During the interval round Christmas and New Year, guising – the act of dressing up in outrageous costume and going across the native district performing a brief seasonal play in return for a couple of pennies – was a previously frequent follow.
In earlier December editions, I’ve written in regards to the hero vs villain fight performs and Derby Tup performances which have been carried out throughout Derbyshire.
As one other twelve months have rolled round, it’s the flip of a 3rd variant of conventional Derbyshire guising performances – The Poor Old Horse.
Like the Derby Tup, the Poor Old Horse includes a brief play with a track revolving across the symbolic loss of life of an animal, involving the important prop of a specifically constructed animal head on a pole, operated by a performer beneath a cloak.
In 1981, folklore researcher Dave Bathe interviewed Jim Heath, aged 74, who grew up at New Whittington within the early years of the twentieth century.
Bathe’s notes report how the native butcher’s store at New Whittington run by his father (J. W. Heath) equipped ‘local lads with cows’ and sheep’s skulls and cleaned up horses’ skulls to be used in a Christmas visiting customized’.
Heath described the arrival of the ‘Horse’: ‘You used to hear a knock at the door, […] these lads used to be singing and you’d open the door and there was this factor (horse’s head) snapping at you!’
Another supply of horses’ heads was Clayton’s Knacker’s Yard, a tannery in Chesterfield: ‘It was a regular thing – he used to expect them at Christmas time… then they used to go to John Green’s timber yard at Whittington Hill and he used to repair the heads up for them’.
There is a recording of the horse making an showing in Staveley within the mid-Nineteenth century. Folk dance and drama collector William J. Shipley spoke to an unnamed previous woman in 1931, who remembered a go to as a younger lady round 1865 – a daunting expertise.
‘They came into my father’s yard (he would not enable them in the home for they have been so tough) they usually arrange a giant horse, a wood one – I imagine it had wood pegs for enamel – I used to be so terrified at their grotesque caps and faces’.
A tragic incident occurred in 1868-9. The Derbyshire Times of February 20 1869 reported on the invention of the physique of James Greenwood, a 31-year-old collier from Dronfield, within the River Derwent at Baslow Bridge the earlier Saturday.
Greenwood was recognized by his brother John who had final seen James the Wednesday after Christmas Day at Dronfield.
Greenwood’s guising troupe, which consisted of six different members, had carried out the Old Horse on the Bull’s Head Inn, Calver, on New Year’s Day 1869.
The landlord, Isaac Bradwell, reported that the get together arrived round eight o’ clock and carried out ‘Ball’; at that time ‘they were not very sober’.
Fuelled by booze, inside tensions started to emerge, and finally they turned quarrelsome.
Greenwood introduced he was going dwelling and took off within the path of Calver Bridge. It was the coroner’s perception he had fallen over an embankment into the river at Calver Bridge and would have been unable to scramble to security.
The newspaper reported Greenwood as having a ‘good character in his own neighbourhood, [and] has left a widow and two children to lament his untimely end’.
For perspective, it’s value highlighting Greenwood’s native Dronfield is over ten miles from Calver.
The Poor Old Horse was nonetheless carried out by a workforce from Dronfield up till the early Nineteen Seventies, when folklorist Ruairidh Greig accompanied them on New Year’s Day acting at Dore, on the sting of Sheffield; writing the encounter up for the journal Lore and Language.
Shortly after the article’s publication in 1973 the workforce broke up, having turn into too aged to proceed and with nobody else keen to tackle the mantle.
The prop horse was subsequently confined to storage within the attic of a member of the Ralphs household, one of many former performers.
Twenty years later, members of the Old Dronfield Society retrieved it to carry out the customized for fellow society members within the early Nineteen Nineties – following which it mysteriously vanished; its present whereabouts are unknown.
The customized was not forgotten in Dronfield and an opportunity sighting of a horse’s cranium in an vintage store led to the concept of a revival.
First Art and Dronfield Heritage Trust put out an open name with a funds of £4,500, awarded to scriptwriters Rob Thomson and Eion Bentick, who labored with college students from Henry Fanshawe faculty and interviewed aged residents of native care properties to provide a brief play carried out on December 2 2016 as a part of Dronfield’s annual Christmas lights switch-on.
‘What’s this all about then?’ demanded a red-faced gentleman in a too-tight tweed blazer stationed on the entrance row, brandishing an e-cig for emphasis.
‘It’s a play a couple of lifeless horse… it’s higher than it sounds from that’, defined the girl within the subsequent chair.
Recently I arrange an Instagram account to doc my Derbyshire folklore researches (@weirdderbyshire).
One profit is that it has linked me with like-minded sorts I wouldn’t in any other case have come into contact with – one being Rob Barber, who was born in Sheffield however moved to Stoney Middleton as a toddler and has subsequently lived throughout a lot of the Hope Valley.
I used to be impressed to find Rob had constructed his personal horse prop based mostly on the Poor Old Horse customized and I requested what impressed him to make it.
‘I used to be an avid reader of Ritual Animal Disguise, a e book by R.C Cawte, which provides an in depth have a look at native folklore, customized and traditions, a lot of which contain dressing up as animals for ceremonies.
‘It’s been exhausting to seek out an abundance of documentation about Poor Old Horse – the additional south you go, the extra info there’s about such customs. It’s rarer that this info is preserved and maintained within the north.
‘Customs like these turn into ignored and plenty of dedicated to the historical past books. It makes me marvel why, what occurred to the horses? Why is that this one thing lacking from our tradition as northerners?
‘This gave me a desire to breathe a little life back into poor old horse and create my own version, using the limited images available of the original as a guide.’
Rob subsequently contacted Ron Shuttleworth, writer of Constructing a Hobby Animal.
Ron, now in his 90s, grew up in Hathersage and was delighted to see somebody of a youthful era take an curiosity in his assortment of folklore materials, which was donated to Sheffield University Library in 2015.
Rob was given the cranium of a Dartmoor pony which shaped the idea of his prop. ‘After a lot cleansing and filling, I painted the cranium shiny black as described in a 1973 Lore and Language article.
‘The eyes have been constructed from silver birch, and marble oak galls and adorned white and satan crimson. The horse’s mouth snaps open as a part of the efficiency which has an operational wire mechanism and the pole is constructed from domestically discovered ash wooden.
‘The cape is a regular black hessian sack. The hobby horse is adorned with a pony bit and brasses and a few personal touches.’
I requested what his imaginative and prescient was for the Horse now he’d introduced it into the world.
‘I’d love for this to be reintroduced into the neighborhood and for the custom to be re-ignited. Perhaps it might be utilized in occasions, exhibited or utilized in training.
‘I discover numerous worth in connecting to my roots and ancestors. I hope I can encourage others to do the identical, whether or not by means of the Hobby Horse or different forgotten traditions.
‘While it’s important we learn about other cultures and traditions, it’s important to understand my own as well. We may think we know all there is to know about local history, but so much has been lost’.
