A rather scary hobby-horse

I wrote a couple of days ago about Crockern Tor on Dartmoor in Devon and the supposedly the home of Old Crockern . I can’t quite make out whether this spectral creature, is a figure on horseback, galloping across the moors accompanied by phantom hounds or the scary skeleton horse. Maybe Old Crockern was actually a spirit of an ancient god of the moors, or a long-forgotten pre-Christian god of the place, the genus loci.

Old Crockern reminds me of Mari Lwyd, a Welsh folk creature with a horse’s skull, which gambols about, wassailing from house to house like a rather scary hobby-horse. I first heard of her from Rosie Scribblah https://scribblah.co.uk/2018/12/31/blwyddyn-newydd-dda/ It also reminds me of the not very scary and frolicsome hobby-horse which disrupts country dancers and Morris people. I’ve mentioned before that when I was at junior school, each year there was a country-dancing festival for schools. I was desperate to be in our dance team, but my dancing is worse than my singing – however, I was chosen to be the hobby-horse for the whole festival! I wish I had a photo of me in the ancient costume, I would love to see what it was like as I was inside it and have no idea!

Dartmoor entered my consciousness when I heard Lorna Doone on the radio, probably in Children’s Hour which was on every day from five o’clock. I would have read the book too, borrowed from the library no doubt. My next connection would have been ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’, which may also have been on the radio but I would certainly have read being a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. In the neighbouring county of Cornwall, another moor Bodmin, was the setting for Daphne du Maurier’s novel, Jamaica Inn, but I was much older when I read that.

Next time we’re travelling over Dartmoor, we must divert to try and find Crockern Tor, apparently, “this somewhat insignificant rock pile when viewed from the south, lies on the gentle slope above Parson’s Cottage just to the north of the B3212 between Two Bridges and Powder Mills and is easily accessed through a gate by the road.” Easily accessed, but I wonder how steep the climb is!

I have no images of scary hobby-horses so instead my featured image is of me and a not scary horse.