Hobby horse (toy)

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William Wallace Denslow's illustrations for a variant of Ride a cock horse, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose.

A hobby horse (or hobby-horse) is a child's toy horse. Children played at riding a wooden hobby horse made of a straight stick with a small horse's head (of wood or stuffed fabric), and perhaps reins, attached to one end. The bottom end of the stick sometimes had a small wheel or wheels attached. This toy was also sometimes known as a cock horse (as in the nursery rhyme Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross) or stick horse.

Hobby horses feature in the worship of Rajasthani folk deity Baba Ramdevji, a reference to a story about his childhood; wooden toy horses are popular offerings at his temple at Ramdevra. They also figured in the public rites of the Romanian Călușari.[1]

Hobby horsing as a sport became popular among young women in Finland and elsewhere in the 21st century.

  1. ^ O. Buhociu, Le folklore roumain de printemps, 1957, p. 250