Imagine you’re having a quiet night at house when abruptly there’s a knock on the door. You open it to discover a boisterous crowd carrying a horse’s cranium mounted on a pole and draped in ribbons – the Mari Lwyd has arrived.
The Mari Lwyd, which means “gray (or pale) mare”, is a Christmas and new yr customized in areas of south Wales courting again to the 18th century. A horse’s cranium is positioned on a pole and lined in a white sheet, embellished with ribbons. An individual, hid beneath the sheet, carries the pole and operates the horse’s jaw, making it snap. A gaggle of inventory characters accompany them together with Sergeant, Merryman, Punch and Judy.
The procession goes from home to accommodate and the group sing verses asking for admittance. The family is anticipated to reply, additionally in verse. And so begins a (typically very lengthy) improvised poetic contest or rhyming ritual often called pwnco earlier than the group is lastly invited into the home and provided food and drinks.
The Mari Lwyd goes from door to door however would you let her in?
Several explanations have been proposed as to the origin of the customized. Some argue that its roots lie in a pre-Christian fertility ritual. Others have argued that the Mari Lwyd has associations with the Virgin Mary.
The customized is clearly linked to the apply of wassailing, the place teams of merrymakers go from one home to a different asking for food and drinks. It could also be linked to different folks performances discovered elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, together with the hobby-horse custom.
Plygain
Further north, a practice celebrated in Montgomeryshire, the place I used to be introduced up, is way much less vibrant and firmly positioned inside a spiritual context. Deriving from the Latin “pullicantio” (cock crow), the plygain (pronounced “plug-ine”), was an early-morning service initially held on Christmas Day in parish church buildings after which additionally in nonconformist chapels, starting in candlelight and persevering with into daylight.
It is now primarily a night service, though some stalwarts nonetheless adhere to the early morning custom.
A trio singing plygain.
After a congregational hymn, a studying and a prayer, the vicar or minister will announce, “Mae’r blygien yn awr yn agored” (the plygain is now open). There isn’t any programme; fairly, a celebration of singers will stand up and make their option to the chancel or the sêt fawr (the elder’s pew in a chapel), and sing a carol, unaccompanied and with no conductor.
These are sometimes from the identical household and with an historic pedigree, their frayed carol books (often previous notebooks) having been handed down by way of the generations. A tuning fork is commonly used to pitch the tune – I’ve even seen it struck in opposition to a singer’s tooth.
The carols would usually have been composed by native poets and sung to well-liked tunes of the time. They don’t describe solely the beginning of Christ and incessantly give attention to the crucifixion. Often very lengthy, they’re often sung in three-part harmonies.
The plygain ends with the spine-chilling sound of Carol y Swper (the Supper Carol), when all the boys within the congregation come ahead to sing.
Carol y Swper carried out at a church in Montgomeryshire.
Revival and reinvention
In the Nineteen Sixties, the St Fagans National Museum of History, or the Welsh Folk Museum because it was then identified, started accumulating completely different genres of Welsh folks songs. These included plygain carols and Mari Lwyd verses. This has helped to resume curiosity in each traditions.
The museum hosts annual Mari Lwyd performances, whereas many a Cardiff pub-goer will seemingly be startled by the sudden look of a snapping horse’s cranium. The apply has developed over time – visits might be pre-arranged, members will sing from track sheets, the Mari might even be fabricated from cardboard. In reality, something goes.
Today, the Mari (in numerous guises) is prospering, and might be discovered as far afield because the USA and Australia.
The plygain remains to be going sturdy in Montgomeryshire and, certainly, throughout Wales and past. Around 50 providers are held throughout December and January.
And this custom, too, has undergone many modifications. Several collections of plygain songs have by now been revealed enabling new carollers to take part.
In 2020 and 2021, a digital plygain passed off in the course of the pandemic. A bilingual plygain web site has additionally been arrange and a brand new carol composed particularly for ladies’s voices, so that girls, too, have their Carol y Swper.
Purists would argue that traditions shouldn’t be revived and re-invented. But it’s within the nature of traditions to alter and always evolve – they have to achieve this in an effort to survive.
We ought to proceed to have fun the modern-day variations of the Mari Lwyd custom and the plygain as a result of they contribute to a shared sense of id and instil in members a way of belonging.
Sioned Davies doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.