WAYZG00SE  , a

term for the annual dinner and outing' of printers and their employes . The derivation of the term is doubtful . It may be a misspelling for " wasegoose," from vase, Mid . Eng. for " sheaf," thus meaning sheaf or harvest goose, the bird that was fit to eat at harvest-time, the "stubble-goose " mentioned by Chaucer in " The Cook's Prologue." It is more probable that the merry-making which has become particularly associated with the printers' trade was once general, and an imitation of the grand goose-feast annually held at Waes, in Brabant, at Martinmas . The relations of England and Holland were formerly very close, and it is not difficult to believe that any outing or yearly banquet might.have grown to be called colloquially a " Waes-Goose." It is difficult to explain why the term should have only survived in the printing trade, though the English printers owed much to their Dutch fellow-workers . Certainly the goose has long ago parted company with the printers' wayzgoose, which is usually held in July, though it has no fixed season . An unlikely suggestion is that the original wayzgoose was a feast given by an apprentice to his comrades at which the bird formed the staple eatable .