In dialect, "Wampert" is someone with a big belly. To turn an ordinary Axamer into a Wampeler, you need a white linen shirt (the Pfoat), a red Loden smock, a leather belt, lots of hay and a few helping hands. Before the parades - the big ones take place every four years, smaller ones annually - people meet up for a haymaking session. Tuft after tuft of hay is stuffed under the shirt and tapped down again and again. The whole thing is tied up with a belt so that nothing falls out, even when wrestling. In the end, a Wampeler looks like a Tyrolean Michelin man: white, buxom and well padded.
A carved mask and a black, cone-shaped "fuzzelhaube" are part of the outfit, but these are only worn during the parade. The actual "riding" takes place without these attributes. With a wooden stick in their hands, the Wampeler then move through the village in the stooped posture of freestyle wrestlers. Their opponents, the riders, are only allowed to attack them from behind in order to throw them onto their backs. This is when the hay and shirt make sense: one protects the Wampeler (mostly) from injury, the other shows who was best able to fend off the attacks. After two rounds through the village, the winner is the Wampeler whose shirt has remained the cleanest.
Incidentally, the parade is not usually as drastic as the Wampelerreiten. Other Axamer and Axamer women slip into the roles of the various "Laniger": the Tuxer clear the way for the Wampelers, the Bujazzl plays his jokes, the altboarischen Paarln and the Flitscheler with their robes made of corn husk leaves are pretty to look at. People have fun, parade through the village, dare to dance or drink a schnapps with the onlookers. And even the Wampeler and the riders end the day in harmony. Finally, the battle against winter is over and spring can begin.
