Goose pulling (also called gander pulling, goose riding, pulling the goose or goose neck tearing) was a blood sport practiced in parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, England, and North America from the 17th to the 19th centuries. It originated in the 12th century in Spain and was spread around Europe by the Spanish Third. The sport involved fastening a live goose with a well-greased head to a rope or pole that was stretched across a road. A man riding on horseback at a full gallop would attempt to grab the bird by the neck in order to pull the head off. Sometimes a live hare was substituted. It is still practiced today, using a dead goose or a dummy goose, in parts of Belgium as part of Shrove Tuesday and in some towns in Germany as part of the Shrove Monday celebrations. When practicing with the dead goose, it is killed prior by a veterinarian. In Grevenbicht in the Netherlands, the use of dead geese was prohibited in 2019, being replaced by artificial geese. It is referred to as ganstrekken in the Netherlands, gansrijden in Belgium and Gänsereiten in Germany.
The practice
Spain
In El Carpio de Tajo goose pulling is practised on every July 25th to celebrate the liberation (Reconquista) from the Arabs in 1141. Later, during the dictatorship of Franco, the use of live geese was prohibited by a new animal protection law. Instead of geese, ribbons tied to sticks were used, which the riders had to insert into metal rings. When democracy returned to Spain, the use of geese was again allowed. It is currently only practiced with dead geese during the Day of the Geese, part of the San Antolín festival in the Basque fishing-town of Lekeitio. Animal rights advocates object that even killing the goose before the practice is cruel and should be criminalised. Those in favour of allowing the practice to continue argue that it is a part of Basque culture, those opposed to the practice feel humaneness should take precedence over tradition.
Netherlands Goose pulling is attested in the Netherlands as early as the start of the 17th century; the poet Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero referred to it in his 1622 poem Boerengeselschap ("Company of Peasants"), describing how a party of peasants going to a goose-pulling contest near Amsterdam end up in a brutal brawl, leading to the lesson that it is best for townspeople to stay away from peasant pleasures. Although the use of live geese was banned in the 1920s, the practice still arouses some controversy. In 2008 the Dutch Party for Animals (PvdD) proposed that it should be banned in the last remaining village of Grevenbicht; the organisers, Folk Verein Gawstrèkkers Beeg, rejected the proposal, pointing out that there was no question of cruelty to animals because the geese were already dead. In 2019, dead goose pulling was also prohibited and the practice was henceforth performed with dummy geese.
Belgium Goose pulling in Belgium was done with live geese until the 1920s, when this was prohibited. Since then, geese are first killed painlessly by a veterinarian ahead of the game, and wrapped in a net to conceal its shape to the audience. Belgian goose pulling is accompanied by an elaborate set of customs. The rider who succeeds in pulling off the goose's head is "crowned" as the "king" of the village for one year and given a crown and mantle. At the end of his "king year" the ruling king has to treat his village "subjects" to a feast of beer, drinks, cigars and bread pudding or sausages held either at his home or at a local pub. Each year the village kings of the region compete with each other to become the "emperor". Children participate as well; in 2008, the children's goose pulling tournament in Lillo near Antwerp was won by a 14-year-old who won 390 euros and a trip to the Plopsaland theme park.
France
Goose pulling was practiced in Manzat in the Auvergne until at least the 1970s. It is still practice in Saint-Bonnet-près-Riom (Auvergne) and in pays basque. (See the French page: jeu de l'oie)
Germany
In Wattenscheid-Höntrop it is believed that the custom was brought by Spanish soldiers who were stationed in 1598 and 1599 during the Eighty Years' War and later in the Thirty Years' War. In May 2017, a petition signed by 100,000 citizens to stop using dead geese prompted the two goose-riding clubs from Höntrop and Sevinghausen to hold future events with a rubber dummy goose. The Velbert village of Langenhorst still practices with dead geese. In some other places of Germany it was forbidden. Goose pulling was banned in Werl in 1961. In Dortmund and Essen dummy geese are used.
Switzerland Gansabhauet ('goose cutting') is held every 11 November (Saint Martin's Day) in Sursee. A dead goose is suspended in the middle of the town square, whose neck the competitors, one after the other, try to cut with a saber.
United Kingdom The sport appears to have been relatively uncommon in Britain, as all references are to it as a curiosity practised somewhere else. The 1771 Philip Parsons locates it in "Northern parts of England" and assumes it is unknown in Newmarket in East Anglia. Parsons described how it was carried out in England:
In the Northern parts of England it is no unusual diversion, to tie a rope across a street, and let it swing about the distance of ten yards from the ground. To the middle of this a living cock is tied by the legs. As he swings in the air, a set of young people ride one after another, full speed, under the rope, and rising in the stirrups, catch at the animal's head, which is close clipped and well soaped, in order to elude the grasp. Now he who is able to keep his seat in his saddle, and his hold of the bird's head, so as to carry it off in his hand, bears away the palm, and becomes the noble hero of the day. In a satirical letter to Punch in 1845 it is regarded as a practice known only to the Spaniards, like bull-fighting. The serious work Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain, of 1849, calls it "Goose-riding" and says it has been "practiced in Derbyshire within the memory of persons now living", and that the antiquary Francis Douce (1757–1834) had a friend who remembered it "when young" in Edinburgh in Scotland. From these references it would appear to have died out in Britain by the end of the 18th century.
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