When Welsh Mari Lwyd Visits
In South Wales, not just Santa is expected to stop by your home for the holidays, keep an ear out; here comes the Mari Lwyd (Gray Mare)! Mari Lwyd is a Hobby Horse, those toy horses that was basically a stick with a stuff horse head on one end, the Welsh kept the stick but have a horse skull on the end of it! Just to add to it, a person carries the stick with the skull on it while draped in a white cloth most commonly giving the appearance that the Mari Lwyd is a tall cloaked figure with a horse skill sticking out from the hood. Depictions of “hooded animals” are quite common in the British Isles thanks to its pre-Christian Pagan beliefs which causes confusion when trying to track down the origin of this tradition since the first recorded account of this tradition appears in the 1800’s and scholars and folklore experts can’t seem to agree if
Continue reading →