I read an article in Outside magazine (I think) quite awhile back, about a sport in northern England involving stuffing crazed ferrets into one’s pants and keeping them there for as long as one could stand it. I believe this website has similar contenthttp://gci.gospelcom.net/dw/1995/11/20/ . This has to be a spoof or urban myth…right?
In reference to the moderator: I have mildly searched for definitive information on ferret legging, to no avail. I did check Snopes and Urban Legends.com. I also searched the Straight Dope archives for this topic using a variety of terms. I am hoping that there is someone out there who knows more. I’ll admit that it is a strange topic to want to…explore, but where else but here for such a thing? Here is a more complete link to a similar version of the story: http://kzsu.stanford.edu/~dougm/Humor/95/November/FerretLeggers.html
…perhaps I should search out the Outside Magazine archives.
No, people really do it.
Why do I get the feeling that this thread will eventually degenerate into yet another discussion on the relative merits of eating steak and kidney pie, as always seems to happen when a US doper asks a question about British habits/customs?
Speaking as a Northerner (A Yorkshireman) I would say that this is a dying custom. Some people also dance around wearing bells and waving their hankie in the air (morris dancing) but it isn’t as common as in days of yore. I personally have never witnessed either type of activity in my 27 years, and have never once been tempted to allow a ferret near my family jewels
You may be closer to the truth than you know - Morris dancing is supposed to be based on a ritual fertility dance, possibly to counter the genital damage caused by ferrets? Could the decline of the former be linked to the latter?
I used to work with a Yorkeshireman who claimed to have attended ferret legging contests. I have also seen Morris dancers several times, although mostly in the fens, where all sorts of strange things go on…
Sorry, Yorkshireman. 
Morris dancing I have personally witnessed on many occasions.
Ferret legging I have not. But I see no reason to doubt its existence.
Steak and kidney pie, done properly, is most palatable.
That is all.
Agree with all Steve says … with the addition that I have seen ferret-legging many times on TV.
Julie
Yes, it exists. This page, which has everything you could surely ever want to know about the history of ferrets, says this about it.
Thank you, all, however nothing authoritative yet. Still seems like smoke and mirrors. Reg Mellor is too fascinating to not have been invited to appear on David Letterman.
APB, I take that back. The commercial web site you refer to does have a bibliography. I suppose I should check out The Complete Book of Ferrets… I did want it to be true…
Some scepticism seems entirely justifiable. This is clearly a minor urban legend in the sense that it’s a good story transmitted credulously, displaying mutations as it does so and usually with some sort of moral drawn from it. In some cases (the Christian websites) this moral is explicit, in others it’s the more implicit one of “ain’t some people wierd”/“it takes all sorts”. Furthermore, there’s the rich British comic tradition (well, Last of the Summer Wine) of jokes about Yorkshiremen with ferrets down their trousers, so one can’t take everything at face value.
Goggling “ferret legging” throws up a large array of mentions. But it has to be worrying that, with the possible exception of APB’s link, to be discussed below, all of these ultimately derive from the same source: an old article by the journalist Donald Katz. The fullest text of this appears to be this copy. Now, whatever else, many of the details are such to at least raise a Doperish eyebrow:
Some copies suggest it may have appeared in Harper’s in 1992. It may have, but it seems to predate that. Katz himself - and by all appearances he’s a respectable journalist - has offered a few comments on the writing of the article and it’s subsequent popularity. An existance prior to widespread email and web access would place it before 1992. Furthermore, there’s the internal evidence of the references towards the end to the Falklands conflict of 1982. These make most sense as topical remarks.
Even with the fuller version of the article and Katz’s comments, there really aren’t many first-hand details about “ferret legging” in them. In particular, he never saw a ferret being used competatively. One would like an independent citation.
Is APB’s National Ferret Welfare Society an independent source? The impressive detail they include is dating the great triumph to 1983; none of the other web versions seem to realise that the article dates back to this period. On the other hand, it’s worrying that Reg is 72, both at the time of his victory and when Katz meets him a year later, but that’s obviously inconclusive.
However, some other ferret fanciers are dubious about ferrets being put down trousers at all:
It really wouldn’t surprise me if Yorkshiremen do regularly store their ferrets in their trousers. The question has to be whether they have ever done so other than in the presence of foreign journalists and southern TV crews. And competitively, at that.
[Incidentally, one envisages the smash Britflick on the subject, using the bastard combination formula of The Full Monty, Bend it like Beckham and Kes. Plucky Northern lass tries to break into the male dominated world of “legging”. The scene where she discovers her brutally murdered pet ferret will be particularly moving.]
It was also mentioned in a Gen13 comic written by Adam Warren. Grunge wins by cheating and turning his tonker to steel.
I love Adam Warren.
Thank you for the validation, bonzer. There is just bloody little out there about ferret legging . The Katz (PalmDigital) link was useful, though Katz also says nothing conclusive, outside of the use of the word “true” in the title of his collection. Were there ever ferrets hanging from Reg Mellor’s tool? I am haunted by this question.