Minehead Hobby Horse

A Hobby Horse in Ireland?

Surviving tradition in Ireland – a May garland seen on a threshold in Schull, West Cork. on May Day this year

We are in the month of May. How significant is that here in Ireland? Well, if it’s any indication, it’s a fact that Irish folklorist Kevin Danaher (1913 – 2002) gives far more space in his writings to May and traditional May customs than to any other single subject or season.

Kevin Danaher of Athea, Co Limerick, at the Irish folklore Commission in 1954. the photographer was Dorothea Lange, who features in this post

In the west of England, which has always had close links with Ireland in terms of language, culture and industry – the month of May has long been celebrated with a strong focus on the ‘Hobby Horse’, a phenomenon which bridges the worlds of superstition, spectacle and folklore. In two places – Padstow in Cornwall and Minehead in Somerset – Hobby Horse (or, colloquially ‘Obby Oss’) festivals are huge events – usually. In 2020, sadly, both had to be cancelled due to Covid19 restrictions: probably the first time in hundreds of years that they have not taken place. The Minehead Oss has a recorded history that goes back to at least 1465, while in Padstow they will tell you that the Obby Oss has been revered forever on the First of May with never a break.

The Padstow Oss has survived through peacetime and wartime. This rare photograph (above) – attributed to Joshua Barret – was taken in 1944, while the early 20th century photograph (below) of the Minehead Oss is my all time favourite of a folk custom: the Oss always has and always will perambulate the town every year, even if no-one is interested in watching it!

As we find this very strong May tradition thriving (usually) in the west of England, we might expect to see an equivalent in Ireland, but you can’t immediately think of a Padstow or Minehead equivalent. Oh, yes – the Hobby Horse is purely Irish, in that there was once a now extinct breed – called a Hobby – which is said to have been the genetic source of all race horses since pre-Roman times!

. . . It is possible to trace the root of the Irish Hobby back to the northern Iberian Peninsula where this peculiar population of horse seemed to first be recognised about 700 BC, identified as the Celtic Horse. It was a small horse, gaited and exceedingly fast. It was the fastest horse in the known world back then, by 400 BC the Greeks called them the Thieldones and immortalized them on the frieze of the Parthenon, and this breed was already the Roman’s preferred steeds for racing. Pliny even writes about them in 77 AD, and we know when the Romans invaded Britain they brought those horses with them. But the Romans found that when they arrived they were met by the natives who had Celtic Horses already–horses which had been brought to Britain centuries earlier in trade from Spain by the Phoenicians for the metal mined there . . .

(Source – Sport Horse Breeder.com)

I won’t dwell on this idea that the Irish Hobby Horse was the ancestor of all modern pure bred sports horses – and was probably responsible for the innate Irish love of everything to do with horses and sport – as I am getting completely out of my depth here, and it’s all a bit off-topic anyway! Although, who knows how and where that name might have migrated over the centuries?

The culmination of the Padstow ceremony on May Day is the ‘meeting’ of the Red and Blue Oss at the huge maypole in the Town Square on the evening of the day (above). They have to close the town to all traffic because of the enormous crowds who attend, and you can see why the ‘social distancing’ rules could never have been applied to the event. Let’s hope that in future years ‘normality’ will have returned sufficiently to our lives to ensure that these ancient customs continue. In my lifetime I have been to Padstow on May Day at least thirty times, and also to Minehead on many occasions: I have good memories of them both.

In order to find a precedent in Ireland for a traditional Oss, I have mined the enormous archive that Kevin Danaher left behind in the Irish Folklore Commission, and I am pleased to report a whisper of success! Danaher uses various sources to summarise an account of traditions taking place in Ireland on May Day:

From the diary of Joshua Wight, a Quaker, we learn that so late as the middle of the eighteenth century, propitiatory rustic processions took place in the south of Ireland. The observer records, that about noon in the month of May, 1752, there passed through the streets of Limerick many thousand peasants marshalled in companies, representing various branches of agriculture…

 

And Thomas Crofton Croker (1825) tells us of what he calls mummers:

 

‘They consist of a number of the girls and young men of the village or neighbourhood, usually selected for their good looks, or their proficiency, – the females in the dance, the youths in hurling and other athletic exercises. They march in procession… Two of them bear each a holly-bush, in which are hung several new hurling-balls. the bush is decorated with a profusion of long ribbons which adds greatly to the gay and joyous, yet strictly rural appearance of the whole. The procession is always preceded by music; sometimes of the bagpipes, but more commonly of a military fife, with the addition of a drum or tambourine. A clown is, of course, in attendance: he wears a frightful mask, and bears a long pole, with shreds of cloth nail to the end of it, like a mop, which ever and anon he dips in a pool of water, or puddle, and besprinkles such of a crowd as press upon his compassions, much to the delights of the younger spectators… The Mummers during the day parade parade the neighbouring villages, dancing and receiving money. The evening, as might be expected, terminates with drinking’.

