Old Tup

The tradition entails the use of a hobby horse with a goat's head that is mounted on a pole and carried by an individual hidden under a sackcloth.

Men would form into teams to accompany Old Tup on its travels around the local area, and although the makeup of such groups varied, they typically included an individual identified as a butcher, a crossdresser, and Beelzebub.

Unlike other hooded animal traditions found elsewhere in Britain, the Old Tup custom does not appear to have died out at this point, and continued to be practised in the local area throughout the century.

[6] Some troupes included a boy or old man who carried a bowl in which to mime the catching of Old Tup's blood.

[2] Some recorded instances also featured a blacksmith and his brother; these were stock characters in the Old Horse tradition which geographically overlapped that of Old Tup, and may be an element borrowed from the former by performers of the latter.

[7] This song spread to the United States where it was sung by George Washington and passed through oral traditions to singers such as Jean Ritchie.

The Old Tup tradition was recorded as being extant in an area of the East Midlands of England that was twenty miles across.

[8] Features common to these customs were the use of a hobby horse, the performance at Christmas time, a song or spoken statement requesting payment, and the use of a team who included a man dressed in women's clothing.

[9] In South Wales, the Mari Lwyd tradition featured troupes of men with a hobby horse knocking at doors over the Christmas period.

[12] Although the origins of Britain's hooded animal traditions are not known with any certainty, the lack of any late medieval references to such practices may suggest that they emerged from the documented elite fashion for hobby horses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[15] "The Derby Tup" song is known from older period, with a sailor from New England having learned a version of it during the War of 1812.

[15] Unlike other hooded animal traditions, the performance of the Old Tup custom did not die out during the twentieth century.