Hypnogoria: THE OLDTIME YULETIDE ADVENT CALENDAR

Welcome dear friends back to the Hypnogoria Old-time Yuletide Advent Calendar! It’s time to open Door 16 and discover a very strange festive menagerie! For O stands for Old Oss! Although it might also stand for “‘Oodening”.

Now “‘Oodening”, actually spellted “hoodening” but pronounced with a dropped H, is an old Christmas tradition popular across Kent. And it is part of a broader tradition of what folklorists call hooden animals and hobby horses.

Often related to mummers plays, of which we will learn more of soon, these bizarre creatures are created with a large cloth, a pole, and head fashioned from a skull, usually a horse’s, although sometimes a wooden version is used. Often bedecked with ribbons, bells or garlands, the hooden animal is part puppet and part costume, with the operator concealed beneath the voluminous cloth and making the jaws snap in a fashion that is both amusing and alarming.

In recent years, a version found in several villages in Wales, the Mari Lwyd - which is thought to mean Grey Mare - has enjoyed a good deal of coverage in round-ups of our stranger Christmas customs. However this horse skulled mischief-maker had many cousins all over the country, and they all behave in much the same way. Some continue to this very day, but others now reside only in history.

Like wassailing and mumming, the hooden animal is a type of festive performance by a troupe of locals in costumes. Staged over the Christmas period, they would go from house to house and perform comedy antics and songs, before appealing for gifts of food, drink or money before departing for the next location. And of course, if their audience wasn’t generous the naughty hooded beastie may well run amuck!

In parts of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and around Sheffield there existed, into the early 20th century, a Christmas and New Year custom of going from house to house performing a short play or dramatized song called The Old Horse, T'Owd 'Oss or Poor Old Horse, complete with a hooden animal as the central figure. While also now extinct, there was in the Cotswolds the Christmas tradition of The Broad, where a hooden animal, in this case made with a bull’s skull, would pay festive visits with its wranglers, and indulge in a little wassailing too.

In Cornwall, at Christmas the Penglas or Penglaz still roams about! This creature, whose name translates as "grey head", was either carved from wood or made from a horse's skull, and accompanied the Christmas Guisers. Sometimes it was led or ridden by Old Penglaze, a character with a blackened face who carried a staff.

Meanwhile in Derby, there was the Derby Tup, a ram version of a hobby horse. It took part in a dramatized version of the Derby Ram folk song, which was performed in northern Derbyshire and around Sheffield during the Christmas season by teams of boys. In a manner similar to the plot of many mummers plays, it is "killed" by a butcher and its "blood" is collected in a large bowl. In some versions brought back to life by a quack doctor.

In course of this Advent calendar, we have heard of many connection between Hallowe’en and Christmas, and it is interesting to note that some hooden animal traditions take place around Hallowe’en, such as the Soulcakers of Antrobus in Cheshire who perform a typical mummers play but also includes a hooden animal Dick the Wild Horse.

And hence while they might seem very different traditions, our modern customs of going carolling and trick or treating, do seem to share a common origin in these very old folk customs that featured local folks in costume going from house to house to perform, whether bringing the mischief of a hooden animal, or to do some wassailing, or to perform a mummers play. However we explore these connections further behind other doors…