Dorset Ooser
The Dorset Ooser (
The Dorset Ooser was first brought to public attention in 1891, at which time it was under the ownership of the Cave family of Melbury Osmond's Holt Farm. After travelling with Edward Cave to
In 1975 a replica of the original Ooser was produced by John Byfleet, which has since been on display at the
Description and etymology
A wooden head, the Dorset Ooser had been cut from a single block of timber, with the exception of the lower jaw, which was movable and connected to the rest of the mask by leather hinges.[1] The lower jaw could be moved by pulling on a string which passed through a hole in the upper jaw to connect to the lower.[1] The mask also contained locks of hair on either side of its head, a beard on its chin, and a pair of bullock's horns.[1] Between the Ooser's eyes was a rounded boss, the meaning of which is unknown.[2] The Ooser was hollow, allowing someone to place their own head within it, potentially permitting it to be worn as a mask whilst being supported on the shoulders; however, there were no holes allowing for the wearer to see while wearing it in this way.[1] The historian Ronald Hutton described the Ooser as "a terrifying horned mask with human face, staring eyes, beard, and gnashing teeth".[3] Similarly, the folklorist H. S. L. Dewar stated that "the expression of the eyes [conveyed] a really agonized spirit of hatred, terror, and despair".[2]
The term "Ooser" was pronounced with a short, quick s by villagers as Osser.
History
The first public mention of the Dorset Ooser was in an 1891 edition of Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, where it was the subject of an article by the journal's editor, Charles Herbert Mayo. The head was, at the time, in the possession of Thomas Cave of Holt Farm in Melbury Osmond; the editor noted that it had been owned by Cave's family from "time out of mind".[6] Cave had stated that it had formerly been kept in an "old malt-house" in the village, "where it was an object of terror to children who ventured to intrude upon the premises".[6] Mayo noted that it was "possibly the only example now in existence, or at any rate from one of the very few which may still survive in the County",[1] adding that Cave was "willing to dispose of this mask to a lover of objects of antiquarian interest".[6]
At some point before 1897, another member of the family, the doctor Edward Cave, left Holt Farm and moved to Crewkerne in Somerset, taking the Ooser with him.[2] In 1897, he relocated to Bath, leaving the Ooser with his family coachman; when Edward Cave subsequently tried to recover the head, he was informed that it had been "disposed of", with some suggestion that it had found its way to the United States.[2] In 1935, a folklore collector named S. A. Ramsden undertook enquiries into the fate of the head at the prompting of the Egyptologist and folklorist Margaret Murray. His enquiries led him to meet with Cave's coachman, Lawrence, who – after Cave left Crewkerne – had subsequently served as the coachman for Cave's replacement, a doctor by the name of Webber. Lawrence said that Cave left the head in his house in the village, where it was hung up in a loft and began to fall apart; Lawrence recalled wearing it to frighten people during a parade around 1900, at which time the hair was falling out. He said that the house was later pulled down, with the head probably still inside it, in order for a local post office to be constructed in its place.[7]
Usage and origins
In Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries,
"In my childhood [the Ooser] was doing service – at Christmas mummings, surely it was. Our Cerne Abbas nurse was quite up in all relating to the "Wurser," as I should spell it phonetically. I did not know of the horns, indeed in our embryo Latinity we thought the word an attempt at Ursa, if I remember rightly. What crowds of odd bits I could note if, alas, I did but "remember rightly" all nurse's folk-lore and folk-speeches."
— H. J. Moule, Dorchester, 1892.[8]
Dewar also recorded the villagers' claims that the Ooser was brought to the door of a tallet in order to scare the local children, and that it was also used to scare adults on some occasions.[5] Knight came across the claim that it was once used to frighten a stable hand, who jumped through a window to escape it, and in doing so "so injured himself that his life was despaired of".[5] Dewar further drew comparisons with the horned masks sometimes worn during Mummers' plays. He noted that in a case of a group of Christmas Wassailers at Kingscote, Gloucestershire, a man was "dressed in a sack, his head in a real bull's face, head and horns complete".[4] Another case highlighted by Dewar was taken from an account provided by G. W. Greening of Dorchester, in which a member of the Bradstock Mummers was dressed as Beelzebub.[4] Given these similarities, Dewar ultimately suggested that the Ooser was "likely enough an off-shoot from the 14th century and later Mummers' plays".[4] The antiquary Frederick Thomas Elworthy expressed the view that the Dorset Ooser was "the probable head" of a hobby horse.[11] The folklorist E. C. Cawte, in his in-depth study of the hobby horse tradition in English folk culture, stated that although both entailed dressing up in an animalistic costume, the Ooser had no clear connection with this tradition.[12]
Elworthy suggested that the Ooser was a depiction of the Devil,[13] an idea supported by Dewar, who believed that, as the Devil, its imagery was "intended to inspire terror in the minds of the foolish and the wicked".[2] Conversely, others have suggested that it is a depiction of a pre-Christian god. In her 1931 book The God of the Witches, Margaret Murray connected the Ooser to her version of the witch-cult hypothesis—the idea that those tried as alleged witches were adherents of a surviving pre-Christian fertility religion—claiming that the mask was a cult item that reflected continuing worship of the cult's Horned God.[14] Murray's hypothesis is now discredited. The historians Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander have stated that "today, scholars are agreed that Murray was more than just wrong [regarding the existence of the witch-cult] – she was completely and embarrassingly wrong on nearly all of her basic premises".[15] The Ooser's pre-Christian origin theory was echoed in the Reader's Digest encyclopaedia of British folklore, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, where it was described as "the idol of a former god of fertility".[16] A gold embossed image of the Ooser was included on the front of the black clothbound encyclopaedia.[17] Although not believing that the Ooser was a specific depiction of a surviving pre-Christian deity, Dewar suggested that the imagery of the Devil, and thus of the Ooser, was originally drawn from the pre-Christian gods of "phallic or fertility worship".[5]
Contemporary usage and influence
In 1975 the local Morris dancer John Byfleet made a replica of the original Ooser, which he carved from a log using a penknife.
