Kosa, the 'thin-beard', is the central masked figure of the Kosa-kosa folk play staged in the run-up to Novruz across Azerbaijan. Clad in a sheepskin coat turned inside out and strung with bells, wearing a false beard and comic mask, he leads a troupe from house to house with his foil Keçəl, singing 'Kosa gəldi' and gathering gifts of food. The heart of the performance is his mock death and revival, a dramatisation of the dying of winter and the return of warmth and fertility to the land. Folklorists read the figure as a seasonal spirit of the year's turning, a vegetation-and-winter personification preserved within the springtime ritual.