#guising

2025-12-03

For a different take on English winter animal #guising #folkcustoms (not quite #mummers, #mumming, #mummering, nor even #marilwyd ... but sort of related, back in antiquity), here's the performance list for a team in the #Whitstable / #Faversham / #HerneBay area.

A poster showing a black & white sketch of a hooden horse, with the Whitstable Hoodeners schedule for winter 2025/26. Text in the poster says:
Performing at
Friday 5 December — The Bouncing Barrel, Herne Bay (8pm)
Friday 19 December — Goody's Brewery, Herne (8:30pm)
Monday 22 December — Whitstable Tour:
 The Fountain, Whitstable (7:00pm)
 The Old Neptune, Whitstable (8:20pm)
Monday 29 December — Whitstable Folk Club (8:30pm)
Wednesday 7 January — Faversham Folk Club (7:30pm)
2025-11-19

Another #introduction, as our previous incarnation on EFDSS's trial folksocial.org migrated to BlueSky losing everything (OK, we'd only made a dozen posts). Our ancient annual #EastKent #folktradition of #hoodening involves visiting houses (mainly public houses, i.e. pubs!) the week before Christmas/Solstice with our #hoodenhorse, performing a short humorous play (written new each year) and a song or two (is #folkmusic right? it's often a parody of a recent pop song). Then we sing community carols and collect donations in our nosebag. For the last sixty years this has been for a local charity rather than ourselves. Everything you wanted to know about #hoodenhorses and #guising (and related #folkcustom or #folklore topics, e.g. #MariLwyd, #wassail) but never dared ask is - probably - contained in hoodening.org.uk, and the #OzaruBooks publications shown there. 🐴

A photo of our team of #hoodeners in around 1919: a molly (man dressed as a woman), musician in flowery costume, boy (who would ride the horse), wagoner, farm hand, and #hoodenhorse (wooden horse's head on a pole with a snapping jaw, operated by a stooped man hidden underneath by sackcloth).
George Macgregorg3om4c@code4lib.social
2025-10-31

'Halloween', Robert Burns (1785).

I like the following annotation the #BBC has appended to Burns's poem, the opening line of which is:

"American style 'trick or treat' juvenile extortion rackets have largely replaced Scottish guising...." 😀

bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/wor #halloween #halloween2025 #guising #poetry #Burns

Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2025-10-31

“It must have been unsettling to answer a knock at the door on a winter’s night and encounter these figures. And that, of course, was the point”

—Skekling, casting kale, driving a flock of sheep into your neighbour’s kitchen(!) & other Shetland guising traditions

shetland.org/blog/halloween-sk

#Scottish #Scotland #Shetland #Halloween #customs #traditions #folklore #guising

2025-10-31

@Black_Flag Agreed! However the fair exchange in #Guising is the good and one true way for exploring the thin time and places of #Samhain.
#TrickOrTreat can get in the bin along with the rest of the extortive capitalist claptrap

imikotoba 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❤️🇯🇵imikotoba@mastodon.scot
2025-10-30

Not more #Kabocha photos this time, but carved and painted orange pumpkins ready for #guising - Houses with a #pumpkin outside can expect to be treated to visits from trick or treaters in costume (usually with a joke or something). Didn’t fancy carving a more traditional ‘neep instead (turnips or swedes are much harder).

Three orange carved pumpkins indoors on the floor. Small with a face and white seeds as random teeth, medium in the middle with a face and tongue sticking out, and a small painted one on the right.
dave cykldavecykl
2025-10-24

Please tell me I did •not• just overhear an advert on the radio in the cafeteria voiced by someone with a accent (and therefore probably on an actual Scottish radio station) referring to “our trick-or-treat trail”?!!

