The Broad

A hooded animal

Folklorists count the Broad as one local version of what they call the hooded animal tradition. Figures of that kind turn up in different forms in many parts of the British Isles, each with its own animal and its own way of being carried. In the Cotswolds the animal was a bull, and the carrier vanished under cloth so that only the head showed. The custom belonged with midwinter visiting rather than with any church ceremony, and the people who took part did so in their everyday clothes.

Origins and history

The oldest mention of the Broad comes from Kingscote, around 1835, and from west Gloucestershire at some point between 1830 and 1840. The historian Ronald Hutton has suggested that the figure might have grown out of older wassailing customs, though the surviving records do not settle the question. Reports thin out after the First World War began in 1914. Hutton observed that the custom neither continued nor was brought back later.

Collecting the records

Much of what is known about the Broad was gathered by R. P. Chidlaw. He passed his material to the folklorist E. C. Cawte, who wrote about the figure in a 1978 book on animal disguises used in British ritual. Christina Hole, another folklorist, also wrote of it and called it the Christmas Bull. Because the custom had already ended, later writers have depended on these collected accounts and on the scattered village reports they preserve.

Dress and objects

The people who went around with the Broad were not dressed up. Accounts put them in ordinary clothing, with the figure itself doing the work of disguise. Some carried a wooden wassail bowl trimmed with ribbons and with sprigs cut from evergreen plants. The bull's head could have horns and glass eyes, and now and then ribbons and rosettes. In two Gloucestershire places a scooped-out turnip or swede held a candle inside instead.

Related customs

Two further customs are listed as similar rites. Mari Lwyd belongs to South Wales and Hoodening to Kent. Neither is described in the sources for the Broad, but both are placed beside it as relatives within the wider group of hooded animal traditions found around the British Isles. The comparison is useful because it shows the Cotswold bull was not a one-off oddity but one local answer to a habit found in many places.

How The Broad is kept

A team of wassailers went from house to house at Christmas. One of them carried the Broad: a bull's head on a pole, with the carrier hidden beneath sackcloth or a sheet. The others wore their ordinary clothes. Sometimes a wooden wassail bowl went with them, trimmed with ribbons and sprigs of evergreen. In a few places the team also performed a hero-combat play. Sometimes the Broad appeared on its own, without the rest of the group.

When and where

The Broad belonged to Christmas, and Christina Hole called it the Christmas Bull. Its earliest records come from about 1835 at Kingscote, and from west Gloucestershire between 1830 and 1840. After the First World War began in 1914, reports of it grew rare and then stopped.

It was kept in a triangle of country bounded by Stroud, Cricklade and Chipping Sodbury. That area took in the southern Cotswolds at their eastern edge, and a stretch of land just beyond them. Thirteen villages appear in the records. Ten of these were in Gloucestershire, and the other three in Wiltshire.

What The Broad means

Folklorists place the Broad inside a family of hooded animal figures found in different forms around the British Isles, so it belonged to a shared midwinter practice rather than standing alone. Ronald Hutton proposed that it may have grown out of older wassailing ways. Beyond that, the records say little about what the people who carried it understood it to mean.

Days The Broad is marked

Questions people ask about The Broad

See also

Old TupA midwinter folk drama with a ram disguise from the English East MidlandsChristmasA festival of Jesus's birth, kept on 25 December with gifts, lights and shared mealsChristmas carolFestive songs and hymns sung during the Christmas season and door to doorAdvent wreathAn evergreen ring of candles lit week by week in the lead-up to Christmas

Good reading and sources

• The Broad (folk custom) on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.