Once a year, on the island of South Ronaldsay, off the north coast of Scotland, the local community prepares for two traditional events: the Horse Festival and the Young Plowing Competition.
Families reach into their closets and pull out richly decorated costumes that the local girls will wear in the street parade.
Passed down from generation to generation, these costumes mimic the harness of the majestic Clydesdale work horse with decorative yokes and halters and small wooden horse ankles.
During this time, the boys gather on the wide expanses of Sands o Wright Beach, where, with the help of exquisitely crafted miniature plows, they carefully make "furrows" in the sand.
The guy with the most precisely patterned furrow wins.
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The horse festival dates back to the 19th century, when other Orkney villages performed their own versions; today is the last one on South Ronaldsay.
But it is by no means disappearing: "When I went there, what struck me was that the whole community was involved," says Simon Costin, director of the British Folklore Museum.
"Grandparents, parents, everyone on the sidelines cheering for the boys."
The costumes, old but constantly evolving, are another sign of his resilience.
"Over the years, they are more and more decorated - jewelry, Christmas decorations, flags; anything that reflects light," says Kostin.
"They become symbols of how the community chooses to express itself."
Today, the Horse Festival is just one of many celebrated in Indulge in Mischief, an exhibition that explores British folk customs and costumes.
More than 40 costumes made, designed and worn by the participants were exhibited.
Curators Costin and Melanie Robinson of the Museum of British Folklore, and Professor Amy De La Haye of the London College of Fashion, designed the exhibition, which is being held at Compton Verney, a museum in Warwickshire known for its collection of British folk art, including bull pull toys, inscriptions on stores and weather vanes in the shape of roosters and hunting dogs.
In Invoking Mischief, the disciplines - together with loans from the English Folk Dance and Song Association and the English Folk Costume Archive - collectively shed light on an area that museums have so far regularly neglected: the flourishing culture of British folk customs.
Those expecting a reminiscence of the bucolic past, on a garland of camels in tame British landscapes, will be disappointed.
"Mention seasonal customs and folklore and people get teary-eyed," laughs Kostin.
"They imagine a Victorian version of Merry England. This is totally not that."
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The horse festival is quite tame, but other customs are often noisy, riotous even.
Take the tradition of Tar Barrels in Otter St Mary's, every 5th November, during which burning tarred barrels, each sponsored by one of the town's central pubs, are busily carried through the town's streets.
As the day passes, the barrels grow larger; around midnight they weigh at least 30 kilograms.
The camaraderie and the uncouth competitive spirit live side by side as generations of the same family bet on the barrels ("You get the feeling that many old bills are sitting around the rims," Kostin recalls).
The tar barrels "proudly perpetuate the grandiose sense of tradition, time and history in Ottery St Mary", says the Visit South Devon website.
The origins of folk customs, however, are often lost over time.
Although some believe that the Tarn barrels were created after the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, there are plenty of other theories: that the burning barrels belong to a pagan ritual that cleansed the streets of evil spirits; that they were aids, more prosaically, for burning huts; and that they served as a warning for the arrival of the Spanish Armada.
The brashness of custom at Otter St Mary's, however, may sound like a tea party compared to the chaos that ensues at Hexie Hood, in North Lincolnshire.
In this all-night event, opposing villages attempt to cram heavy leather cylinders - 'Hoods' - into one of four pubs in Hexie or the nearby village of Westwoodside.
"They cross horns in a rugby formation called Svej - and Svej can last all night," Kostin says.
The event takes place in January.
"I remember looking around the village and seeing 300 men, wrestling each other, in a snow-covered field, their bodies evaporating," he says.
“It's very visceral and archaic. You are attending something primal."
Hexy Hood (according to tradition) traces its roots back to the 14th century, when the Lady of Mowbray, the wife of a local landowner, went horseback riding.
As she crossed the hill, the wind blew away her silk hood.
Thirteen farmers chased after the hood all over the field, before one finally caught it.
Too shy to return it himself, he handed it to one of the others to return to the lady.
Amused, she named the worker who returned the hood "Lord" and the one who caught the hood "Fool", giving rise to two key characters in the tradition, along with 11 changeable "bogins", "guardians of the tradition".
They are there to keep everything safe - but also to preserve tradition.
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The Lady of Mowbray is said to have then granted the land to the workers - on the condition that the race for the hood be repeated every year.
And while the St. Ottery "barrels" wear thick gloves and practical clothes, in the case of Hexie Hood, costumes are key.
The Lord and the main "god" are dressed in red hunting coats and top hats covered with flowers and badges; the Lord also carries an official staff, made of twelve willow sticks with one turned upside down in the center, representing the twelve apostles and Judas.
His face is tarnished, while the Fool is covered in multi-colored scraps of material.
He leads the procession, fending off nearby townspeople with a sock filled with bran and claiming the right to kiss every woman he meets along the way.
His welcome speech ends with the traditional rhyme: "hoose agen hoose, toon agen toon, if a man meets a man knock 'im doon, but doan't 'ot 'im", which translates as: "house against house, city against city, if a man meets a man, let him knock him down but not hurt him."
Deeper meanings
Pushiness aside, every folk custom - in every community around the world - is unique to its time and place.
