Etymology Mari Lwyd, 2014 Although the custom was given various names, most recorded sources term this particular custom
Mari Lwyd.
Marie Trevelyan states that the name
Marw Lwyd had been used in many parts of Wales since the seventeenth century. She derived this name as "Grey Death", arguing that it was a symbol of "the dying or dead year". However, this etymology is heavy contested, Jones considered this to be a translation of "Blessed Mary", and thus a reference to the
Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, a key religious figure in the
Catholic Church,
Eastern Orthodox Church, and others. Although translating it slightly differently, as "Holy Mary", Peate endorsed this viewpoint. Although some of his acquaintances later suggested that the use of
Mari for Mary was unknown in Wales prior to the
Protestant Reformation, he countered these criticisms with the observation that the term
Mari was being used in reference to the Virgin in the mid-14th century
Black Book of Carmarthen, thus attesting to its early usage in Welsh. He nevertheless accepted that during the medieval period the term might have been restricted largely to poets, given that there is no evidence of its usage among the common dialect in this period. Given that
llwyd is the usual word for "grey" in the Welsh language and that Welsh speakers would have been exposed to the English word "mare", an alternative suggestion considered by Peate was that the term
Mari Lwyd had originally meant "Grey Mare". This etymological explanation would have parallels with the name of a similar hooded horse tradition found in
Ireland and the
Isle of Man, which is known in
Irish as the
Láir Bhán and in
Manx as the
Laare Vane, in both cases meaning "White Mare". Initially believing that "there is much to be said for this suggestion", Peate later embraced it fully. Cawte similarly believed that "Grey Mare" was the most likely original meaning of the term, noting that the Mari Lwyd appeared to represent a horse and that similar
hobby horse customs in neighbouring England, such as the hoodening tradition of East Kent, also made reference to horses with their name. Peate suggested that even if the term
Mari Lwyd had originally referred to a "Grey Mare", it could still have come to be associated with Mary in popular folk culture following the Reformation, thus explaining why Mary is referred to in the lyrics of some surviving Welsh wassailing songs. A further suggestion is that
Mari Lwyd derives from the English term
Merry Lude, referring to a merry game. Peate opposed this idea, arguing that if the latter was converted into Welsh then the result would be
merri-liwt or
merri-liwd. Peate also dismissed the idea that had been suggested to him that the term
Mari in this context had derived from
Morris, a reference to
Morris dance. Another reason to doubt this idea is that there is no known historical link between the Mari Lwyd, which was found in South Wales, and the Morris dance, which was concentrated in the north of the country. In other recorded instances, the
Mari Lwyd custom is given different names, with it being recorded as
y Wasail "The Wassail" in parts of
Carmarthenshire. In the first half of the 19th century it was recorded in
Pembrokeshire under the name of
y March "The Horse" and
y Gynfas-farch "The Canvas Horse". One account from
West Glamorgan has the head termed the
aderyn bee [
bi?]
y llwyd, meaning the "Grey Magpie", although this may be due to an error on the part of the recorder, who could have confused the horse's head for the
aderyn pica llwyd, an artificial bird in a tree that was carried by wassailers in the same area. Note that in modern Welsh, the
Mari Lwyd is referred to with
definite article y, which subsequently causes a
soft mutation of
m to
f (), rendering the form
y Fari Lwyd.
Origins Positing the custom to be "the survival of some ancient popular rite or ceremony", in 1888 David Jones suggested that its origins were Christian, and that it had once been part of the festivities of the
Feast of the Ass, a commemoration of the
flight into Egypt of Mary and
Saint Joseph that was historically marked on 14 January. According to Jones' idea, the Mari Lwyd itself represented the donkey on which Mary rode during the story. Peate was of the opinion that the Mari Lwyd was "no doubt a survival of a pre-Christian tradition" that had once been spread across Britain and other parts of Europe, and which – having survived the
Christianisation of Britain – had been renamed
Mari Lwyd in reference to the Virgin Mary during the Middle Ages. He expressed the view that the original custom had been "horrific in origin and intention" and that from an early date it had been connected to wassailing. Cawte concurred that it was "reasonable to accept" that the Mari Lwyd head had become attached to an independent wassailing tradition, but said that the connection to the Virgin Mary was unnecessary. Pearce also suggested the possibility that in parts of Glamorgan and
Monmouthshire the Mari Lwyd tradition came under the influence of
mystery plays, thus explaining why later recorded examples from those counties contained characters known as "the Sergeant" and the "Merryman". festivities in
Los Angeles The folklorist Trefor M. Owen also suggested that the Mari Lwyd was a practice "which probably had a religious (if pre-Christian) origin", adding that by the time it had been recorded, it had become "emptied of its religious content". Also embracing Peate's suggestion of ancient origins, Ellen Ettlinger believed that the Mari Lwyd represented a "death horse", as symbolised by the white cloth worn by its carrier, suggesting that it was originally employed in a pre-Christian ritual to mark the festival of
Samhain. The folklorist
Christina Hole suggested that this "ancient character" was once "a bringer of fertility". However, after 1970 the folkloric trend for interpreting such hobby horse traditions as pre-Christian survivals had ended, as scholars came to express greater caution about proposing origins for such customs. The Mari Lwyd was part of a wider "hooded animal" tradition that the folklorist E. C. Cawte identified as existing in different forms in various parts of Britain. Features common to these customs were the use of a hobby horse, the performance at Christmas time, a song or spoken statement requesting payment, and the use of a team who included a man dressed in women's clothing. A related example is the
hoodening custom of
East Kent in southeastern
England. In an area along the border between
Derbyshire and
Yorkshire, the
Old Tup tradition featured groups knocking on doors around Christmas carrying a hobby horse that had a goat's head. Hole drew parallels between hoodening and the
Christmas Bull tradition recorded in
Dorset and
Gloucestershire. In south-west England, there are two extant hobby horse traditions—the Padstow
'Obby 'Oss festival and
Minehead Hobby Horse—which take place not at Christmas time but on
May Day. Although the origins of these traditions are not known with any certainty, the lack of any late medieval references to such practices may suggest that they emerged from the documented elite fashion for hobby horses in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this, the hooded animal traditions may be comparable to England's
Morris dance tradition, which became a "nation-wide craze" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before evolving into "a set of sharply delineated regional traditions". ==Regional coverage==