Murray's interpretation of the Ooser was embraced by
References
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f Mayo 1891, p. 289.
- ^ a b c d e Dewar 1962, p. 178.
- ^ a b c Hutton 1996, p. 88.
- ^ a b c d e f Dewar 1962, p. 180.
- ^ a b c d e Dewar 1962, p. 179.
- ^ a b c d Mayo 1891, p. 290.
- ^ Oates & Wood 1998, p. 41.
- ^ a b c Moule 1892, p. 27.
- ^ Brown 1952, pp. 107–108.
- ^ Robson 1988, pp. 145–146; Hutton 1996, p. 88.
- ^ Elworthy 1900, p. 141.
- ^ Cawte 1978, p. 153.
- ^ Elworthy 1900, p. 139.
- ^ Murray 1952, pp. 43–44; Oates & Wood 1998, p. 19.
- ^ Russell & Alexander 2007, p. 154.
- ^ Reader's Digest Association 1973, p. 164.
- ^ Darby & Finneran 2022, p. 314.
- ^ Anon 2006; Anon 2009.
- ^ a b Anon 2006.
- ^ Anon 2009.
- ^ Lewis 2005.
- ^ Valiente 1984, p. 95.
- ^ Seims 2008.
- ^ Blackwell 2012, pp. 30–31; Doyle White 2015, p. 369.
Bibliography
- Anon (5 July 2006). "Scary Ooser 'goes home'". Dorset Echo. Archived from the original on 8 June 2015. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
- Anon (2009). "About the Wessex Morris Men". Wessex Morris Men. Archived from the original on 17 August 2014. Retrieved 7 February 2016.
- Blackwell, Christopher (2012). "How do you say that in Witch ? Interview with Culture Builder of Paganistan, Steven Posch". Action. pp. 19–31. Archived from the original on 29 September 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
- Brown, Theo (1952). "The "Stag-Hunt" in Devon". Folklore. 63 (2): 104–09. .
- Cawte, E. C. (1978). Ritual Animal Disguise: A Historical and Geographical Study of Animal Disguise in the British Isles. Cambridge and Totowa: D.S. Brewer Ltd. and Rowman and Littlefield for the Folklore Society. ISBN 978-0-85991-028-6.
- Darby, Paul; Finneran, Niall (2022). "Spectral Nation: Characterizing British Haunted Landscapes through the Lens of the 1970s 'Ghost Gazetteer' and a Folk Horror Perspective". Folklore. 133 (3): 311–333. .
- Dewar, H. S. L. (1962). "The Dorset Ooser". Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society. 84: 178–180.
- Doyle White, Ethan (2015). "Review of Murphy Pizza, Paganistan: Contemporary Pagan Community in Minnesota's Twin Cities". Folklore. 126 (3): 368–369. S2CID 216644682.
- Elworthy, Frederick Thomas (1900). Horns of Honour: And Other Studies in the By-Ways of Archaeology. London: John Murray.
- Hutton, Ronald (1996). The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820570-8.
- Lewis, Richard (1 May 2005). "Celebrating May Day the pagan way". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 27 January 2016. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
- Mayo, Charles Herbert (1891). "The Ooser". Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries. 2: 289–290.
- Moule, H. J. (1892). "The Ooser". Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries. 3: 27.
- Murray, Margaret A. (1952) [1931]. The God of the Witches. London: Faber and Faber.
- Oates, Caroline; Wood, Juliette (1998). A Coven of Scholars: Margaret Murray and her Working Methods. Archive Series 1. London: The Folklore Society. ISBN 978-0-903515-16-0.
- Reader's Digest Association (1973). Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. London: Reader's Digest.
- Robson, Peter (1988). Calendar Customs in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Dorset (M.Phil thesis). Sheffield University.
- Russell, Jeffrey B.; Alexander, Brooks (2007). A New History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics and Pagans. London: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-28634-0.
- Seims, Melissa (2008). "The Coven of Atho". The Wica. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
- Valiente, Doreen (1984). An ABC of Witchcraft: Past and Present (corrected ed.). London: Robert Hale.
External links
- "The Dorset Ooser" at Dorset County Museum's WordPress blog
- "The Dorset Ooser" at the Dark Dorset website
- "The Dorset Ooser", a study by Daniel Patrick Quinn
- "Spotlight on SDNQ: Christmas traditions" on the SDNQ website