Minehead Hobby Horse
Minehead, Somerset
30 April l to 3 May

The Minehead Hobby Horse emerges on the eve of May Day, or 'warning day', from his home on the quay. He visits the local pubs chases the children and cavorts in the streets while his attendants collect money. He is not awe-inspiring in the way that the Padstow Hobby Horse is, and is of a more gentle disposition. He is followed by two musicians, one with a drum and the other with a melodeon. This is the Sailor's Horse, and he is occasionally challenged by another, impertinent Town Horse.

The Sailor's Horse is up by 6 o'clock on the next morning, when he trots up Higher Town to Whitecross, where he bows three times to the rising sun. His other formal engagement on May Day is to pay a visit to Dunsber Castle, where he himself is entertained and where he entertains in return. On 2 May and 3 May, he visits various outlying hamlets, returning eventually to finish his dancing in the main square in Minehead on the evening of 3 May.

As with the Padstow horse, there is nothing certain about the origins of the Minehead Hobby Horse. There is a suggestion from both Padstow and Minehead that their own is the original and the other the imitation horse. The Minehead horse is credited with frightening off Viking invaders in 878 and 1052. Though if this is to be believed, it scotches the theory that it is a commemoration of a famous shipwreck of Dunster in 1772, when a mw was washed ashore, whose tail was cut off and became part of the horse. In a report of 1830, the custom is said then to have 'persevered for ages'. And as to the horse's peregrinations, it is claimed that these make it part of a beating-the-bounds custom.

The creature itself is long and boat-shaped, borne in the middle from whence the head emerges. This wears a mask fashioned out of tin and crowned with ribbons and feathers, like the helmet of an armoured knight. The horse's upper Part is
with ribbons which flow in the wind, and the sides are decorated with circles. At the rear is a long, tasselated tail. Musicians apart, the Sailor's Horse is attended by ‘Gullivers' : (derivation uncertain), wearing masks and tall hats, with ribbon covered costume akin to the horse's cloth and colouring. Their job is to collect money, which they do with enthusiasm, but not quite with such vigour as they did in the past, when it is said '" they actually went so far as to kill a man who was reluctant ' offer a donation.

The Tyburn Walk
From St Sepulchre's Church, London EC4 to Hyde Park Corner
Last Sunday in April

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon on the last Sunday in April, a group of Catholic worshippers assemble outside St Sepulchre's Church, opposite the side of Newgate Prison (now the Old Bailey), in preparation for a procession to Hyde Park Comer, the site of the Tyburn Gallows. They walk the route that the condemned took from the prison to their execution, stopping at a number of churches on the way, including St Ethelreda's in Ely Place and St Patrick's in Soho Square.

Of the many thousands of those hanged at Tyburn, a number were Catholic martyrs; the walk is in memory of the 105 Catholics who were put to death here and at other sites in London, such as Tower Hill and St Paul's Churchyard, during the Reformation. It is a pilgrimage of about two-and-a-half miles and is concluded by a sermon outside the Tyburn Convent in Bayswater Road, adjacent to the site of the gallows, at a spot marked by three brass triangles let into the pavement on the corner of Edgware Road. The last execution to be carried out at Tyburn was in 1783, and thereafter the executions were carried out at Newgate Prison until it was demolished.