The Dorset Ooser was first brought to public attention in 1891 by the Canon Charles Herbert Mayo (1845-1929). Canon Mayo was Dorset Editor of Somerset & Dorset Notes & Queries (SDNQ) and in the 1891 issue of SDNQ (vol. 2, part xvi, p.289) he announced the discovery at Melbury Osmund of a large wooden mask with horns that had been used at village revels and Christmas mumming. Accompanying the article was a photograph of the Ooser taken by John Chaffin & Sons of Yeovil, one of only two known photographs of the original mask.
Canon Mayo wrote: ‘THE OOSER. With the present Number, which concludes the Second Volume of S.&D.N.&Q., our readers are presented with an illustration (see Frontispiece) of the Dorset “Ooser,” taken from what is possibly the only example now in existence, or at any rate from one of the very few which may still survive in the County.
An Ooser is defined by the late Rev. W. Barnes, in his Glossary of the Dorset Dialect, 1886, p.85, as “Ooser, oose, or wu’se. A Mask as with grim jaws, put on with a cow’s skin to frighten folk. ‘Wurse,’ in Layamon’s Brut, is a name of the arch-fiend.”
The object itself is a wooden mask, of large size with features grotesquely human, long flowing locks of hair on either side of the head, a beard, and a pair of bullock’s horns, projecting right and left of the forehead. The mask or ooser is cut from a solid block, excepting the lower jaw, which his movable, and connected with the upper by a pair of leathern hinges. A string attached to this movable jaw, passes through a hole in the upper jaw, and is then allowed to fall within the cavity. The Ooser is so formed that a man’s head may be placed within it, and thus carry or support it, while he is in motion. No provision, however, is made for his seeing through the eyes of the mask, which are not pierced. By pulling the string, the lower jaw is drawn-up and closed against the upper, and when the string is slackened it descends.
It may plausibly be conjectured that the Ooser was in use at village reveals, and at similar times of rustic entertainment, and it reminds us of the animal heads worn by 14th century mummers, as illustrated at p.160 of Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes (1838). The horns, however, are not fixed vertically on the top of the head, as there represented.
The custom of personating animals is very ancient, and is described by Du Cange, (s.v. Cervula), as “Ludi profani apud Ethnicos et Paganos: solebant quippe ii Kalendis Januarii belluarum, et vetularum assumptis formis huc et illuc discursare, et petulantius sese gerere: quod a Christianis non modo proscriptum, sed et ab iis postmodum inductum constat, ut ea die ad calcandam Gentilium consuetudinem privatae fierent Litaniae et jejunaretur”; – and he refers to 10th Canon of the 4th Council of Toledo (A.D. 671). Bishop Faustinus (Sermone in Kal. Jan.) thus describes the custom: “Quis enim sapiens credere poterit inveniri aliquos sanae mentis qui cervulum facientes, in ferarum se velint habitu commutari? Alii vestiuntur pellibus pecudum, alii assumunt capita bestiarum, gaudentes et exultantes, si taliter se in ferinas species transformaverint, ut homines non esse videantur.”
Coming nearer home we find the same custom of personating the brute creation condemned (according to Kemble) in the Poenitentiale of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury (cap. xxvii): “Si quis in Kalendas Januarii in cervulo aut vetula vadit, id est, in ferarum habitus se communicant et vestiuntur pellibus pecudum, et assumunt capita bestiarum; qui vero taliter in ferinas species se transformant, etc., quia hoc daemoniacum est.” (Quoted by Kemble, The Saxons in England, 1876, vol. i., p.525).
The Ooser, figured in the accompanying illustration, belongs to Mr. Thos. Cave, of Holt Farm, Melbury Osmund, Dorset, in whose family it has been preserved time out of mind. No recollection of its ever being made use of is retained, but the present owner remembers its being kept in an old malt-house in the village of Melbury Osmund, where it was an object of terror to children who ventured to intrude upon the premises. Mr Cave, we understand, is willing to dispose of this mask to a lover of objects of local antiquarian interest.’
In volume 3 of SDNQ (March 1892, p.27), Henry Joseph Moule, curator of the Dorset County Museum, recounted his own early memories of the Ooser at Cerne Abbas: ‘The note about the Ooser calls back old times. In my childhood he 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. Any very ancient thing was, by the bye, in her Dorset “Wull’s Aggern” = Eggardon.’
The Melbury Osmund mask later went missing and a question about its current whereabouts from folklorist Margaret Murray of University College, London, was in 1917 published in SDNQ (vol.15, part 117, March 1917, p.182): ‘Can any of your readers inform me as to the present whereabouts of the wooden mask known as “The Dorset Ooser”? It belonged to Mr Cave, Holt Farm, Melbury Osmund, and an illustration of it was published in S.&D.N.&Q., 1891, p.289; and also in Elworthy’s Horns of Honour. I shall feel deeply indebted for the information.’
Later in 1917, another note about the mask was published in SDNQ (vol. 15, part 118, June 1917, p.214), this time from Cecil Henry Spencer Perceval of Henbury, Bristol: ‘In Feb. 1892, I had correspondence with Mr Thos. W. Cave (whose address then was 86, Cannon St., E.C.) to whom it then belonged. He offered it to me for Fifty Guineas, and said he had two other gentlemen to whom he was writing to the same effect. In a London Directory of 1906 I happen to have, his address is given as 19, Basinghall St., E.C. Perhaps the above information may be a help in tracing it. He says on 6th Feb.,1892, “Several Societies have written me for price, which I have given no one, as you wrote me first.” ‘
Although the original Ooser mask was never found, a replica is now on display at the Dorset County Museum and every year it makes an appearance at the May Day celebrations at Cerne Abbas.
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