Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...and ridicules the Arabic theory. THE DORSET OOSER 139 nated, until we have in the Far East, as in the Far West, the conception of a being altogether bestial, ferocious, and base. Even where the hideous and the terrible are modified by a laugh, that very laugh has degenerated, and so become the expression of something still more malignant, the raging, maleficent grin of fiendish mockery, or, on the other hand, the merely stupid, vulgar comicality of Punch. Perhaps the very latest serious home representation still existing of modern notions of the devil, which we may compare with its Japanese contemporary, is shown in Fig. 65. This is called the Dorset Ooser, and the sketch is taken from a photograph in Somerset and Dorset FlG 6 Notes and Queries, vol. ii. (1891), p. 289. It is a wooden mask of large size with features grotesquely human, long flowing locks of hair on either side of the head, a beard, and a pair of bullock's horns projecting right and left of the forehead. It is cut from a solid block of wood; the lower jaw is movable by the wearer. The Ooser, here represented, belongs to Mr. Cave, of Holt Farm, Melbury Osmond Dorset, "in whose family it has been preserved time out of mind." It is not, however, probable that it is older than the last century, though it may be the relic of a very ancient custom and the latest survivor of a long line of similar masks, which time and decay have eaten up. It was probably worn at the village revel, and may even have been used at some of the miracle plays, that certainly lasted down to Elizabethan times, after the Reformation had been completely established. Hobby horses were very common, and well within the present century, at the feast of St. Michael, a sort of revel or fair was kept up at...
