The Mari Lwyd

The Mari Lwyd (also spelled Llwyd, Llewyd, or y Fari Lwyd) is an old Cymric (Welsh) and Kernoweck (Cornish) tradition with roots in antiquity. She’s the featured performer in a processional rite or folkplay. This ritual is usually performed around Alban Arthan / Yuletide. The Mari is a horse skull placed on a pole, decorated with ribbons and flowers. She functions as a type of puppet. She is sometimes rigged so that the jaws can open and close. A person chosen for the honor hides beneath a sheet and operates the skull.
 
The Mari parades through town or at a pub or government building, singing songs, dancing, snapping its jaws at passerby, collecting alms, insulting famous or wealthy townspeople, and engaging in other “horseplay.” Some processions incorporate Christian poems and Christmas carols. Others include more Pagan ceremonies, such as predictions through divination. The Mari Lwyd engages in a battle of wits – making pwnco (bad puns) – if she wins, she is allowed access to the building and is given drinks.
 
The name Mari Lwyd may have originated from the Welsh or early Anglo-Saxon word for mare, but it may have come from march or horse. Some have attributed it to the proper name Mary. The adjective Lwyd or Lloyd means “grey”. Thus we have the “Old Grey Mare” of legend and song. In Cornwall, she is sometimes called “Pen Kefyl” or “Pen Kevil” which means “horse head”, and she’s painted black and wears a black sheet.
 
The Mari Lwyd may have derived from several sources. It resembles the “Hobby Horse” of Cornish parades, the “Hooden Horse” or “old horse” folkplays of Kent, or “Snap the Dragon” of Medieval entertainment. She might have come from the stang /gwellen /ermula used as a ritual leader’s staff. Mari may originally have been part of a midwinter death and rebirth ritual. She seems to be connected to the Welsh goddess Rhiannon.
 
The Mari Lwyd was a common practice in southern Wales, the west country of England, and Cornwall until the 1840s, and existed in isolated Welsh communities well into the 1930s. The custom died out around the 1940s, except within individual families and folklore societies. This is less due to Christian persecution than to attrition – people were more interested in television and radio than old traditions – and two devastating world wars and the influenza epidemic.
 
Today, the Mari has been revived by Pagan groups, folklore societies, Morris dancing organizations, and Welsh, Cornish and British tourist bureaus. Some original Mari Lwyd figures still exist from the old ceremonies, with horse skulls over 150 years old (some elder Welsh community residents told folklorists they remembered the dray horse the skull belonged to!) One can be found in a museum in Powys. Other Mari Lwyd icons are new creations, made of cloth, papier maché, wood, and yes of course, duct tape.
 
-- A.C. Fisher Aldag
 
“Poor Ol’ Horse” -- Mari Lwyd lyrics in English
From Mary Jones’s Celtic Dictionary
 
  Once I was a young horse,
  And in my stable gay
  I had the best of everything
  Of barley oats and hay.
  But now I am an old horse
  My course is getting small
  I'm 'bliged to eat the sour grass
  That grows beneath the wall.
 
  Poor old horse, let him die
  Poor old horse, let him die.
 
  I've eaten all my oats and hay
  Devoured all my straw
  I can hardly move about,
  Nor can my carriage draw.
  With these poor weary limbs of mine
  I've travelled many miles
  Over hedges, bramble bushes
  Gates and narrow stiles.
 
  Poor old horse, let him die
  Poor old horse, let him die.

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