"People are really passionate about it," says Professor Fay Heald, from the University of Sheffield, director of the Contemporary Folklore Research Centre.
“And the meanings are much deeper than you might infer just by attending. Much of the understanding comes from living in community."
"Someone coming from the north to events from the south, for example, wouldn't catch all the references."
What all customs have in common, she says, is "the purpose they serve": as a way of connecting and responding to the physical, natural and social worlds around them.
"Folk culture refers to the products and practices of relatively homogeneous and isolated small social groups living in rural locations," wrote George Revill for Oxford Bibliographies.
"Therefore, folk culture is often associated with tradition, historical continuity, sense of place and belonging - which are manifested in song and dance, storytelling and mythology, native designs on buildings, everyday artifacts and clothing, diet, customs, social rules and structures, work practices such as farming and crafts, faith and worldviews."
Most important of all, says Kostin, the essence of folk culture is in the people.
"It's not a mayor's festival or something run by the city fathers," he says.
“These are seasonal custom events generated by ordinary people who want to celebrate something specific about them. That defines folk custom."
Horses are a constant motif of folk tradition.
While the Indulging in Mischief exhibition is based in Compton Verney, Maidstone Museum is hosting Animal Disguise and the Kent Covered Horse, an exhibition bringing together two old museums of Covered Horses, from an ancient winter folk custom called Covering, with other similar artefacts including Morris dancing horses and Obi Ose.
A celebrated custom, the tradition of the Covering - like its Welsh equivalent, Mary Loud and Padstow's Obi - revolves around a wooden horse's head that is placed on a pole and worn by someone hidden under a cloth.
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In its modern form, the Covering is accompanied by locals who are also performers in a comedy show, which is usually performed in pubs and at parties.
The strangeness of folk customs generally coincides with periods of deep reflection, just like saturation with current systems.
Covered and Os, key figures at the Pedstu May Day festival, are reminders that some key figures from folk customs can, even to outsiders, seem disturbing or otherworldly.
"When you're part of a community, you don't see them as otherworldly," Hild says briskly.
Folklorist and historian Ronald M. James described the Wasp as a "sinister image" consisting of a large circular platform beneath a black apron.
"The man carrying the animal pokes his head through the hole in the center of the structure. He wears a mask with a tall, pointed cap. At one end of the platform is a tail and at the other, a stylized head with a snapping jaw," he adds.
Os's resemblance to a dragon has not gone unnoticed over the years.
A visit to Padstow as a child awakened in Kostin a long-lasting interest in folk customs.
"We spent our holidays in Cornwall," he recalls.
"It was May Day, I was a seven-year-old who turned a corner and suddenly saw the huge, bizarre, terrifying figure of the Wasp, hovering above the masses, the song and the music. It was a very powerful sight. It was a moment of true magic, when people stepped out of the banal everyday reality and became something else."
At these events, participants "are no longer bankers, bakers, nurses, teachers," says Kostin.
"They take on a different persona and participate in a community-led activity where all those things are forgotten because now they're celebrating something very powerful."
The strangeness of folk customs waxes and wanes, but, broadly speaking, the spikes coincide with periods of deep reflection, just like saturation with current systems.
"The first revival was around the time of the Industrial Revolution, with the feeling that big industry was having a negative impact and that this way of life was being lost and had to be recreated," Hild explains.
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A second, better-known revival took place in the sixties and seventies, with "a great rejection of the idea of 'The System'."
The revival of the sixties was a collective rejection of mass leadership.
And while the British are currently grappling with a perfect storm of social challenges - from the aftermath of Brexit and economic turmoil, to rapid climate change and environmental crises - today's resurgence of interest in folk culture feels like a search for continuity.
"There's a lot of confusion in England right now about who we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to be English, and yet we still want to be," says Hild.
"It's human to want to be proud of your place - and, at the moment, England is an unpleasant place to be. People are looking for an older experience of England to reconnect with an identity that is not tied to recent political history."
And while the setting of the Indulgence in Mischief exhibition celebrates folk traditions, it also challenges the idea that these traditions are fixed.
"We're dealing with the ways in which folklore manages to retain its power," says Kostin.
"Because if these things die out, that's why they've lost relevance. People don't want to keep those things in amber and as ossified. These are living traditions."
Therefore, as an example - just one of many - in the early 20th century, Padstow saw the introduction of a second Axis, known as the Peace or Armistice Axis.
Each year, a new cover script is written, with themes such as death and resurrection interwoven with references to local and international news.
The tribute to mischief highlights the rise of all-female morris dancers (including Bos Morris from Gloucestershire) and the inclusion of LGBT performers in some customs; Kostin himself is one of the initiators of the Gay Bogie collective from Hastings.
But nothing speaks to the resilience of British folk customs like the Fool's speech at this year's Hexie Hood celebration: “This game is 664 years old. And like all good traditions, it is modern enough to last in time, but old-fashioned enough to last forever. And it will last forever!" he thundered, greeted by chants, laughter and flashes from mobile phones.
“There are many things that will last forever, like Chris Leighton's homemade brandy and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, God bless. Long live the king! Tonight we have roast pig, but we also have roasted nuts and mushrooms for vegetarians and vegans. What a diverse bunch of people we are!"
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