It’s you total tumshie!! You certainly ought to ken better! 😒😡

Whatever they were trying to sell, I sure as hell won’t be buying it…

dave cykldavecykl
2024-10-31

And tonight, of course, the street outside is full of little monsters ! 👻🧛🧙🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️🧟🎃

2023-10-31

Having a festive first game of Ghosts Love Candy Too, which so far is pretty good tbh. Silly, enjoyable theme - ghosts haunt guisers to steal their candy. Enough strategy for a light game, reckon all the guisers we saw this evening would love it.

#BoardGames #BoardGame #Halloween #Guising #TrickOrTreat

A board game being played on a table. There are lots of cards with ghost cartoons on them, other cards with cartoon children wearing Halloween costumes, and candy tokens. A pumpkin token bag is also on the table, and the edge of some barmbrack fruit cake on a plate.
2023-10-31

Happy Halloween 🎃

A day for sharing Matt McGinn's Dundee Ghost, and this rather ghoulish figure from Chapbook 3.4 (1966).

McGinn singing: youtube.com/watch?v=VU28xfabOC

#Halloween #FolkMusic #TradMusic #Folk #ScottishMusic #Scotland #Scottish #Dundee #Glasgow #Scots #ScotsLeid #Guising #TrickOrTreat #MattMcGinn

A page of Chapbook 3.4, titled 'the dundee ghost' with 'words and music by Matt McGinn'. There are 22 bars of music, lyrics to the song, and a hand-drawn picture of a ghoulish, skeleton-like head in a hood with a dark-shaded background behind it.

The lyrics are too long for this description box, but are available here: https://mudcat.org/detail_pf.cfm?messages__Message_ID=226962
Assoc for Scottish Literaturescotlit@mastodon.scot
2023-10-31

Oidhche Shamhna – a South Uist Halloween

Margaret Fay Shaw recorded a traditional Hebridean #Halloween with her images & film of South Uist in the 1930s

#Scottish #Gaelic #Hebrides #guising #folklore
nts.org.uk/stories/oidhche-sha

A black and white image of two children dressed for Halloween. They are wearing multiple layers of outsized clothes, bundled and knotted around. Their hands are hidden, and they have huge adult work-boots on their feet. The figure on the left is wearing a crude mask with tiny eyeholes and a mouth hole; scraps of dried grass have been added to creat a beard and moustache. The figure on the right doesn't seem to have a mask – just a large clump of heather for a head.
2023-10-31

Happy Halloween.
Whether you're guising, dooking or hiding out from the spooks, we hope you have a great day. There are a couple of appointments available today if you need to fine tune your skeleton before the festivities start.

#appointmentsavailable #spooky #funny #Halloween #skeleton #treatment #shop #guising #trickortreat #dooking #creepy

2023-10-19

Are you feeling some twinges as the weather changes. Worried it'll cramp your guising style? We offer a bewitching array of treatments (no tricks) to get your spine-tingling and touching your toes again.

Whether you're planning on dooking for apples or hiding out on the sofa with the leftover sweets, we can get you feeling ghoulishly good again.

Give us a shout (or scream) on 0131 339 9451 to find out more.

#halloween #guising #trickortreat #trick #spine #treatment #Chiropractic

2023-03-31

Tomorrow (April 1) sees assorted horses etc. run amok at #MaidstoneMuseums, as part of the ongoing Animal #Guising and the Kentish #HoodenHorse exhibition. Free entry.

10.30 #Whitstable #Hoodeners
11.30 Dover Tales
12.00 Invictus Mugustis Equinus (from Broadstairs Folkweek)
12.30 Curator's tour, with James Frost
13.30 Whitstable Hoodeners
14.00 Invictus Mugustis Equinus
14.30 Dover Tales

museum.maidstone.gov.uk/whats-

Old newspaper article: "The Hooden Horse in Maidstone Museum / An old Christmas custom / The Hooden Horse will be up to his antics again" (has a picture of a lady next to a hooden horse)
Stewart Russellscruss
2021-10-31
a carved swede/turnip with Xs for eyes, two nostrils and a lopsided grin, lit from the inside by a small candle. The result is a glowing spooky/spoopy face. This is the Scottish halloween tradition

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