The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is an English folk dance dating back to the Middle Ages. The dance takes place each year in Abbots Bromley, a village in Staffordshire, England. The modern version of the dance involves reindeer antlers, a hobby horse, Maid Marian, a Fool ánd berets.

There are no recorded references to the horn dance prior to Robert Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire, written in 1686.

According to some, the use of antlers suggests an Anglo-Saxon origin along with other native Anglo-Saxon traditions that have survived into modern times in various forms. It has been speculated that the dance originated in the pagan period and was connected with the ruling dynasty of Mercia, based some 15 miles away at Tamworth, who owned extensive hunting lands in Needwood Forest and Cannock Chase surrounding Abbots Bromley.

On this theory, the royal forester would have organised sympathetic magic rituals to ensure a plentiful catch each year, a tradition that survived into Christian times and gradually came to be seen as affirming the villagers' hunting rights.

The Horn Dance takes place on Wakes Monday, the day following Wakes Sunday, which is the first Sunday after 4 September.