On the winter solstice, the Cornish town transforms into a rambunctious festival full of dance, delinquency and Morris dancers. Our writer dodges the vegetable missiles – and learns how to get the best out of a horse skull
Incense burners as big as basketballs send thick clouds of smoke into the hyped-up crowd. “Hoo hoo Holly!” cries a man in a suit of twisted roots, looking like an oversized Shredded Wheat. The crowd begins to chant: “Make way for the Holly!” And two 10ft tree gods – the Oak King and the Holly King – begin to lash and headbutt each other, as flamethrowers blast the air with hot orange streams. These mysterious-seeming traditions are part of Montol, Cornwall’s biggest solstice festival. Each year on 21 December, Penzance’s high streets close to traffic and crowds of thousands wearing elaborate outfits and horses skulls prowl, throw brussels sprouts and burn effigies of the sun.
Elements of Montol have pagan roots, including rituals such as “wearing animal masks and cross-dressing, going from house to house performing ludicrous plays and performing really crap music”, says one co-organiser, Aaron Broadhurst. But Montol itself only began in 2007, when Simon Reed, former Penzance mayor and campaigner for Cornish Culture, found the word, meaning “balance”, in an old Cornish dictionary. In its first incarnation, says co-organiser Paul Tyreman, the festival consisted of a wind band, the Turkey Rhubarb Band, who led a procession up Market Jew Street and through the town. “People gathered, sung carols, lit a beacon, and went home.”
Osses on the prowl around Penzance.
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