29) suggested the performers might are actually executing a mumming Participate in. E. C. Cawte dismissed this suggestion: "If that is so It's really a most strange 1, there's no indication in the combatants, the set of horses is of an strange style, and the mast horse appears to be the centre of attention."[26]

Modern-day performances re-enact the stories of your legendary nine Muslim saints (Wali Songo) who introduced Islam to Java, but currently they tend to be held transient and meant just for enjoyment; They might even be executed by women.

Every single "rider" wears a pointed cap by using a tassel and accustomed to wield an inflated bladder over a adhere; now, much like the tricorned major-heads known as kilikis who parade with them, they carry a phallic pizzle made from foam-rubber which they use to belabour the onlookers.

Other stock characters in the parade involve 4 masked, smartly dressed "aged Adult males" with strolling sticks. Occasionally the horse falls to the ground and is also then "shod" (the smith hammers the shoe soles of one or other of your carriers, who kick out, wildly). The man who leads it from time to time breathes into its mouth or nostrils. It then revives and carries on in the village.[29]

The frame features a carved wooden head, normally with snapping jaws (operated by pulling a string) connected to it at a single finish, and a tail at one other. The "rider" may well dress in a cape or other flowing costume to assist cover the body. In one of the most elaborate versions, faux legs, meant to become Those people with the rider, dangle down the sides of your skirt, while this appears to be a fairly the latest progress.[2]

Hobby horses may very well be built in many various ways. The types most often located in the United Kingdom have already been categorised as follows:[1]

The Salisbury Huge, a twelve ft-tall (three.5m) determine from time to time claimed to represent Saint Christopher, is really a processional determine exceptional in Britain. The present figure's wooden body was rebuilt c. 1850 even though it is probable that he existed during the fifteenth century. It rarely appears today, being stored inside the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, in addition to its companion Hob-Nob, a tourney-sort hobby horse, a mischievous character which used to clear the way for the enormous from the processions that were held because of the Tailor's Guild on Midsummer's Eve.

The performers are grouped all around a mast horse (probably 'Snap Dragon'; see down below) that has a shiny black head created from a painted skull set on a brief pole.

As at Padstow, his facial area is concealed by a mask connected to some tall, pointed hat. The top surface of your horse is roofed with ribbons and strips of material. An extended fabric skirt, painted with rows of multicoloured roundels, hangs down to the bottom all round. An extended tail is attached into the again on the frame. Every horse is accompanied by a little group of musicians and attendants. The Town Horse is accompanied by "Gullivers", dressed equally for the horse but without the large body; as at Padstow, scaled-down, children's horses have from time to time been created [two]. The horses' visits are (or ended up) thought to deliver great luck.

In his discipline notes, created in 1908, folklorist Cecil Sharp referred to some hobby horse "without having a curtain" staying linked Using the morris dance at Winster; he also mentions a "Snap Dragon" made from "a true horse's head" (cranium?) dug up for that function, but doesn't say whether or not it absolutely was connected to the morris.

Some wave clubs. Some have furry tails. You will find a doctor as well as a nurse, in white coats by using a pink cross on the back. They all race throughout the dancing Place within an anti-clockwise way and after that slide to the ground in the writhing heap.[thirty]

Initially made in a similar way as a mast horse or hooden horse, the Derby Tup (ram) represented a male sheep. It took section in a very dramatised Edition from the Derby Ram folksong, which was executed in northern Derbyshire and all over Sheffield through Hobby Horse the Christmas time by teams of boys.

Other characters contain the Straw Adult males, dressed in costumes fabricated from rice-straw, with blacked faces, and tall, pointed straw hats; they embrace women and roll with them on the ground, and that is said to confer fertility. Housewives Get straw within the Straw Males's skirts as a superb luck attraction, taking it property to feed their geese and chickens.

Hobby horses of the tourney form, using a body suspended around the dancer's waistline, may also show up at different festivities during the Languedoc. An illustration in the chivalet dance, and its traditional tune, and an outdated photograph of an animal of this kind, are on present during the people museum at Agde.