a paler, long-sleeved garment. The other "musician" is more smartly dressed, in top hat, a long riding jacket, breeches, tight, knee-length socks or gaiters and polished shoes. He has what appears to be a false beard and bushy eyebrows. Mummers or morris dancers? The performance may have been arranged by Llewellynn Jewitt, who lived at the hall between 1868 and 1880. In 1931, Stanley Evans ("Folk Dancing in Derbyshire", Derbyshire Countryside, vol 1, no 2, April 1931, p29) suggested the performers may have been performing a mumming play. Cawte dismissed this suggestion: "if so it is a most unusual one, there is no sign of the combatants, the pair of horses is of an unusual design, and the mast horse seems to be the centre of attention." But, despite the absence of weapons, it is not difficult to envisage the two military-looking characters on hobby-horses as possible combatants, or even the two characters behind who are waving a pole and a broomstick. Moreover, the "Wild Horse" is a central character in the Soul-caking plays of nearby Cheshire (see photo). In his field notes, made in 1908, folklorist Cecil Sharp referred to a hobby horse "without a curtain" being connected with the morris dance at Winster; he also mentions a "Snap Dragon" made from "a real horse's head" (presumably a skull) dug up for the purpose, but does not say whether it was associated with the morris. It seems he did not see them himself, and his account published in 1924, long after his visit to Winster, is confusing. In 1966, Winster morris dancers stated that there had never been a hobby horse associated with their morris, but that there had been a separate horse ceremony involving a skull that was reburied each year. It seems possible that Sharp's "Snap Dragon" and the horse ceremony recalled by the morris men are the same custom that is shown in the Winster Hall photograph. Llewellynn Jewitt's own notes (1867) In 1867 Jewitt recorded several visits to Winster Hall by groups of traditional performers (some being children, others men): 'guisers', 'mummers', the 'hobby horse' and 'Snap Dragon'. Jewitt differentiates between 'Snap Dragon' and 'Hobby Horse(s)' but does not describe how they were made, or how they differed, but implies that they did not always go out together. If Sharp is correct and Snap Dragon was made from a horse's skull, the photograph may show