Gray Mare

"Mari Lwyd" meaning "Gray Mare" is an ancient Welsh tradition celebrating the end of the Christmas season (taking place from Christmas into January). A group of singers would go from house to house (including pubs) with the Mari Lywd and try to gain entry by a verbal contest with the inhabitants. The Mari Lwyd consists of a horse's skull with false eyes and and ears and a white sheet which was attached to the skull to make the body. Sometimes the horse head was actually made from wood. The jaws were wired so they could be snapped. Bells were attached to the reins and horse adorned with colorful ribbons. Either a person dressed up as the Mari Lwyd or it was carried on a pole.

The custom used to begin at dusk and often lasted late into the night. The Mari Lwyd party consisted of four to seven men, who often had coloured ribbons and rosettes attached to their clothes and sometimes wore a broad sash around the waist. There was usually a smartly dressed "Leader" who carried a staff, stick, or whip, and sometimes other stock characters, such as the "Merryman" who played music, and Punch and Judy (both played by men) with blackened faces; often brightly dressed, Punch carried a long metal fire iron and Judy had a besom.

The Mari Lwyd party would approach a house and sing a song in which they requested admittance. The inhabitants of the house would then offer excuses for why the team could not enter. The party would sing a second verse, and the debate between the two sides – known as the pwnco – would continue until the house's inhabitants ran out of ideas, at which time they were obliged to allow the party entry and to provide them with ale and food. An account from Nantgarw described such a performance, in which the Punch and Judy characters would cause a noise, with Punch tapping the ground to the rhythm of the music and rapping on the door with a poker, while Judy brushed the ground, house walls, and windows with a broom. The householders had to make Punch promise that he would not touch their fireplace before he entered the building, otherwise it was the local custom that before he left he would rake out the fire with his poker.

Once inside, the entertainment continued with the Mari Lwyd running around neighing and snapping its jaws, creating havoc, frightening children (and perhaps even adults) while the Leader pretended to try to restrain it. The Merryman played music and entertained the householders.

You can see how this ceremony was performed in this black and white film of men in the village of Llangynwyd carrying out the tradition of the Mari Lwyd, BBC Wales program, Lolfa, 1966. 

And this black and white film recorded in Tregaron(?) performing the Lari Lwyd ritual on Christmas Eve 1964, currently kept in National Library Of Wales.

The origin of the tradition is uncertain but it is believed that it is pre-Christian and possibly associated with Welsh mythological character Rhiannon from the Welsh folk epic Mabinogion. Rhiannon, who came from the otherworld, rode a shining white horse. 

But is it possible that this skeletal grey mare has a solar symbolism? 

In Slavic mythology, sun god Svetovid had a white stallion as his sacred animal. You can read more about the solar horse in my post about the Slavic sun god Svetovid.

Now it is very likely that this is the same white solar stallion we see depicted on many Celtic coins, like this one:

This white stallion was the symbol of the bright, warm, summer sun, which shines around the time of the summer solstice. The stallion is in this way linked with the Sky father who dominates this part of the year. 

The dead skeletal grey mare would then be a good symbol for dim, cold, winter sun, which shines around the time of the winter solstice? The mare is in this way linked with the Earth mother who dominates this part of the year.

That the whole ritual could have a solar symbolism can also be seen from the part which concerns the fire. The fact that Judy carries the fireplace poker and is made to promise not to touch the fire could be a remnant of the old winter solstice fire magic ritual which is still preserved in Serbia. In Serbia, every Christmas eve, a yule log was ceremonially placed in the fire place, and was supposed to burn through Christmas night and Christmas day. This symbolically insured that the fire of the sun would burn through the winter and that the summer would arrive again. On Christmas day, a special fire poking ritual was performed by the first man that crosses the house doorstep. As he poked the fire he tried to make as many sparks as possible, all the while reciting this spell: "As many sparks, as much luck, as many sparks as much happiness, as many sparks as much health, as many sparks as many cattle, as many sparks as much grain..." This Serbian ritual was intended to bring good bountiful year to the family in whose house it was performed. Maybe similar fire poking was once part of Mari Lwyd ritual???

What do you think?

PS: When I originally wrote this article, I didn't know about animal calendar markers...Basically using animals, whose mating or birthing season always happens at the same time during the solar year, as symbol for that part of the solar year...Now I know...

What does this have to do with solar horses? Well, wild horse mating season starts in April and ends in September, peaking on summer solstice, because mare fertility is directly driven by the day length...

I wrote about this in my posts "Trojan horse" and "Unicorn"...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...

Cantre'r Gwaelod

Cantre'r Gwaelod meaning Sunken cantref (province) is a legendary ancient sunken kingdom said to have occupied a tract of fertile land lying between Ramsey Island and Bardsey Island in what is now Cardigan Bay to the west of Wales. 

There are several versions of the legend. The earliest version appears in the Black Book of Carmarthen which dates to the 13th century. In it the land is referred to as Maes Gwyddno (English: the Plain of Gwyddno). In this version, the land was lost to floods when a well-maiden named Mererid neglected her duties and allowed the well to overflow.

It is interesting that a very similar story is also found in "Historical and descriptive notices of the city of Cork and its vicinity" first published in 1839 by John Windele. On Pages 42-43 we can read this:

A short distance to the south west, from the City, is Lough na famog, (probably the Lough Ere of the Hajiology,) now called the Lough of Cork, a considerable sheet of water supplied by streams from the adjoining hills; the high road runs along its eastern shore, and the other sides are skirted by grounds, unhappily without tree or shrub, to add a feature of beauty or interest to the picture. It is the scene of one of CROKER'S charming Fairy Legends, detailing the bursting forth of the lake, through the negligence of the princess Fioruisge (Irish: Fior-uisge - spring water), daughter of King Corc. In taking water from the charmed fountain, she forgot to close the mouth of the well, and the court, the gardens, the King, and his people, were buried beneath the flowing waters. 

