Written by Simon Batchelor, BA (Hons), MA, MA (Res), Customer Services Assistant at the University of York Library.
One item in the rare books collection has recently caught my attention; drawn in the corner of the an endpaper is the picture of a youth, standing on one leg, he is holding a horse collar up to his neck and has placed his head into it, his face is distorted with a wide grin or grimace – the title of this drawing is “Gurning through a horse collar”.
Gurning is the art of pulling faces and a world championship is held at the Egremont Crab Fair each September. The competitors place their heads in a horse collar and distort their faces in order to produce the most grotesque possible. Competitors are not allowed to use their hands to assist them in this, which may explain the use of the horse collar. The collar is a heavy affair made of leather and straw making it too weighty to be rested on the (human) neck alone.
The drawing is one of several illustrating ‘Upton’s life and adventures’, these include an illustration of a recumbent man, wearing a nightshirt and cap, with a candle at his head and foot. This may represent the eponymous Upton, either laid out following his death (hence the candles) or merely asleep. Above the recumbent man are drawings which seem to represent a well dressed huntsman, a more rustic man in a wide brimmed hat, an elderly man reading a newspaper (he may be part of the death watch, a group of friends of the deceased who watched over the body at night to ensure that the deceased was truly dead and to ensure that the corpse was not stolen) and our gurning youth. Each appears in his own suitably entitled vignette and these presumably illustrate the life of the recumbent man.
The book in which these drawings appear was published in Edinburgh in 1774, by Messrs J. Bell and W. Creech, and was owned by Mr Bryan Cooper Abbs (1771-1850). It would seem that Mr. Abbs may well have been the artist himself, as he has also used the pages to practice his signature.
Why then did the illustration of the gurning youth catch my eye? I remember seeing Gurning on television (yes it was a televised sport usually on regional news and magazine shows) as a child and I became re-acquainted with it while studying folklore at the University of Sheffield, because of this I realised that this was an early illustration of the practice.
Although now confined, largely, to Cumbria it is possible that gurning was once a widespread tradition in northern England, indeed the owner of our volume lived most of his life in and around Monkwearmouth in County Durham. According to the website of the Egremont Crab Fair, the first reference to gurning was in an edition of the Cumberland Packet of 1852 where it was described as “an ancient tradition”.
The website also states that at this time it was known as a “grinn for tobacco” and that this suggests that the sporting tradition began in the 17th century as a way to win a supply of tobacco, “the use of which had by then spread throughout society.” It is unclear when the horse collar was introduced but our drawing could push this element back to the late 18th century.
Whilst our illustration may represent the earliest reference to gurning through a horse collar there are much earlier visual references to people pulling faces, many inhabit the churches and cathedrals of Europe. Generally described as grotesques, mouth-pullers, grinners and tongue stickers these carved figures stare at us from corbels, the capitals of columns, roof bosses and pendules. Like the modern gurner their faces are distorted, jaws are pushed forward or sideways, tongues are stuck out towards the chin or to one side of the mouth, teeth are bared and eyes are rolled. The only difference being that they also use their hands to aid their facial manipulations.
It is not possible to say that gurners have a direct connection with their medieval counterparts but they do share similarities, and not just in their physical similarities; The word “gurn” is a dialect term from northern England and southern Scotland meaning “To show or gnash the teeth in rage or scorn; To look savage; To distort the countenance”. This would seem to describe both the medieval sculptures and the modern gurner equally well.
Unfortunately there is no generic term for the medieval sculptural forms, they are generally known as grotesques, or by the terms I have used above, but Trubshaw has suggested that they should perhaps, in Leicestershire at least, be referred to as “Mawmers”. This is derived from a Leicestershire dialect term “Mawming” – to make faces. However there is perhaps a better word which describes both the medieval carvings and the modern gurner, “Mumpers”.
Although these days it is associated more with begging (one of its many dialectal meanings) “Mumping” has connotations with both gurning and mawming. In the Border Counties it can mean “To make grimaces, to screw up the face” whilst in northern England, particularly the old Danelaw Counties, it can mean “To strike the face, particularly the mouth” (If anyone is unsure why this definition is relevant watch a fist fight in any old school cartoon).
Furthermore the word survives in modern usage: Were you asked the name for the highly contagious viral infection which causes swelling of the salivary glands and the face to swell and distort you would of course answer… the mumps.
The Cooper Abbs Collection is a family library started by the Reverend Cooper Abbs of Monkwearmouth (1738-1800) and added to by his descendants.
The books give an insight into the social history of a well to do North Eastern family library. The library is predominantly of the 18th-century, and contains literature, history including Ancient and European, reference books including dictionaries and grammars, and some theology.
All the books are catalogued and available for study. Please contact sarah.griffin@york.ac.uk for more information