Ages of working class folk, peasants, going to the homes of the wealthy and having this customary charitable exchange, where the working people are singing to and blessing the wealthy master and mistress of the house. And in exchange, they’re being gifted food, they’re being gifted cider and wassail. And they’re often being gifted money, as well.”

Good health to your house, may riches come soon,
Bring us some cider, we’ll drink down the moon.
It’s Our Wassa-ail jolly wassail
Joy come to our jolly wassail
Apple Tree Wassail, Traditional, England

The Asheville wassailers do not ask for money, but after singing at a house decorated with bright holiday lights, they ask for another gift.

“As you heard in the last song, we did ask for alcohol several times,” Lynch-Thomason said.

The wassailers laugh, and the homeowner asks, “Do you want alcohol?”

“You guys have some cups. I can see that,” another household member observes.

Wassailing is not your typical round of Christmas caroling. It is more mischievous. And that is something that the Asheville group takes very seriously.

“This was a really fun and rowdy tradition,” Lynch-Thomason said. “And it eventually got displaced by caroling in the Victorian era. It was considered kind of too rambunctious by the emerging culture. And so, the spirit of what we’re trying to return to is that kind of raucous, fun feeling of these strangers with a party showing up at your door.”

There was an old farmer and he had an old cow
But how to milk her he didn’t know how.
He put his old cow down in his old barn,
And a little more liquor won’t do us no harm.
Harm me boys harm, harm me boys harm.
Apple Tree Wassail, Traditional, England

In fact, wassailing developed such a bad reputation for public drunkenness, it was banned by the Puritans in England and was highly discouraged by religious leaders who settled in the United States. But recently, the tradition has had a renaissance — in both England and America.

Wassailers sing outside a home in Asheville, North Carolina. Traditionally, wassailers not only sang for their neighbors, but also sang in apple orchards to ensure a good harvest for the coming year.

*Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

One wassailer, Leila Weinstein, has been with the group for about five years. She explains what draws her to this tradition. “I love the old songs. I love ballads. I love all the medieval imagery,” Weinstein said. “And then just the comradery of singing together, and you know, lighting up the night with some song.”

For Caleb Magoon, wassailing is an excuse for a really good time. And it is a way of connecting to others. “It’s just getting together with people every year that you might not see otherwise, you know. And having a fun time being silly,” Magoon said.

But members of the Asheville group are not only drawn to wassailing because of the rowdy good time and the sense of community. For participants like Erin Gahan Clark, it is also a way to connect with the traditions of their ancestors.

“I think that for me, like I was raised in the Catholic faith and so I always knew about Christmas caroling,” Gahan Clark said. “But I feel like these songs, that are older, are connecting me to my well ancestors and like more ancient roots. And I just dig it. It feels good in my body.”

Wassailing As Connection To Ethnic Identity

Most of the wassailers in Asheville are white. And wassailing seems to help them connect to their ancestral traditions and ethnic identity. For Lynch-Thomason and many of her white peers, they feel disconnected from a sense of ethnic identity. And she said that here in the United States, that is by design.

“There’s been a long and very purposeful project of making people white here. Of having people forget their ancestral identities and becoming white as a way to create racial hierarchies and reinforce white supremacy,” Lynch-Thomason said. “When you came off the boat, you know at whatever period, there was a project here of making you become white, and forget your ancestral languages and traditions. And so today, white folks in this country are experiencing a lot of grief and have a lot of yearning for ancestral practices.”

Lynch-Thomason has experienced this grief of ethnic ambiguity firsthand. And when she was in her mid-20s, she decided to learn about the traditions of her ancestors.

“In my case, I have ancestors from England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Scandinavia, kind of all over the place. And there are several hundreds of years of separation from any of the traditions from those places. So I’ve sought out and learned from other people, English folk songs, Scottish ballads,” she said.

Lynch-Thomason said that connecting with these English and Scottish folk songs has had a big impact.