The incident is common to almost every lake in Ireland. 

Six centuries ago, Cambrensis had a similar legend concerning Lough Neagh, which Hollinshed has repeated in a less diffusive style. "There was," he says, "in old time, where the pool now standeth, vicious and beastlie inhabitants. At which time was there an old saw in everie man his mouth, that as soon as a well there springing, (which for the superstitious reverence they bare it, was continuallie covered and signed,) were left open and unsigned, so soone would so much water gush out of that well, as would forthwith overwhelme the whole territorie. It happened at length, that an old trot came thither to fetch water, and hearing her childe whine, she ran with might and maine to dandle her babe, forgetting the observance of the superstitious order tofore used: But as she was returning backe, to have covered the spring, the land was so farre overflown, as that it past hir helpe; and shortly after, she, hir suckling, and all those that were within the whole territorie, were drowned; and this seemeth to carie more likelihood with it, because the fishers in a cleare sunnie daie, see the steeples and other piles plainlie and distinctlie in the water." 

In 1770, Welsh antiquarian scholar William Owen Pughe reported seeing sunken human habitations about four miles (6.4 km) off the Ceredigion coast, between the rivers Ystwyth and Teifi.

In the 1846 edition of The Topographical Dictionary of Wales, Samuel Lewis described a feature of stone walls and causeways beneath the shallow waters of Cardigan Bay. Lewis took the view that considering that the Ptolemy maps marked the coastline of Cardigan Bay in the same location as it appears in modern times, the flood described in the legend must have occurred before the second century AD.

Modern historians however rejected the legend as a fantasy. 

But few years ago, ferocious winter storms stripped thousands of tons of sand from beaches in Cardigan Bay. What was revealed was a huge prehistoric forest, hundreds of oaks that died more than 4,500 years ago when they stopped growing and were then submerged under the surface of the Cardigan Bay. This ancient forest, named "the forest of Borth", once stretched for miles on boggy land between Borth and Ynyslas. Then something happened, the climate changed, the sea lever rose and the whole area disappeared under a thick layer of peat and sand and the ancient forest disappeared from view.

What is interesting is that archaeologists also found a timber walkway made from short lengths of coppiced branches, held in place with upright posts. It has been dated to between 3,100 and 4,000 years old, built as the local people found ways to cope with living in an increasingly waterlogged environment. Human and animal footprints were also found preserved in the hardened top layer of peat, along with scatterings of burnt stones from ancient hearths.

So people who lived in the forest of Borth, and who witnessed it's submergence under the waves of the Cardigan Bay, continued to live in the area. They must have passed the account of this event from generation to generation until eventually it came to us as a legend about the submerging of the Maes Gwyddno (the Plain of Gwyddno). 

What is interesting is that the destruction of the forest of Borth happened at the same time when the Irish bog oaks found in the area of the above mentioned Lough Neagh, stopped growing because they were suddenly submerged in water for 10 years.... The I wrote about this in my post "Partholon and the great flood". In that article I talked about a very strange correlation between the Irish myths and legends talking about the great floods of the mid 3rd millennium BC, and the actual dendochronological data from the same period...I concluded that the Irish myths about the great flood of Partholon are probably real histories, memories of the real catastrophic weather even which hit Ireland during the period 2354 BC and 2345 BC. 

And we now see that Wales was also hit by the same event. Dendochronoligical data obtained from the tree stumps found in the Cardigan Bay seems to match the dendochronological data from Lough Neagh. 

Did Welsh people, just like the Irish, manage to preserve the memory of the "great flood" and pass it on to us across 4500 years? Or did some past great winter storms reveal the remains of "the forest of Borth" to the amazed and bewildered medieval witnesses only to cover them again, triggering human imagination and eventually giving us the legend about the submerging of Cantre'r Gwaelod?

I just thought of something. The Laigin people from Ireland at one stage controlled Llyn peninsula. I wonder if this is how we find almost identical "let the tap running" explanation for the legend in both Ireland and Wales? 

In "The Lleyn peninsula : It's history, literature & antiquities" we read that "...practically every lake in Wales has some story or other connected with it. The story about the lake Glasfryn is very interesting. The story says that in the olden times there was a well where the lake is now, and this well, kept by a maiden named "Grassi," was called "Grace's Well." Over the well was a door, presumablv a trapdoor, which Grassi used to open when people wanted water, and shut immediately afterwards. One day Grassi forgot to shut the door, and the water overflowed and formed a lake. For her carelessness Grassi was turned into a swan, and her ghost is still said to haunt Glasfryn House and Cal-Ladi. This little lake is now the home and breeding-place of countless swans..."

This is almost identical to the legend about the Lough from Cork. So it is quite possible that the Laigin are the link here...

We also find similar legend in Brittany. It says that once there was a city called Ys that was built on land reclaimed from the sea. It was a rich place, famed for its beautiful gardens. One night Princess Dahut, under the influence of wine, mistakenly opened the sluices and the city was submerged.

Finally I have to ask this question: who was this "princess" or "maiden" who is blamed for the "great flood"? Cold this be the Old Mother Earth, the Mother Goddess, who controlled the waters, like "Baba", the hag from Slavic mythology did? Wells were considered holy to her, an the well water was called  "živa voda", living water. If the Earth is the Mother Goddess, then the well water is her menstrual blood, the living water indeed... And the flood that destroyed all these ancient cities could have been an actual flood caused by a catastrophic climate change...Like the flood of Partholon described in the old Irish Annals and recorded in bog oaks... This is a very interesting theme to explore....