Many Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are familiar with the mummering tradition over the 12 days of Christmas, but many might not be familiar with the very early pagan roots of the activity.
Among the characters featured is the dreaded hobbyhorse, a mystical creature with a horse’s head or horse’s skull, and a moveable jaw that can be snapped shut with a string.
In early tradition in the British Isles the hobbyhorse was a fertility figure, but Andrea O’Brien says the character had changed over the generations in Newfoundland.
She says by the early 1900s the hobbyhorse was simply seen as a fun thing to do, although it was still used to scare people and chase them around the house. “But I don’t know how much connection there was left,” she says to those “earlier beginnings of the tradition.”