Wassail wassail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our bowl it is made: Of the white maple tree
With the wassailing bowl we’ll drink to thee
Gloucestershire Wassail, Traditional, Gloucestershire, England, Lyrics published Oxford Book of Carols, 1928

“There’s something really powerful to me about speaking words and singing songs, holding those vibrations, those words, those forms of knowledge in my body,” Lynch-Thomason said. “And knowing that people in my ancestry also sang these songs and held these words.”

Saro Lynch-Thomason (third from left) leads the wassailers in rehearsal. One of the songs the group performed, the “Boar’s Head Carol” was first published in 1521.

*Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The boar’s head as I understand
Is the rarest dish in all this land
Which thus bedecked with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico (‘let us serve with a song’)
Boar’s Head Carol, Queens College version, Oxford, England, first published 1521

It is not always easy to learn songs and rituals that haven’t been passed down from generation to generation. There are challenges to singing a 700-year-old song.

During a rehearsal at Lynch-Thomason’s parents’ house in Asheville, the wassailing group struggles with Latin pronunciations.

“‘Servire’… I’m sure this is wrong. ‘Let us servire…’” Lynch-Thomason said to the group. “I’m changing this as I do it. ‘Let us servire cantico.’”

The wassailers repeat the phrase in unison, sounding unsure of their pronunciation.

“That’s some Lat-English right there,” declares Magoon.

It is messy trying to reconfigure a 15th century English tradition for 21st century Asheville. But Lynch-Thomason said it is important that white folks make the effort to learn about their ethnic identities and the practices of their ancestors.

“When we aren’t able to connect to those practices, we end up appropriating and attaching to other cultures, indigenous cultures, and African American cultures,” Lynch-Thomason said. “And it’s really important to understand that in Indigenous history here, and in African American history, song and dance traditions, and many spiritual traditions were illegal for a very, very long time. We have to think about how painful that is for white folks to then be trying to borrow or utilize those traditions without much context for them. When we as white people actually have those traditions in our ancestry that we can be seeking out in a healthier way.”

A Toast To The New Year

Old Christmas is past
Twelfth Night is the last
And we bid you adieu
great joy to the new
Please to See the King, Traditional, Pembrokeshire, South Wales

Back on the porch, as the group finishes singing, one of the people in the house returns with a bottle of wine. One of the wassailers slips on a costume that looks like it was made out of red and blue rags. She wears a wreath on her head that is wrapped in fake ivy, with battery-operated candles on top — a sure cue that we’re no longer in the Middle Ages.

The wassailers begin to stomp and sing.

The ‘Spirit of the New Year’ toasts a household member while Saro Lynch-Thomason opens a bottle of cider. The ‘Spirit’s’ costume was modeled on a traditional mumming costume from the British Isles, which featured torn strips of fabric on the sleeves and legs.

*Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Spirit of Earth and Light, traveling through this winter night
Will you bless those here with fortune in the coming year?
Spirit of Earth and Light, Lynch-Thomason, 2016, Asheville, NC

The Spirit of the New Year emerges from behind the singers and dances up to the owners of the house to make a toast. She tips her glass against the bottle of wine and people cheer.

“Did everyone get wine?” asks the woman in the house.

The wassailers shout goodbyes and thank yous as they leave the porch, their voices fading as they walk away.

“I just think we so badly need community. And there are so many ways that our current culture divides us from each other. And isolates us from each other. And when you get people together to sing together, something really, really powerful happens for us. And it happens in our bones, it happens at like this molecular level. And we need it,” Lynch-Thomason said. “And so to create that with a group of people, and then bring that as a gift to others, to say, even if you’re feeling isolated in your home or isolated in your community, we show up and we sing to you. That’s a powerful gift.”

