May Day marvels from Padstow

Our May meeting happened to fall on May Day itself, so I decided to deliver a talk about the extraordinary May Day celebrations in Padstow, Cornwall, which I was lucky enough to witness some years ago. The festivities focus around two Hobby Horses, surreal horse-like costumes worn by men underneath, which parade around the town trying to capture women under their skirts, accompanied by a prancing "teaser" with a jester's club, and followed by columns of townsfolk playing drums and accordions and singing specific traditional songs. Once upon a time there was just one horse, but since 1919 there has a been a rival, and all the townspeople are affiliated to one or the other. In the talk I discussed the origins of such May Day pageantry (which was once common all over the country and across Europe), the fertility symbolism, and the strange arc of the Padstow's particular tradition: through much of the 19th century it was viewed as a rather degenerate spectacle perpetrated by a handful of drunken old sailors, who used it to raise a few coppers to buy more drink. But from the early 20th century it was gradually transformed into something respectable and so widely popular that by the 1960s Padstownians began to resent all the spectators from out of town. The specifics of the rituals combined with this slight sense of suspicion towards outsiders, resulted in the 1973 folk horror movie The Wicker Man being based on Padstow's May Day practices.

Sadly you won't find any photos of this—since I was giving the talk myself there was no one else to take photographs. Instead you get heartwarming snaps of Sheridanites enjoying each others' company. You can see more such photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sheridanclub/albums/72177720316662449.

Mr White, no stranger to mummery and wassailing himself