The Battle for Christmas Read Online Free PDF Page B

would not take no for an answer. This time they tried to cajole Rowden into offering them the perry by promising payment at a later time: “‘Call for your pot [of perry] and mine and I will pay you again,’” said one. This time it was Rowden’s wife who replied, saying, “‘We keep no ordinary [i.e., tavern] to call for pots.’” (A
pot
commonly referred to alcohol, as in the still-current usage
potted)
    So the four men left. Or so it seemed—for fifteen minutes later three of them returned, saying they had managed to borrow some money and could pay for the perry on the spot. Apparently the Rowdens would actually have sold them the drink at this point, but the couple demanded to see the money in advance. One of the men shoved a “coin” in Goodwife Rowden’s face; it proved to be “nothing but a piece of lead.”
    At this point the Rowdens, assisted by their young apprentice, managed to cajole (or push) the visitors out the door and into the December night. But once again the respite was brief. The visitors stopped about forty feet from the house and began to harass the Rowdens. They bellowed out sarcastic cries of “hello.” One of them, Samuel Braybrooke by name, began to taunt the Rowdens’ apprentice, demanding that he give them directions to the town of Marblehead (where alcohol could surely be had, especially on Christmas night). The apprentice, Daniel Poole, replied that “‘he had better be at home with his wife.’” Braybrooke continued to taunt young Poole, asking him “if he wanted to fight, if so to come out.” Braybrooke’s companion Joseph Flint renewed the dare, this time suggesting that they make a bet out of it: “Flint said if he [Poole] wanted to box, he would box with him for a pot of perry.” Finally, when it became clear that despite all this bravado the apprentice could not be pressured into leaving his doorway, the dares and taunts turned into actual violence—violence that was directed not directly at Poole or the Rowdens but at their house. Here is John Rowdens account of what happened:
    [T]hey threw stones, bones, and other things at Poole in the doorway and against the house. They beat down much of the daubing in several places and continued to throw stones for an hour and a half with little intermission. They also broke down about a pole and a half of fence, being stone wall, and a cellar, without [outside] the house, distant about four or five rods, was broken open through the door, and five or six pecks of apples were stolen. 27
    Quite a scene. But one that is wholly recognizable from the English and European sources; for this was a wassail gone bad. The four young men came to the old man’s house and sang for their gift of perry. When refused, they pretended that they were willing to pay for the perry (even though making the exchange a financial transaction represented a violation of the wassail ritual, in which the drink would have been a gift offered in return for the songs). But the visitors could (or would) not pay; the “coin” they brought turned out to be a fake, and their offer of payment seems to have been intended merely as a sarcastic comment on the Rowdens’ refusal to play their expected role in the gift exchange. Finally, the wassail turned into what the French call a “charivari” (loud noise, mocking taunts, and stone-throwing), which lasted for more than an hour. There was no gift and therefore no goodwill—no “treat,” but only a “trick” in turn.
    Typically, all four of the wassailers were young men (one was seventeen, another about twenty-one; only one of the four was married). Typically, too, all of them stood near the low end of the economic hierarchy, and none would ever achieve any great degree of prosperity. 28 Finally, thirteen years later, three of the four men were peripherally involved in the events surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692. Two of them (Braybrooke and Flint) were among the signers of a 1695 petition urging