Mari Lwyd

By E.M. Duffield-Fuller

Disclaimer: This story contains references to WW2 as well as the tradition of Mari Lwyd and Mummery of which some elements (not displayed in this text) have come under recent controversy.

Bampi always said that winter was the time for grief. In December, even the skies shrouded themselves, their corpse-cold touch burrowing shrew-like into your bones. Alys hadn’t understood him then, but now that Bampi was nothing more than a frost covered mound it made more sense.

She’d missed him fast and fierce when he’d died in the spring. His absence had seemed everywhere, as if every room of their cold and draughty farmhouse was singing with it—as if he was more there in his absence than he had ever been alive.

She’d missed Bampi in the summer, too, as the sheep bleated and called from the rolling greens, and in the autumn as the leaves began to fall and the cold winds crackled in her hair. But now, in winter, the pain of missing him was worse than ever. Just as water split cracks in the floor when it swelled into ice, she felt his absence cracking her ribs open and creeping in towards her heart—harder and colder and sharper than ever.

Today was the worst of all. Bampi always loved Mari Lwyd’s visits. As soon as the horse-skulled mummer and his band of merry-makers came knocking at the door in the bleak mid-winter, Bampi came alive again, belting out all the songs he knew to drive them away. Best night of the year, he always said. He ought to be here now, and Alys found herself cross, somehow, that he wasn’t.

“Snow’s starting up again,” Mam said distantly, from the window. Her fingers kept tangling in the fraying edges of her shawl, but her eyes didn’t leave the blackened glass of the windows. “It will be cold for the men out there tonight.”

“The mummers will have plenty of ale in them. I doubt they’ll feel the cold,” Tad said dryly from the fire, jabbing at the ashen newspaper scraps with the poker.

Mam didn’t say anything, but she clutched the shawl closer still, her eyes straying to the framed photo up on the mantelpiece. Rhys beamed back at her, smugly proud in his new uniform, all set out in sepia in his tiny wooden frame, caged behind the glass. It was held in pride of place next to Bampi’s old pipe. Sometimes, Alys thought she could still smell pipe smoke drifting from his chair by the fire. She used to curl up on his lap as he told her stories and sang her songs and called her his Cariad Bach, the pipe smoke drifting up to stain the ceiling all the while.

Alys curled up on the floor by the fire instead now, tucking her gangly legs up to her chest and stretching the sleeves of her new cardigan—or, more accurately, Elen’s old one—over her fingers to hide them from the wailing winds blowing down the chimney. Elen, thirteen now, had got a new winter cardigan out of the clothes rations. She thought she knew everything, just because she knew big words like appeasement, Luftwaffe and reserved occupation. Alys mouthed the words to herself a dozen times beneath the scratchy sheets at night. She didn’t know what any of them meant except the last ones. Reserved Occupation. That was a keep-you-safe charm which meant Tad stayed home when Rhys had gone. Mam said they weren’t to talk on it, though. She said sometimes good luck felt like bad luck for the older men and talking on it didn’t help any. She just hugged both her girls tightly then and made them promise to say an extra prayer for their big brother when they blew out their candle at night.

“Not that they’d need candles much longer,” Elen said. In the New Year electricity was coming to Llan-y-Troedd. It was all anyone was talking about in the village. Elen said that someone was going to come and put it in the kitchen so that they could have a light bulb there that turned on with just a flick of a switch. Most of Wales had it already now, just the little villages were left. Elen said down in Cardiff and Swansea the houses had electricity wired up in every room. Bampi would be turning in his grave. He never trusted electricity. He would have refused to let them in to wire up the house. He said it drove all the magic out of the world. How could you hope to believe in ghosts and spirits and the great grey horse if light and dark could be conquered with a fingertip, after all?

A rap at the door made Alys flinch out of her reverie now. Tad frowned at the clock over the mantelpiece, straightening up and rubbing the ash down his mucky trousers.

“It’s not time already, is it? Go and get the stuff then, Catrin,” he added to Mam, who was staring at the door with glistening eyes. Mam hurried to the kitchen at the back of the house while Tad, Alys and Elen all gathered behind the closed front door.

The sound of the song drifting rhythmically through the wood in time to the heavy hammering seemed oddly eerie this year, harmonising with the howling winds.

Let us in, let us in. We’re cold and we’re hungry and we have a song to sing. Let us in, let us in, let us in.

Bampi was always the best at coming up with reasons that they couldn’t let Mari Lwyd in—singing retorts about it being too late, or the fire had just gone out, or he was already in his pyjamas and couldn’t entertain anyone right now. He could keep it up for ten minutes or more, each excuse getting more elaborate than the last. Of course, he always gave in, in the end. Then he’d open the door to let the brightly costumed singers pass the threshold, and give them food and drink until they were ready to brave the weather again for the next house.

