Haxey Hood

The Haxey Hood is held every January 6th in the village of Haxey, Lincolnshire, and has been for as long as anyone can reliably trace — at least to the fourteenth century. The origin legend gives it to Lady de Mowbray, whose silk hood blew away in the wind and was chased by thirteen farmhands; she rewarded them with a field of land on condition that the chase was re-enacted every year.

The cast of characters is fixed: the Lord of the Hood in top hat and red coat, eleven Boggins in red jerseys, and the Fool — who gives a speech, is symbolically 'smoked' over a fire of burning straw, and presides over the preliminaries. The Hood itself is a stiff leather tube that cannot be thrown or kicked — only pushed, carried, and wrestled over. Two teams representing the village's two pubs attempt to push it to their respective doors; the whole village becomes the playing field, fences and gardens included.

The game has no fixed duration: it ends when the Hood finally reaches one of the pub doors, which can take hours. It resembles no other sport and has no obvious ancestor — its origins, whatever Lady de Mowbray's legend claims, remain genuinely obscure.