The Padstow ’Obby ’Oss festival is one of Cornwall’s most famous folk customs and one of the best known May Day traditions in Britain. It takes place every year on 1 May in Padstow, a coastal town in North Cornwall, and centres on two separate processions led by stylised hobby horses known locally as ’Obby ’Osses. The event marks the arrival of summer and brings together music, movement, greenery, local identity, and long established community practice. Although it now attracts large crowds of visitors, the festival remains deeply connected to Padstow itself, its families, its streets, and its own inherited ways of keeping the custom alive. The celebration begins at midnight on 30 April, when people gather outside the Golden Lion Inn to sing the Night Song. This marks the formal beginning of the festival and announces the arrival of May. By morning, Padstow has been decorated with greenery, flowers, flags, and a maypole, transforming the town into the setting for the day’s processions. The songs are central to the custom, especially the Mayers’ Song, which is sung as the processions move through the town. Its repeated references to summer, unity, and May morning connect the festival to older seasonal traditions in which communities marked the turning of the year through song, procession, and public celebration. The two main ’Osses are known as the Old ’Oss and the Blue Ribbon ’Oss. Each has its own supporters, route, colours, songs, and associations. The Old ’Oss is traditionally linked with the Golden Lion Inn, while the Blue Ribbon ’Oss is associated with the Institute. The Blue Ribbon ’Oss developed later and is often connected with the temperance movement of the late nineteenth century, when some local people wanted a version of the custom less closely associated with drinking. After the First World War, it also became known as the Peace ’Oss. These separate processions show how the festival has changed over time while still preserving its central form. The ’Oss itself is not a realistic horse costume. It is a striking black circular frame, usually covered in dark material, with a small horse’s head and snapping jaw at the front. The person carrying the ’Oss is hidden beneath the covering, giving the figure a strange and powerful appearance as it moves through the streets. Each ’Oss is accompanied by a Teaser, dressed in white and carrying a painted club, who guides, provokes, and controls the figure’s movement. The procession also includes musicians playing accordions, melodeons, and drums, along with singers and followers known as Mayers. At certain moments the music slows and the ’Oss sinks to the ground, before rising again as the rhythm becomes livelier. The origins of the Padstow ’Obby ’Oss are uncertain. May Day celebrations are recorded in Britain from at least the sixteenth century, and seasonal customs involving greenery, song, dancing, and procession were once widespread. Hobby horse figures also appear in older festive traditions, including references in Cornish drama and wider British folk practice. However, the earliest clear reference to the Padstow ’Obby ’Oss itself dates to 1803. This means that while the festival may draw on much older seasonal customs, there is no firm evidence proving that the modern Padstow celebration has survived unchanged from ancient or pre Christian times. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, writers and folklorists became increasingly interested in the festival. Some interpreted the ’Obby ’Oss as a survival of a pre Christian fertility rite, linking it with Beltane, the coming of summer, and ideas of renewal. This interpretation became popular, especially because the festival takes place on May Day and includes symbols often associated with seasonal rebirth. However, modern historians are more cautious. The custom may certainly contain older elements, but the evidence does not allow a simple claim that it is a direct survival from pagan religion. Its history is more likely a mixture of local tradition, seasonal celebration, social change, and later interpretation. Folklorists helped bring the Padstow ’Obby ’Oss to wider attention. In the early twentieth century, figures such as Francis Etherington and Thurstan Peter wrote about the custom, helping to establish it as a subject of serious folkloric interest. Later, researchers, collectors, and film makers documented the festival as part of Britain’s living folk heritage. The 1953 colour film Oss Oss Wee Oss, made by Alan Lomax, Peter Kennedy, and George Pickow, became an important record of the May Eve and May Day celebrations. By the later twentieth century, the festival was widely recognised as one of the most dramatic and distinctive folk customs in the country. Today, the Padstow ’Obby ’Oss remains a powerful expression of local identity and seasonal celebration. It is not simply a performance for visitors, although visitors now form a large part of the crowd. It is a tradition rooted in place, repetition, and community memory. Its uncertain origins are part of its appeal, but its importance does not depend on proving that it is ancient. What matters is that the people of Padstow have continued to carry it, sing it, renew it, and pass it on. Each May Day, the ’Oss rises again, and with it one of Cornwall’s most remarkable living customs.