 

Patrick Kennedy, in The Banks of the Boru, describes a similar procession:

 

‘After a reasonable pause we had the delight of seeing twelve young men come forth, accompanied by the same number of young women, the boys dressed much more showily than the girls… To heighten the beauty of the spectacle, out sprung the fool and his wife, the first with some head-dress of skin, a frightful mask, and a goat’s beard descending from it. Though we knew that the big bluff, good-natured countenance of Paudh himself was behind the vizard, we could scarcely refrain from taking flight, not being able any more than other children to look on an ugly mask without extreme terror. His wife (little Tome Blanche, the tailor) was in an orange-tawny gown, flaming handkerchief and mob-cap, and had a tanned, ugly female mask, fitting pretty close to her face. Paudh’s first salute to his friends was a yell, a charge in various directions, and a general thrashing of the crowd with his pea-furnished bladder suspended from a long stick. Mrs Clown had a broom, and used it to some purpose when she found her friends disposed to crowd her.’

 

There is also mentioned by Sir William Wilde, together with something like a hobby horse (Popular Irish Superstitions, 67):

 

‘From Monaghan we have a graphic account of a somewhat similar proceeding: there the girls dressed up a churn-dash a s a “May babby” and the men, a pitchfork, with a mask, horse’s tail, a turnip head, and ragged old clothes, as a “May boy” but these customs have, we believe, long since become quite obsolete.’

The mask worn by the Obby Oss at Padstow could have evoked the description by Patrick Kennedy, above: some head-dress of skin, a frightful mask, and a goat’s beard descending from it . . . This particular representation, once used in the Padstow processions, is now a museum piece. So here I present my argument that we can find descriptive evidence of traditional Hobby Horses in Ireland as part of the May festivities. If anyone finds other instances or has direct personal experience or stories passed down which involve Hobby Horses, or activities which sound like the examples described in Danaher’s reports, above, please let me know.

Queen of the May

May Eve activity: setting up the May Bush

May Eve activity: setting up the May Bush

I was excited to learn – from one of my favourite and most faithful volumes on folklore: The Year in Ireland by Kevin Danaher (Mercier Press 1972) – that on May Day the Fastnet Rock weighs anchor, casts off her moorings and goes sailing about in Roaringwater Bay! I spent May Eve in a whirl of anticipation – and hot spring sunshine – awaiting the morrow which would present this wonderful spectacle to add to the feast to be seen from our window. The morrow that came, ostensibly the first day of summer, was a disappointment: the wind was in the east – and biting – and the whole bay was encased in damp, grey fog. The perambulations of the rock remained out of sight until nightfall, by which time the sweeping light had smugly returned to its rightful place twelve miles off shore.

Dancing Rock...

Dancing Rock…

My only consolation – again, according to Danaher – is that a cold, wet May morning heralds an excellent summer (and this certainly came about last year). I could write all day about Danaher’s observations on the subject of Mary’s month – in his book 42 pages are devoted to it: the longest section by far, indicating the importance given to this part of the year in the traditional calendar. But I’ll leave that for another time and concentrate on our own activity: putting up our May Bush.

Cutting the sprays for our May Bush
Tying the Bush
Setting up
Replete with ribbons for May Morning

When I lived in the west of England it was a toss-up between going to Minehead or Padstow on May Day – occasionally both. They were contrasting experiences: in Minehead, on the north coast of Somerset, you had to take pot luck – there was no fixed itinerary to the day and you never quite knew what you were going to see, or where or when. What you wanted to see was the Hobby Horse, sometimes known as the Ship-horse, or the Sailor’s Oss. I’ll refer you to another classic book – by chance also dating from 1972: A Year of Festivals – A Guide to British Calendar Customs by Geoffrey Palmer + Noel Lloyd (Frederick Warne):

…The head of the horse (or the mast and sails of the ship) is in the centre; and a long rope tail, once a real cow’s tail, is fastened to the ‘stern’. The man inside the contraption glides and sways through the streets, and sometimes swings his tail around anybody who refuses to contribute to the collecting-box… The ship form of the horse is said to date from 1772 when, on the evening before May Day, a ship sank in a storm off Dunster, three miles from Minehead. The only object to be washed ashore was a dead cow, the tail of which was used to decorate the horse…

Now, the early photograph below is one of my all-time favourites as an illustration of a folk custom: it’s optimistically captioned Hobby-horse Festival, Minehead, Somerset and says to me that such traditions will continue forever because ‘they have to be done’ – even if the rest of the world has lost all interest…

A few generations ago… from ‘A Year of Festivals’
Chance sighting in Minehead

The First of May at Padstow is another matter altogether. It’s a huge gathering: all the roads are closed to traffic and at times it seems impossible that any more people could be fitted in to this modest Cornish fishing community. Here there are two ‘Obby Osses’: the Red Oss, sometimes known as the Original or Old Oss, is stabled in the Golden Lion, while the Blue Oss – or Temperance Oss has its headquarters in the (perhaps more temperance friendly) Public Library. Both horses come out in the morning of May Day, led by a ‘Teaser’ and accompanied by numerous dancers, drums and accordions, perambulate all around the town, and well beyond it, finally meeting in the evening at The Square, in the shadow of an elaborate and colourful May Pole.

