Hobby Horses

A hobby horse is a child's toy composed of a stick with a horse's head at one end. The child straddles the stick horse and “rides.” The hobby horse has links to ancient spring and harvest festivals across Europe.

The word hobi in Middle English was a diminuitive of Robin, or Hobbe, and it was used to describe a small horse. It may have been derived from an actual horse called Dobbin or Robin. Hobby was in use as the name of a small falcon at this time, and in 1298 the phrase hobby horse first came into use to describe a small horse. The term was later used to describe the horse-shaped frame used in Morris Dances at May festivals. Eventually it came to describe a wooden stick horse or rocking horse in the 17th century. A hobby horse could not carry its rider anywhere; hence the word hobby came to describe a pastime without a valued outcome. Two types of child's toy have been described as hobby horses: the stationary rocking horse, a finely crafted and ornate toy on curved rockers, or more commonly the stick horse. The stick horse had a painted wooden or fabric horse's head at one end, and some versions had a seat and wheels. The head was raised by reins or handles, and as the child straddled the stick and trotted, the horse's head rose and fell.

More elaborate versions of hobby horses included wheels, rocking devices, and seats, as in this 1908 photograph.

After World War II, and before commercial manufacture of toys, the hobby horse remained a popular toy with children, its head being easily constructed from a stuffed sock tied onto a shortened broom handle, or carved from wood. Reins were made of ribbon or leather, buttons and glove fingers were sewn on as eyes and ears and wool was used for the mane.

The hobby horse has links to ancient corn festivals. Demeter, the corn goddess, was depicted in ancient Greek carvings with a dark horse's head. Until the mid-20th century the last sheaf of corn in a harvest was described as the “mare” or “the maiden.” It was carried through the fields and stored above the hearth in the great hall until May Day, when the corn was formed into a loaf in the shape of a man or woman to be shared by villagers at the Spring Festival. In Roman times, a horse was sacrificed in the cornfield, its tail was placed above the hearth of the ruling family, and its head on a stick became a prize for competing villagers.

Visual aspects of those rituals remain in the ‘Obby ‘Oss festival in Padstow, England, where a man hidden under a heavy, fabric-covered wooden frame swings a mast bearing a horse's skull or emblem head above festival goers, as captured on film by Peter Kennedy in 1953. Today, festival horses are fabric covered wicker frames into which a man steps, hoisted by shoulder straps. Fake legs give the impression that the man sits astride the horse as he prances, waving the horse's head on a stick. In 2000, the town of Banbury in England revived its ancient Hobby Horse Festival, banned by the Puritans 400 years previously and reflected in the child's rhyme

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