Horning the Colt

I've featured quite a few quirky British folk festivals on this blog (and I'll feature many more) and I've talked about the importance of keeping them alive. These traditions - even if they have no relevance to modern life - are a link to the past and help to bind a community together by providing a unique cultural identity. Certainly, in my Cornish home town of Helston, the annual Flora Day celebrations are the high point of the year and, when it came back this year after a Covid-enforced two years, I actually saw grown men becoming tearful with happiness. 

It is, therefore, always sad when you read about a tradition that has died. One such that should have taken place today is the Horning of the Colts in Weyhill, Hampshire. 

Today, October 10th, was known as Old Michaelmas Day and, for over 700 years, was when the Weyhill Fair was held in Hampshire. The word fair comes from the Latin feria meaning holy day. Feast days and fair days coalesced, as the church saw the fair as a good revenue-raising enterprise. Fairs could only operate by right of a grant from the crown and the earliest of these grants was given by William the Conqueror to Winchester, to hold its annual free fair on St Giles Hill. The Weyhill Fair took place three times a year: April for trading cattle, July for selling the lambs and October for hops. 

Weyhill Fair was one of the largest and most important sheep fairs in the country and, at its zenith, was trading 100,000 sheep a day. The fair also traded large numbers of pigs, horses and cattle. The hop fair saw the Farnham hop growers arriving in mass and they had a row of stalls which became known as the Farnham Row. The cheese fair saw cheeses brought from the counties of Wiltshire, Somerset and Gloucestershire. The fair was also a great place for hiring skilled and unskilled workers with a custom known as ‘Mop’, in which the disengaged person stood in a prominent position displaying an article of their profession. 

Hawkers selling all manner of trinkets and entertainers of all kinds would have taken advantage of all the people coming to the fair. Some of the items for sale were somewhat unusual ... the annual register of the fair for 1832 records that one Joseph Thomson offered his wife for sale for 50 shillings. He didn’t quite make that but accepted 20 shillings and a dog. This inspired Thomas Hardy to include the scene in The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) where Michael Henchard, after becoming drunk at the Weyhill Fair (called Weydon Priors in the book), sold his wife to a sailor for five guineas.

The fair is now gone, sadly, although a modern fair does still take place with the usual rides and food stalls etc. However, with the loss of the fair has gone the ancient Horning of the Colts ceremony. This, no doubt, had its roots in paganism but had come into the present as an initiation rite for new young farmers and shepherds (and even new parish priests). 

They initiates were taken to one of the town's many inns and presented with a vessel made of a pair of ram’s horns with a silver cup mounted between them capable of holding a pint of ale. Below the cup was a grotesque carved face. According to one contemporary account, the face on the cap at the Star Inn (now the Pink Olive restaurant) was 'like a dog with an open mouth, which was painted red.' I've tried, in vain, to find a good photo or illustration of this item - though one does appear on the cover of this book which, I'm told, may be in Andover Museum.

After a good dinner the landlord would then ask 'Are there any colts to be horned?' The initiates would then come forward and the filled vessel placed on his (it was all boys back then) head. The following was then recited or sung: 

So fleet runs the hart and so cunning the fox, 

Why shouldn’t the young calf grow to be an ox. 

For to get his living through briars and through thorns, 

And to die like daddy with a long pair of horns.

 

Horns, boys, horns! 

Horns, boys, horns!

Why shouldn’t he ramble through briars and through thorns 

And to die like his daddy with a long pair of horns. 

The cup was then handed to the novice, who drank the the ale. After this he paid for half a gallon of ale (4 pints) for the others to drink. 

I have found a modern recording of the song (with slightly variant lyrics) by Kate Fletcher and Corwen Broch. You can listen here. 

I am also told that there were plans to revive the ceremony but, to date, it hasn't happened. 

What a great shame.