Notable Landmarks · Padstow, Cornwall
Padstow 'Obby 'Oss May Day Festival
Cornwall's riotous May Day rite where being caught under the 'Oss means a baby (or a husband) within the year. The 'ancient pagan fertility rite' story is a 20th-century folklorist invention (per Ronald Hutton), though the custom itself is genuinely old.
The place
May Day hobby-horse procession; the 'Oss 'captures' women under its skirts — tradition holds that a woman so caught will marry or conceive within the year.
Sources
Nearby on the map
The wave-battered headland bound by legend to Tristan and Iseult — the knight sent to fetch his king's bride, the love-potion drunk in error, the doomed passion that medieval Europe told and retold. Folklore, and labelled so; the drama of the place is entirely factual.
LegendLiterary PassionMenabilly (Daphne du Maurier's Manderley)Fowey, Cornwall · EnglandThe hidden house du Maurier trespassed into as a young woman and loved all her life — the original of Manderley, whose dreaming opening line the world knows by heart. 'Rebecca' made obsession, jealousy and a dead woman's unseen erotic power into a national bestseller.
Fact & fictionNotable LandmarksMên-an-TolMadron, Cornwall · EnglandCornwall's famous fertility stone — crawl through the ring to conceive. The fertility/healing folklore is genuinely recorded, though the 'seven times at full moon' formula is largely a modern accretion.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.