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The Dorset Ooser () is a wooden head that featured in the nineteenth-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. 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 traveling with Edward Cave to Somerset, the Ooser went missing around 1897. Subsequent accounts collected from villagers indicate that it featured in a localised 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. Other accounts testified to it being used in practical jokes to scare local children and in some cases adults. 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 etymology of the term "Ooser" is also disputed. 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 scare people into behaving in a moral manner. 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. 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 local folk culture, being used in Morris dancing processions. 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. ==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 an individual to place their own head within it, potentially permitting it to be carried on the shoulders and worn as a mask; however, there are no holes that allow 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, folklorist H. S. L. Dewar stated that "the expression of the eyes conveys 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 known as 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 seventeenth-century Italian term ''Oser'', again used for the Devil. Alternately, he suggested that it might be a derivative of ''Guisard'' or ''Guiser'', an old term for a Mummer. Hutton instead suggested that the term might be a derivation of ''Wooset'', a term used in Wiltshire dialect 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 dated back to the early seventeenth century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dorset Ooser」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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