Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/283

 Reviews, 247

them the skill in weighing and marshalling evidence that belongs to his legal training; and he has left no point untouched that could serve to throw light on his subject.

"Hoodening" is a Christmas custom observed by the men employed in farm-stables in the Isle of Thanet and the adjoining district of East Kent. On Christmas Eve they go round the neighbourhood collecting money, and singing carols and other songs, accompanied by musical instruments (usually a concertina and triangle), or sometimes performing tunes on hand-bells. The distinctive local feature of this all-but-universal practice is that the men take with them a hooden horse. This is a wooden horse's head fixed on a pole like a child's toy "hobby-horse," and carried by a man whose body, together with the pole, is completely shrouded m a rude garment of sackcloth or other rough material, attached to the head and generally adorned with some attempt at representing the be-ribboned mane and tail. The head is decorated with "horse- brasses," and the jaws are well provided with iron nails representing teeth. The lower jaw is fixed on a hinge, and is worked backwards and forwards by the man inside, who prances and curvets and imitates the action of a fidgetty horse. He is known as the " Hoodener," and is led by another man dressed as a " Waggoner " with a long whip, who makes him show off his paces, and is accompanied by a "Rider" or "Jockey," who attempts to mount him, to the amusement of the spectators ; and also by " Molly," the man in woman's clothes who commonly accompanies such rustic shows, and who here carries a birchen broom and makes a great show of sweeping. When these have sufficiently shown off their antics to the mingled terror and delight of the younger folks present, the money is collected, and in some places must be put into the Hooden Horse's jaws. The Horse is kept from year to year in the farm-stables, and has been known to be renewed from time to time when lost or worn out. On its existence, of course, depends the continuance of the custom. Mr. Maylam points out that the places in which it is observed are all in the area of the Lathe of St. Augustine, which is also the area of a distinct variety of the Kentish dialect. The natural inference from this would be that the custom took shape when the Lathe in question was still in some sense a political unit, a distinct entity with its own special features.