We have traveled many miles
Over hedges and stiles
In search of our king
Unto you we bring
Please to See the King, Traditional, Pembrokeshire, South Wales

——

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

Songs Of Solidarity: The West Virginia Mine Wars

The West Virginia Mine Wars were two decades of fighting between coal miners and their employers over the workers’ right to belong to a union. In 1921, the conflicts culminated in the Battle of Blair Mountain, when ten thousand armed miners fought several thousand company men in the remote hills of Logan County, West Virginia, before surrendering peacefully to the US Army. This August will mark the 100th anniversary of the battle.

Inside Appalachia Folkways reporter Rebecca Williams recently talked to Saro Lynch-Thomason, ballad singer and folklorist from Asheville North Carolina. Saro created the Blair Pathways Project, which tells the history of the West Virginia Mine Wars through music. Saro was also a Folkways Corps Reporter back in 2019.

Saro Lynch-Thomason is a ballad singer and folklorist from Asheville, North Carolina. Saro created the Blair Pathways Project, which tells the history of the West Virginia Mine Wars through music.

Rebecca Williams: Saro, will you tell us about the song The Company Store?

Saro Lynch Thomason: It was very common for coal miners and their families to live in company run towns. And so the house that you rented, you paid rent to the mine owners for that house, and then the dry goods store or the store you would have gotten your food, your clothes , and your textiles, that was also run by the company.

Thomason: The song The Company Store was submitted as a poem to the United Mine Workers journal, which was run by the United Mine Workers of America, the union, back in 1895. And it was written by a coal miner named Isaac Hanna. And this poem is a long complaint about how criminal the mine operators were in running company run stores.

Williams: What other things were miners complaining about back then?

Thomason: Working as a minor in the coal industry in the late 19th and early 20th century was really dangerous work. Things like roof falls or exposure to methane gas, and then the risk of explosions. All of that was much more common than it needed to be. And we know that thousands and thousands of people died in the industry just during this period.

Williams: Why did you decide to include an Italian labor song on Blair Pathways?

Thomason: Storenelli D’esillio is written by an Italian anarchist named Pietro Gori. Many people don’t realize that a large portion of the people who were mining coal in West Virginia in the late 1800s, early 1900s, were Southern and Eastern European immigrants. And those immigrant cultures and communities also brought far left politics.

Williams: There were also significant numbers of African American mining families in these coal camps, right?

Thomason: Yes. Some of these miners had come up from the deep south through recruitment campaigns or just looking to get out of sharecropping systems. Some of these African American workers had come into the state, helping to build a railroad. These workers were often also very invested in unionizing, and came into elected positions in the United Mine Workers of America.

Williams: One of the major strikes of the West Virginia Mine Wars took place on Paint and Cabin creeks in 1912 and 1913, where there were numerous deadly battles and skirmishes. Tell us about Walter Seacrist, who wrote the song “Law in the West Virginia Hills”?

Thomason: As a child, he actually lived in a strike camp. And as an adult, he joined the union and he started writing songs about his experiences of the Coal Wars.

Williams: The song mentions wives and children. So we know that it wasn’t just male miners involved in these strikes. You included a song called Lonesome Jailhouse Blues written by a woman from Kentucky in 1932.

Thomason: “Lonesome Jailhouse Blues” was written by a woman named Aunt Molly Jackson. And she wrote this song when she had been organizing with the National Miners Union, which was a communist union. And was put in prison for that organizing work. Many women were organizers and were really the backbone of strikes.

Williams: So how were women involved in the Paint and Cabin Creek strike?

Thomason: Women would often go down to the train stations and harass or sometimes attack or at least shame the replacement workers who were coming in. And women would also hold down picket lines in front of the mines. On top of that they were doing things like committing sabotage. Women would go and tear up, you know, the rail lines so that trains exporting coal from the region couldn’t run.

Williams: In 1921, these decades of conflicts boiled over into full-scale war during the week-long Battle of Blair Mountain, which is often called the largest armed insurrection in U.S. history since the Civil War.

