The Dorset Ooser () is a wooden head that featured in the 19th-century folk culture of Melbury Osmond, a village in the southwestern English county of Dorset. The head was hollow, thus perhaps serving as a mask, and included a humanoid face with horns, a beard, and a hinged jaw which allowed the mouth to open and close. Although sometimes used to scare people during practical jokes, its main recorded purpose was as part of a local variant of the charivari custom known as "skimity riding" or "rough music", in which it was used to humiliate those who were deemed to have behaved in an immoral manner.
The Dorset Ooser was first brought to public attention in 1891, at which time it was under the ownership of the Cave family of Melbury Osmond's Holt Farm. After travelling with Edward Cave to Somerset, the Ooser went missing around 1897. Since then, various folklorists and historians have debated the origins of the head, which has possible connections to the horned costumes sometimes worn by participants in English Mummers plays. The folklorists Frederick Thomas Elworthy and H. S. L. Dewar believed that the head was a representation of the Devil and thus was designed to intimidate people into behaving according to the local community's moral system. Conversely, the folklorist Margaret Murray suggested that it represented a pre-Christian god of fertility whose worship survived in Dorset into the modern period, although more recent scholarship has been highly sceptical of this interpretation. The etymology of Ooser is also disputed, with various possibilities available.
In 1975 a replica of the original Ooser was produced by John Byfleet, which has since been on display at Dorset County Museum in Dorchester. This mask retains a place in Dorset folk culture, being removed from the museum for use in local Morris dancing processions held by the Wessex Morris Men on both St. George's Day and May Day. The design of the Ooser has also inspired the production of copies which have been used as representations of the Horned God in the modern Pagan religion of Wicca in both the United Kingdom and United States.
Description and etymology
A wooden head, the Dorset Ooser had been cut from a single block of timber, with the exception of the lower jaw, which was movable and connected to the rest of the mask by leather hinges. The lower jaw could be moved by pulling on a string which passed through a hole in the upper jaw to connect to the lower. The mask also contained locks of hair on either side of its head, a beard on its chin, and a pair of bullock's horns. Between the Ooser's eyes was a rounded boss, the meaning of which is unknown. The Ooser was hollow, allowing someone to place their own head within it, potentially permitting it to be worn as a mask whilst being supported on the shoulders; however, there were no holes allowing for the wearer to see while wearing it in this way. The historian Ronald Hutton described the Ooser as "a terrifying horned mask with human face, staring eyes, beard, and gnashing teeth". Similarly, the folklorist H. S. L. Dewar stated that "the expression of the eyes [conveyed] a really agonized spirit of hatred, terror, and despair".
The term "Ooser" was pronounced with a short, quick s by villagers as Osser. It is unclear if the head itself was the Ooser, or whether it instead was designed as a depiction of an entity called the Ooser. Dewar suggested the possibility that it might have been connected to the term Wurse, used for the Devil in Layamon's Brut, or to the 17th-century Italian term Oser, again used for the Devil. Alternately, he suggested that it might be a derivative of Guisard or Guiser, two old terms for a mummer. Hutton instead proposed that Osser possibly derived from Wooset, a term used in the dialect around Wiltshire to refer to a pole upon which a horse's skull with deer's horns was affixed. This Wooset was recorded as having been paraded by youths in the Marlborough district until the 1830s, where it was used to mock neighbours whose partners were suspected of marital infidelity, the horns being a traditional sign of cuckoldry. Similar traditions have been recorded in Wiltshire and Somerset, where they can be traced back to at least the early 17th century.