Mari Lwyd
The custom of Mari Lwyd was a regular Yuletide occurrence in South Wales until the early twentieth century- although it is currently enjoying something of a revival. J Evans first described the ritual in his work, “A Tour through Part of North Wales in the Year 1798 and other times.” The tradition is a strange one: part wassailing with menaces, part battle by song.
Every Christmastide, at some time after dusk, a group of local men, would take to the streets of South Wales’ towns. The men’s faces were blackened, and they dressed as mummers. Throughout the evening and into the night, they would move from house to house. They carried with them a sinister prop: an artificial horse constructed from a blanket draped over a stick and a real horses skull: the Mari Lwyd. This horses head was often kept buried throughout the year and only dug up at Christmas
Once a householder answered the door, a two-sided choral debate with the mummers began- a ritual known in Welsh as the pwnco. The mummers started by singing:
Wel Dyma ni’n dwad
Gy-feillion di-niwad
I ofyn am gennad
I ofyn am gennad
I ofyn am gennad I ganu
(Well here we come
Innocent friends
To ask leave
To ask leave
To ask leave to sing.)
The householder would then counter with a reason why the group should not enter. If the homeowner ran out of excuses, they had to let the Mari Lwyd in. Once inside, the mummers were offered food and drink while some of them carried the Mari Lwyd about the house, its jaws snapping at terrified children and adults.
The origins of the Mari Lwyd are as obscure as they are creepy. Some suggest the ritual has pre-Christian roots, based the horses’ similarity to similar figures in Ireland and the Isle of Man. Then there is the name. The folklorist E C Cawte believed it means ‘Grey Mare,’ as grey in Welsh is Llwyd and Mari could be a misspelling of the English ‘mare.’
Others, however, believe that Mari Lwyd is a derivative of ‘blessed Mary’, a Catholic reference to the mother of Christ riding on a donkey during the Feast of the Ass. This obsolete festival was held on January 14 and commemorated the flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt. Most people today, however, accept that the Mari Lwyd is a hybrid of both a pagan ritual and a Christian feast.