The Horseman's Word
A Scottish fraternal society for horse workers.
The Horseman's Word was a secret society in Britain for horse workers, founded in early 1800s north-eastern Scotland. It later reached other Scottish areas and Eastern England. Membership declined by the mid-1900s, but a smaller version persists in parts of Scotland.
Quick Facts
- Also known as
- Society of Horsemen
- Region of origin
- north-eastern Scotland
- Century of establishment
- early nineteenth century
- Areas of spread
- other parts of Scotland, Eastern England
- Status by mid-twentieth century
- largely declined
- Current status
- continues in diminished capacity within parts of Scotland
- Related societies
- Miller's Word, Toadmen
Facts from the source article.
History
The Horseman's Word emerged as part of a popular outgrowth from Freemasonry in Britain, known in Scotland as the Mason's Word after its secret password. Freemasonry had influenced friendly societies and benefit clubs for working people, such as the Society of Oddfellows, Ancient Order of Druids, Ancient Order of Foresters, and Ancient Order of Royal Shepherds, all adopting Masonic initiatory structure and ceremonial elements. These groups were weakest in rural Scotland, where local conditions produced groups using the Masonic model. In the eighteenth century, the Miller's Word formed among Scottish grain millers to restrict trade entry, with local groups holding initiations, passwords, and secrets, and claiming magical powers from reading the Bible backwards three times over three years. The historian Timothy Neat described the horsemen as largely serious, practical men, while esoteric publisher Ben Fernee noted that unmarried ploughmen lived hard lives, drank hard, played rough, and chased women.
Praxes
According to Neat, the initiation ceremony into the Horseman's Word was a dramatic and memorable event, using heightened language and ceremony to create meaning for participants. The precise ceremony and oaths varied among groups but had a clear basis in Freemasonry, with severe punishments specified for oath breaches. The Word borrowed much from the Miller's Word initiation, including bread and whisky as pseudo sacraments and blindfolding the inductee, while adding its own passwords, oaths, and ordeals. In the Angus group, initiations typically occurred at night, preferably at full moon, in an isolated barn, byre, stable, or steading. A High Horseman sat holding a cloven goat's hoof and presided. The apprentice was stripped to the waist, blindfolded, spun to disorient him, then brought before the High Horseman. After set questions and answers, the initiate knelt, had his blindfold removed, and gave vows to keep secrets. All assembled then recited the Horseman's Creed, reminding them of punishments for breaking vows. A ceilidh followed with toasts and whisky the apprentice had brought. The diabolist elements may have been a deliberate parody of Presbyterianism, then dominant in Scotland, and the drunkenness, jokes, songs, and toasts may have mocked conventional morality. Historian Ronald Hutton suggested these diabolical elements derived partly from folk stories of the witches' sabbath, absorbed from Scottish folklore or published witchcraft accounts.
Legacy
In the twentieth century, scholars began studying the society's history. J.M. McPherson, in Primitive Beliefs in the North-East of Scotland (1929), proposed it was a survival of an ancient pagan cult persecuted in Early Modern witch trials. Folklorist Thomas Davidson supported this in a 1956 article, as did George Ewart Evans in four books from the 1960s and 1970s. However, neither Davidson nor Evans examined original Scottish sources, and McPherson relied only on late nineteenth-century observations. Around the same time, researchers who did examine the origins criticized the ancient roots theory. In 1962, Hamish Henderson detailed its eighteenth-century rise, expanded by Ian Carter in a 1979 study of Scottish agricultural life. In 2009, The Society of Esoteric Endeavour published a compilation of nineteenth and early twentieth-century texts about the society, limited to one thousand copies, with the first hundred containing a knotted horse hair like that used to invite prospective members.
More in Magical Organizations
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced