VERSES FOR A CHRISTMAS FETE
The Lord and Lady enter, and speak these verses:
We bid you welcome to the hall!
There\'s food and frolic for us all.
At the intermission the Lord offers the audience the boar’s head,
All ye that keep the old law,
and ye that eat no lean,
the boar’s head this fair evening,
from our best cheese is ta’en,
Bedecked with bays and rosemary,
From our own garden just hard by.
the wassail, and the pudding:
All ye that drive and need to see,
this wassail bowl’s of spirit free,
and ye who would your spirits cheer,
your wassail take from this bowl here.
Lest man or maid might yet be glum,
The pudding, too, is soaked with rum.
So was Meg the cook, I\'m told,
While yet the pudding was in the mold.
To end the intermission:
On with it, on, enough, I say!
Bear this heavy fare away!
On with the dance and merriment,
Bring on the rapper-swords well bent!
Bring on the cloggers’ merry board,
While pipes and fiddles tunes afford.
Bring on the maskèd morris’ mirth,
And songs of our Redeemer’s birth.
Let antlers Abbott’s Bromley crown,
And all the Muggle world, SIT DOWN!