Ferret legging up for deletion Options

[Emperor]

Ferret legging could be deleted from Wikipedia.

Luckily, it is now safe at Encyc.

[Kato]

Someone has written:

Delete If this was a real "sport" it would show up in more than one source. Steve Dufour (talk) 18:48, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

It very much is a real sport. I don't think it goes on much if at all anymore, but - ridiculous as it sounds - it was a regular novelty act and was (alongside gurning) the kind of thing that would go on in small village fairs.

[No one of consequence]

Someone has written:

Delete If this was a real "sport" it would show up in more than one source. Steve Dufour (talk) 18:48, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

It very much is a real sport. I don't think it goes on much if at all anymore, but - ridiculous as it sounds - it was a regular novelty act and was (alongside gurning) the kind of thing that would go on in small village fairs.

Multiple hits in LexisNexis in the US, Canada and Australia. In the US, appears to be a novelty sport held at Scottish, Celtic or Highland Games-type of festivals/fairs.

* PLAN AHEAD. No animals are harmed in the sport of ferret-legging. Is the same true for participants who put a live weasel down their pants? Find out about this odd activity Oct. 25-26 at the Richmond Highland Games and Celtic Festival, where there will also be rugby games and large men hurling telephone poles (that's caber tossing). Nip some whisky to the sounds of the Glengarry Bhoys and Seven Nations.

This post has been edited by No one of consequence:

[Kato]

Multiple hits in LexisNexis in the US, Canada and Australia. In the US, appears to be a novelty sport held at Scottish, Celtic or Highland Games-type of festivals/fairs.

Sticking a ferret down y'trousers is a well known Yorkshire activity, and the ferret legger is popular stereotype of a Yorkshireman.

According to WP, the champion ferret legger performed his feat in Holmfirth in Yorkshire, which sounds credible as Holmfirth is classic ferret-in-trousers territory. There's a whole episode of the TV show Last of the Summer Wine (set in Holmfirth) about a guy keeping ferrets in his trousers on YouTube.

I never understood why English culture and pastimes get transmogrified into Celtic blarney when they travel to North America. I guess the image of half crazed drunken ferret leggers doesn't fit the stereotype of the plum-voiced upper-class English gent, and so they get morphed onto the Irish or Scots instead?