FSogol's 2018 Advent Calendar Day 12: The Skeletal Welsh Horse You Must Beat in a Battle of Rhymes

[FSogol]

In the Welsh folkloric tradition of Mari Lwyd, a horse skull visits your home around Christmas, and you must best it in poetry or allow it inside.

There’s a skeletal horse singing rhymes outside your door, and it wants to come inside. Can you beat the dead mare in a battle of poetic wits? This is the Welsh tradition of the Mari Lwyd, a mid-winter custom wherein the skull of a horse, decked out with bells and ribbons, is paraded on a stick by a reveler beneath a sackcloth, who challenges neighbors in exchange for drink and food.

It probably goes without saying that although Mari Lwyd now manifests around Christmas and New Year’s, this is a pre-Christian practice, one of those pagan rituals that’s endured on the British Isles over the centuries. The rather terrifying spectacle of Mari Lwyd did nearly disappear from Wales at one point, yet it’s had a resurgence recently, with Christmas ornaments being used for eyes occasionally instead of old glass bottle bottoms. The insults in the “pwnco” battles, as they’re called, are milder these days, and the drinking a little less heavy, but the sardonic grin of the horse skull, sometimes with a spring-loaded jaw, remains to haunt your Yuletides. In the 1966 video from the BBC Wales below, the Mari Lwyd dialogue plays out in matching rhymes until the undead mare is let in.

Exactly why anyone, at any point in history, thought this was good fun is lost to the ages. Music Traditions Wales (which offers a flat-pack Mari Lwyd for schools to assemble) points to the deep visual culture of the white horse in Britain, such as the late prehistoric Uffington White Horse carved into the hills of Oxfordshire, England. And there is a wider, worldwide heritage of ritual animal disguise, including the similar practice of hoodening in Kent, England, which features a hobbyhorse on a pole held by a person under a sheet.

More at https://hyperallergic.com/345156/the-welsh-undead-horse-of-christmas-you-must-beat-in-a-battle-of-rhymes/

and

https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/mari-lwyd-horse-skull-wales-wassailing

and http://resources.trac.wales/traditions/mari-lwyd
(which includes instructions to make your own horse skull if you don't have one laying around!)








I'll cover wassailing and caroling later this month.


(For an explanation of my advent project and a link to last years posts, see
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10181152160 )

[Siwsan]

1. We Welsh are an interesting group, aren't we? Poetry and music reign in our hearts.

I embrace my Celtic culture with enthusiasm, because we are delightfully fascinating.

Which reminds me - the Solstice is coming up, next week. Where the heck did I put that bottle of Mead!

[FSogol]

2. Gotta agree. Mrs FSogol and I hope to visit Wales sometime soon.

Fellow Celt here.

[Siwsan]

3. It is breathtakingly beautiful. Can't recommend it highly enough

I've made several visits and constantly dream of my next one.

I've never felt more welcomed anywhere else I've visited. A close second is Scotland.