Thomason: What strikes me about these conflicts is that you just have to get to a place where you feel like you have no other options. To do something like risking your life, essentially, by going to war really means that you have nothing else to lose.

Williams: I noticed that your album “Blair Pathways” doesn’t include a song about the battle. Why is that?

Thomason: You know, I think there’s different reasons why there may not be a song. events like this are also traumatic, and people want to forget about them. People did die in this battle. It was a battle that people had to be pretty secretive about if they were involved. It’s not something you necessarily wanted to let all your neighbors know about. So I think there would have been reasons to not talk about the fact that this enormous uprising had taken place.

Williams: One of the last songs on the album is called “Hold on.” It was one that you and others sang as you marched to Blair Mountain in 2011. Why were you marching to Blair Mountain?

Thomason: One goal was to promote the need for sustainable jobs in West Virginia. The other goal was to try and save Blair Mountain because Blair was endangered of being stripped mined for coal. And this really important, you know, historic battle site and it needs to be preserved. So the march took about a week, and we were in 90 to 100 degree weather, and music and song became a really powerful part of the march. People started to really understand how songs could bring people together, and really vindicate and enliven the work they were doing.

Rebecca: You helped lead the singing on the march. Why did you choose this song in particular?

Thomason: It’s such a great song to sing in groups. And it’s really structured in a way where you can create new verses.

Thomason: It comes from African American traditions, and in the civil rights movement, verses were adapted to be about that movement.

Williams: Saro, what did you take away from studying the mine wars and immersing yourself in this music?

Thomason: I think I came away with a better understanding of how complex these conflicts were. And how important it was that people know that they happened. Without that labor history. We wouldn’t have things like the eight hour work day and safety standards at work. We wouldn’t have any of those things if all these different labor movements hadn’t taken place.

Williams: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about this and to revisit this history in time for the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Blair mountain

If you want to learn more about the West Virginia Mine Wars, sample or purchase more music from the project, you can go to Blairpathways.com. There you’ll find a series of essays that accompany the songs and more information about the musicians playing them.

Music Credits
“The Company Store” Musician: Tim Eriksen (vocals) and Riley Baugus (banjo) Origin of Music: Isaac Hannah, 1895, United Mine Workers Journal
“Stornelli d’esilio” Musician: Il Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano Origin of Music: Pietro Gori, 1895
“Lonesome Jailhouse Blues” Musician: Elizabeth Laprelle (vocals) Origin of Music: Mary Stamos or “Aunt Molly Jackson,” 1930s or ‘40s.
“When the Leaves Come Out” Musician: Morgan O’ Kane (vocals, banjo) Origin of Music: Ralph Chaplin, 1913.
“Hold On” Musician: 2011 March to Blair Mountain participants, song led by Saro LynchThomason Origin of Music: African-American traditional, 20th century, words adapted by Alice Wine, Blair verses created by Saro Lynch-Thomason 2011
“Law in the West Virginia Hills” Musician: Samuel Gleaves (vocals, guitar), Myra Morrison (fiddle), Jordan Engel (bass) Origin of Music: Walter Seacrist, 1930s

Winemaking Tradition With Italian Roots In Valdese, NC

Valdese is a small town in North Carolina’s Piedmont, and it shares a surprising amount of culture with the other Piedmont — the one in Italy. Valdese is known for crusty Italian bread, zesty Italian sausage and the Italian lawn bowling game of bocce. And for winemaking.

A few dozen Italian immigrants settled in Valdese back in the 1890s. They were “Waldensians” a group that had been persecuted for their religious beliefs in Europe. In North Carolina, they made wine at home and eventually set up a winery.

“Now that’s dry,” said Freddy Leger, as he uncorked a bottle and poured wine into a glass.

Leger was one of the founders of the Waldensian Heritage Winery. Leger died recently, but was interviewed at the winery about 10 years ago.

