The Haxey Hood Game is a game of football traditionally played at Haxey in the English county of Lincolnshire on the afternoon of January 6th prior to Twelfth Night. The initial processions is accompanied by the Hood song which boasts of drinking old England dry. The hood is a two foot long leather cylinder which is carried by the Fool, who has a blackened face. He is accompanied by the Lord of the Hood, who wears a red jacket and top hat adorned with flowers. He also carries a wand of thirteen willow rods bound round thirteen times. They are followed by the Chief Boggan who leads twelve red-clad Boggans. After an attempt at escaping the Fool mounts the Mowbray Stone where he makes a speech before straw is set fire under his feet. They then move to the nearby pitch. Here children play Dummies, before the main game begins. Sometimes over a hundred people are involved and the teams struggle to take the Hood to an opposing teams public house, where the landlord has to treat everyone to a drink!
Local tradition claims that it dates back to the thirteenth century when Lady Mowbray held sway over the Isle of Axholme. She is said to have had her red hat blown off in the wind, and that thirteen smallholders gave chase, caught it and returned it to her. However folklorists have suggested that the Hood was originally the head or penis of a sacrificial animal used in a fertility ritual.
