Mock Mayors

The book I'm currently researching and writing has required me to look into the tradition of Mock Mayors.

In 2016, and for the first time in 122 years, the tradition of (Mock) Mayor of Mylor has been revived in the Cornish town of Penryn. Enthroning the Mayor of Mylor involves a topsy-turvy day when the job of Mayor-for-a-day is given to the fellow that the 'Journeyman Tailors' deemed the wittiest. 

What follows is a day of parades, costume, ale-testing, music and dancing, ending with a mock civic feast. 

Hazelnuts were traditionally gathered by locals of the lower classes known as "The Nutters" on "Nutting Day" and the Mock Mayor's officers were given maces that were topped with the heads of cabbages and the Mayor would be carried in a chair and hold a sword.

Meanwhile in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, they've been electing a 'Mayor of Ock Street' for generations.

The Mock Mayor, or Sham Mayor, is a popular comedy performer once found at May Fairs everywhere. He (or she) is usually elected by a popular vote and then proceeds to act as a kind of ‘Lord of Misrule’ character, parodying the official office of mayor and doing things that the real incumbent can’t. This usually involves wearing something approximating a mayor’s outfit, singing, carousing, telling jokes and generally acting the fool. 

I wrote about Mock Mayors here while sculpting a figure of one. 

My research was particularly about my childhood home of Cornwall where, in some places, they also elected a Mock King. As Sir James George Frazer writes in his seminal work, The Golden Bough: 

‘A custom of annually appointing a mock king for a single day was observed at Lostwithiel in Cornwall down to the sixteenth century. On ‘Little Easter Sunday’ the freeholders of the town and manor assembled together, either in person or by their deputies, and one among them, as it fell to his lot by turn, gaily attired and gallantly mounted with a crown on his head, a sceptre in his hand, and a sword borne before him, rode through the principal street to the church, dutifully attended by all the rest on horseback. The clergyman in his best robes received him at the churchyard stile and conducted him to hear divine service. On leaving the church he repaired, with the same pomp, to a house provided for his reception. Here a feast awaited him and his suite, and being set at the head of the table he was served on bended knees, with all the rites due to the estate of a prince. The ceremony ended with the dinner, and every man returned home.’ 

And Peter Linebaugh has commented that: 

‘The May feast was presided over by the “Lord of Misrule,” the “King of Unreason,” or the “Abbot of Inobedience.”’

I might have to sculpt an Abbot of Inobedience now.