Back with a bang, and back with a double whallop of localised custom. Both the Haxey Hood Game and the Straw Bears - that are associated with Plough Monday - are local customs that may well be variants of once more common customs. In the case of the Haxey Hood Game, the 'rules' of the game follow many of the early forms of 'football', played between villages, or even between two halves of a village, and in the case of the Straw Bear, there are links to many of the guising or mumming festivals that are still prevalent, or are being reintroduced up and down the country. Now, for some details:
The Haxey Hood Game
Like most customs the origins of this 'tussle' are clouded in the mists of time. However, the general story is that the Lady de Mowbray, some 700+ years ago, dropped her hood (or veil) while out riding in a strong wind. Local farm labourers rushed to return the hood, upon which the grateful Lady bestowed the honourary title of Lord of the Hood on the particular returnee. The following year, it is said, the lady installed the return of the hood as an annual fixture that has developed into the modern 'game'
So, to the present day. The game is played between two North Lincolnshire villages - Haxey itself, and Westwoodside on Twelfth Night (January 6). Contestants, otherwise known as Boggins, represent one of four local hostelries, and attempt to 'sway' the hood (now a long leather cylinder) that way. The game is ended when the hood is presented to the landlord of one of the four inns. The game is overseen by the Lord of the Hood and the Chief Boggin, and is started by the Fool (the farm labourer who did not return the original hood to the hatless Lady), who is dressed colourfully with rags sewn to a blazer. Before he throws the hood into the air from the location where the original hood was first picked up, a small fire is lit behind him in order to 'smoke the fool'!
It is interesting that this particular custom appears on Twelfth Night - old Christmas Day, and is associated with feasts and merriment. As we saw with the customs associated with Christmas and the New Year, this sort of custom, associated as it is with rewards and feasting in the depths of winter, may all be associated with attemtps to welcome back the sun and the spring, to lift spirits and to focus people's minds on something other than the hard toil of daily life.
Like many other customs, the Haxey Hood Game, also contains within its custom and ceremony many aspects of other seasonal customs and traditions. Games such as this, if you call it football, or a tussle, or as in some places 'uppies an doonies', usually occur between neighbouring villages, or within a village that is seperated by a natural boundary, such as a river. They also involve most able-bodied villagers. It doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to see a folk-memory of the assertion of boundary rights behind some aspect of the Hood game - perhaps a more energetic version of the Beating of the Bounds?! Maybe not.
In this day and age, when our calendar customs are largely limited to Christmas, Easter, a summer holiday, and the various bank holidays, it makes you appreciate just why there seemed to be so many occassions for celebration and communal gathering in the period right up until, really the post WWII period, when many of these, or similar customs died out.
Of course, many of these old customs and traditions were seasonal celebrations based on a rural cycle of living that most of us have lost touch with.
It should also be noted the game, and the villages take place in the Isle of Axholme, a raised area of land formerly surrounded by rivers, streams and bogs. In fact, some attribute the origins of the leather hood with those apparently found on the heads of sacrificial bog vicitims found in the area - though I make no claim as to the validity of this piece of information!
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8 months ago
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