
Our resident folklore expert, Idris Po has come forward to comment on this year’s sudden craze for Yule Goats.
He states that the small ones should be made from dried grain stalks, and should not in fact contain seaweed. No part of them should move of its own free will. The faces should be arranged to suggest sweetness, not to imply some kind of deranged nightmare beast. Po comments that the use of fish bones as a raw material, with fish guts as a binding – while innovative – really isn’t in keeping with tradition. The pungency isn’t in the least bit festive.
Traditionally, larger Yule Goats are made of straw and rope. At least, he hopes that the current construction on he green is intended to be a Yule Goat.
Having seen the aforementioned construction, I remain uncertain about it. Granted, some of our goats do have very large, and alarming mouths. Creatures of Hopeless typically have three to five limbs, so again this may not be cause for alarm. It’s the metal cage on the inside that worries me, and no one I talked to was willing to discuss why the (maybe) Yule Goat has a metal cage inside it.
It would be nice, I feel if this year we could break with tradition and get through winter without some sort of community murder project. I know they aren’t usually deliberate, but the Yule Goat has death by misadventure written all over it. And other things, although you have to get in rather uncomfortably close to read the text on the fabric scraps.
(text by Nimue, image by Nimue and Keith)
We of the Hopeless Horticultural Society would like to point out Community murder projects are a festive tradition on the island that stretch back as far as anyone can remember.
We have to look after these old folk traditions or they will go by the way side and be forgotten.
Besides which there is always an excess of orphans around the Yule period , looking under nourished and in need of a good flogging.
and who can argue with tradition (and hope to not become a victim of it?)