Eddie Zimmerman holds a bottle of Waldensian Heritage Burgundy Wine

“My grandfather was one of the winemakers here in Valdese,” Leger said. “Whenever the Waldensians came here, they planted little vineyards. And a lot of the homes had little vineyards beside them. And their own wine cellars and so forth.”

How the Waldensians made wine changed over time. The first change happened when the Waldenses moved from Italy to North Carolina. There was different soil, a different climate, even different grapes. Leger proudly showed off a bottle of their most traditional wine.

“This is what we call Heritage,” he said “And Heritage is 100% Concord wine.”

The Concord is an American grape that’s usually made into jelly or juice, but Leger said the Waldensians chose the Concord for their wines because it would grow here.

“We still use that,” Leger said. “We wanted to do everything the same way that grandpa made it, so to speak.”

The Waldensians saw winemaking as part of their family heritage — something to pass down through the generations.

Another local winemaker, Eddie Zimmerman, was introduced to the tradition by his great uncle.

“Uncle Henry Peru,” Zimmerman said. “He was a Waldensian. He made wine.”

Zimmerman remembers visiting his great uncle. Wine was always offered.

“Just as a fellowship and friendship thing,” Zimmerman said. “It was an insult not to drink a man’s wine. “

Early experiences like that made a lasting impression on Zimmerman. He started helping out at the Waldensian Heritage Winery in the year 2000.

“Because, you know,, they needed the labor, they needed somebody that had the passion for it, “ Zimmerman said.

Wooden wine barrels at Waldensian Heritage Museum

For 40 years volunteers from the community came out to help make the wine.

“A lot of people in town came and helped them mash grapes and stuff,” Zimmerman said.

The Waldensian heritage winery closed its doors in November 2019. The old dairy barn was sold back to its original owners and turned into an event space. They don’t make wine there anymore.

But Eddie Zimmerman does. Both at home and commercially. In 2008 Zimmerman bought a winery a few miles down the road: Waldensian Style Wines. These days he makes mostly fruit-based wines.

“Most of my wines are sweet — things like blackberry and apple and peach,” Zimmerman said. “That seems to be what sells at festivals.”

Zimerman has added a few winemaking innovations of his own. About 10 years ago he took a slush machine to a festival.

“And it was so popular that when you go to a wine festival, everybody has slush machines,” Zimmerman says. “And I’m the one that started that.”

But with wine festivals cancelled because of COVID-19, Zimmerman hasn’t made any wine this year. Not even for himself.

Pitching a ball at the Valdese Boccee Court

Zimmerman’s friend, Leger, was worried about the future of winemaking in Valdese he spoke about it 10 years ago. Young people didn’t seem interested.

“I think that’s gonna be one of the biggest challenges that we have,” Leger said.

Leger died in the summer of 2020. Eddie Zimmerman was at his funeral.

“I had a wine bottle of wine put in his casket with him,” said Zimmerman. “ I got permission from the family. We opened the casket back up and laid a bottle of wine in his arms. And he took that to the grave with him. He would have liked that.”

Leger would probably be happy to hear about people like Kevin Duckworth. He’s one of the people in Valdese still making wine in his basement. Duckworth learned how to make wine about 30 years ago from his ex-father-in-law.

“He had the recipe because he was full-blooded Waldensian,” Duckworth said. “And I was an outcast. Or a blueblood as they called me. And it was some time until he actually shared the recipe with me.”

Duckworth had to promise to keep the recipe a secret. After his father-in law died, Duckworth stopped making wine for years. But he recently started up again.

Duckworth hopes that the winemaking tradition in this area, brought over from Italy, will continue. And he thinks his family will be a part of that.

“My daughter and her husband were newlyweds and they decided that they wanted to make some wine,” Duckworth said. “Hopefully they’ll pass it on. We have a granddaughter and a grandson. And hopefully they’ll pass it on. I can’t imagine them not.”

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council. The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.