WAYZGOOSE

Roland A. Paquette wrote:

”Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable page 1144 and distinction of top of page for quick reference, to wit: Wayzgoose. An annual dinner, picnic, or beanfeast especially one given to, or held by, those employed in a printing-house. Wayz (wase) is an obsolete word for a bundle of hay, straw, stubble; hence a "Stubble Goose", a harvest goose or fat goose, which is the crowning dish of the entertainment.”          
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The "Wayzgoose" is a celebration of printers--a term that goes back to at least the seventeenth century, and was described by Joseph Moxon in his authoritative book "Mechanick Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing," 1683-4. Of course the copy I have is not that old (of Moxon's original, only 50 or so copies are known to survive.) The Oxford University Press published a reprint of the work, edited and annotated by Herbert Davis and Harry Carter, in 1958, and a Dover edition was then later published in 1978.          

Writing about "customs of the Chappel" (or printing house), Moxon wrote this about the Wayzgoose:     

"It is also customary for all the Journey-men to make every Year new Paper Windows, whether the old will serve again or no; Because that day they make them, the Master Printer gives them a Waygoose; that is, he makes them a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night; And to this Feast, they invite the Correcter, Founder, Smith, Joyner, and Inck-maker, who all of them severally (except the Correcter in his own Civility) open their Purse-strings and add their Benevolence (which Workmen account their duty, because they generally chuse these Workmen) to the Master Printers: But from the Correcter they expect nothing, because the Master Printer chusing him, the Workmen can do him no kindness.          

These Way-gooses, are always kept about Bartholomew-tide. [The 24th of August, (but ten days later in the season before the reform of the calendar in 1752).] And till the Master-Printer have given this Way-goose, the Journey-men do not use to Work by Candle Light."            

According to notes accompanying Moxon, regarding the Wayzgoose:  "Excellent articles in the O.E.D. on this word and its variant 'Wayzgoose' show that nothing is known of its derivation or history before Moxon used it, that the more usual form, 'Wayzgoose’, is probably due to a mistaken etymology, and that it was a dinner before it became an outing and a dinner."            

Today, hobby printer groups have revived the term, and use it in a sense similar to its original meaning.  I have documented two recent trips.  Please vistit.