Padstow taster… Photos from the 1960s and 2006:

1960s – from ‘A Year of Festivals’
Padstow 2006
Preparing the Maypole in Bavaria

Preparing the Maypole in Bavaria (Florian Schott, Ellbach)

While I was experiencing my first Padstow May Day in the 1960s, our Cappaghglass neighbour Dietrich was in Bavaria, watching the construction of an enormous Maypole: he also remembers all the children dancing around it holding up May Bushes. For our own May Bush we took our inspiration from Danaher:

…The children set up their May Bush in the same spirit in which we hang out our flags on a national holiday, to celebrate an occasion, but some – at least – of their parents were glad of the feeling of protection against unseen forces which the May Bush gave…

Oh yes! We have to be aware that…

…So powerful were the preternatural forces abroad in the night between sunset on May Eve and sunrise on May Day that almost anything might be expected to happen… (Danaher) while …The powers of evil, always on the alert to entangle and destroy souls, being most dangerous and powerful on May-Eve, on that day the maids were apt to be uneasy and rather sullen, watching us suspiciously lest we might, through our unbelief, frustrate their precautions against danger. They strewed primroses on the threshold of the front and back doors – no fairy can get over this defence – and in the cow-byres they hung branches of rowan while the head dairy-woman sprinkled holy water in mangers and stalls. The milkmaids, at the end of the evening milking, stood to make the sign of the cross with froth from the pails, signing themselves and making a cross in the air towards the cows… from The Farm by Lough Gur by Mary Carbery (Longmans, 1937).

Burning the land

Burning the land

We have had a long, dry spell and there have been a number of gorse fires recently in our neighbourhood: this one occurred on May Eve – traditionally a time in Ireland when bonfires were lit – although the gorse fires have nothing to do with that tradition. Here are the observations of William Wilde (father of Oscar) in Irish Popular Superstitions, Dublin, 1853

…Turf, coals, old bones, particularly slugs of cows’ horns from the tan-yards, and horses’ heads from the knackers, logs of wood etc were also collected, to which some of the merchants generally added a few pitch and tar-barrels. The ignitable materials were formed in depots, in back-yards, and cellars of old houses, long before the approaching festival; and several sorties were made by opposing factions to gain possession of these hoards, and lives have been lost in the skirmishes which ensued… With the exception of one ancient rite, that of throwing into it the May bush, there were but few Pagan ceremonies observed at the metropolitan fires. A vast crowd collected, whiskey was distributed galore… The entire population collected round the bush and the fire; the elder portion, men and women, bringing with them chairs or stools, to sit out the wake of the winter and spring, according to the olden usage… Fiddlers and pipers plied their fingers and elbows; and dancing, shouting, revelry and debauchery of every description succeeded, till, at an advanced hour of the night, the scene partook more of the nature of the ancient Saturnalia, than anything we can presently liken it to…

mass sign

By contrast, our own rural activities were much more calm and constrained. I couldn’t miss out on an outdoor Mass celebrated at one of Lough Hyne’s Holy Wells – the Skour Well. On a beautiful evening – attractive to the midges – it felt the most natural thing in the world to be at a site which has been considered sacred for hundreds, if not for thousands of years, and to take part in a ceremony which is also ancient. I counted over eighty people, including a gentleman of 97, at this event – presided over by two priests and centred on a portable altar with cloth and candles, the revered well being the backdrop. Prayers were said and hymns were sung in English, Irish and Latin.

There’s a continuity here which defies any twenty first century rationale. I was very conscious that this was the way that faith was practiced in Ireland in the penal times (requiring that a watchful eye be kept out for the Redcoats) – but also it was an honouring of nature and a respect for the elements: earth, water, sun and rain – old ways carrying on regardless of new technologies.

A May garland – Hatherleigh, Devon:

Finola’s memory of May Day in her schooldays was of all the girls wearing veils and processing down to the grotto saying the Rosary; and, every day throughout Mary’s month, singing the refrain that was sung at the close of the Mass at Skour Well:

O Mary! we crown thee with blossoms today,
Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.

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