Tad tried his best, but his heart was barely in it. By the time Mam had come back from the kitchen with the tray, he had already opened the door to let the mummers in.

The cold winter air came sweeping in with them, and Alys stumbled back fearfully. Her back pressed up against the whitewashed stone of the farm house as Mari Lwyd, the Leader, the Merryman, Punch and Judy all came squeezing into the house before her. The door seemed to thud ominously shut behind the five of them, trapping them inside this suddenly far too small room with her.

Mari Lwyd seemed taller than last year. The horse-skull almost scraped the ceiling, the cloak and ribbons draped underneath rippled though there was no breeze, completely obscuring the man who held the pole beneath it which held everything in place. Alys tried to push herself further back into the wall as the smooth, white bone turned blankly around the room, staring at her.

The Leader wore a black suit and hat, the rim of which was so wide that it seemed to throw his whole face into shadow until Alys couldn’t recognise the man beneath it at all. It ought to have been Mr Lacey, the Butcher from the village—but she was sure Mr Lacey was shorter than that, and thinner, too. This man was tall and broad and ominously silent as he thudded his wooden stick rhythmically upon the floor. Neither Tad, Mam nor Elen seemed to notice anything was amiss. In one of Not-Mr-Lacey’s white gloved hands, he held the bell bedecked bridle, which he used to lead Mari around the house as the horse jingled, pranced and snapped its mouth.

Elen shrieked with glee, not realising that something was wrong this year. She had grabbed hold of the Merryman, who swung her up in his arms in a wild and wordless waltz. The Merryman, Punch and Judy, were all dressed in bright colours, patchworked together. Punch and Judy were howling and capering around the room, causing chaos, and trilling high-pitched shrills like wounded animals or pagan wind spirits around the cramped and crowded room. Tad was laughing, Mam had half a smile on her face, one hand pressed to her chest. Elen was still being spun far too fast by the Merryman. Her legs wind-milled as she screamed, half elated, half terrified, as if she couldn’t stop. Her foot crashed heavily into Bampi’s old chair and it knocked into the hearth, sending everything atop the mantelpiece crashing to the floor. Alys screamed, pushing herself off the wall, darting forwards across the chaos.

The glass in Rhys’ frame had broken as he lay face down upon the flagstone floor, but it was the pipe Alys snatched. Kneeling amongst the shattered shards, she held it to her chest. The whole room went silent as everyone seemed to stare breathlessly at her.

Mari Lwyd leaned forwards slowly. Its eyes were glassy as they stared at her. Elen said they were made of glass bottles, wedged in the socket holes, but they seemed strangely knowing now. A gentle huff of breath seemed to slip out of its hollow nostrils. Alys stared at the horse and the skull seemed to stare back, almost as if it recognised her.

Then, with a jingle of bells, the Leader pulled it away. Without a word, he bowed to Tad and Mam and Elen, and backed out of the door, drawing Punch, Judy, the Merryman and Mari Lwyd with him.

Mam crossed the floor even before the door had banged shut behind them, clutching through the glass shards for Rhys and holding him tight to her.

“They’re good and drunk this year,” Tad said, frowning at the still fully laden tray on the side. “Never seen them so wild. And they didn’t take a single mouthful of the stuff we brought them, Catrin. Oh well, can’t say as they don’t deserve to blow off a little steam now more than ever, hmmm?”

Mam didn’t say anything, she just brushed her fingers across the photograph and placed it reverently back upon the mantelpiece.

“It’s your fault, Alys. You upset them all shouting and shoving like that. You’re such a baby,” Elen sneered, her bony fingers poking hard between Alys’ ribs. “You know it’s not real, don’t you? They make the skull move with levers and wires and things.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Tad said firmly. He rested one hand in the small of Mam’s back, but she just shook her head and moved away. He bent and tried to pry Bampi’s pipe out of Alys’ hands, but she refused to relinquish it.

“What has got into everyone tonight?” he burst out, but there was another hard knocking at the door before Alys could think of an answer.

Let us in, let us in. We’re cold and we’re hungry and we have a song to sing. Let us in, let us in, let us in.

Everyone stared at each other. The words were muffled slightly by the door, and were slurred with drink, but sounded far more cheery than they had before.

“Have they forgotten that they’ve done us already?” Tad asked frowning.

“Maybe they came back for their food after all?” Elen suggested.

But Alys knew. She just knew. She darted to the door, wrenched it open, much to the surprise of the mummers beyond, and pushed past them all.

The snow was still coming down fast, obscuring the night in a white haze, blanketing the farm fields surrounding them. She hurried to the gate and stared out into the world beyond.

One troop of staggering footprints led from the gate to the front door where the half-drunken mummers still stared at her, mystified. Mr Lacey’s wide-brimmed hat was pushed back on his head, revealing his plump and cheery face beneath as he gaped in her direction. But there were no footprints leading away from the gate, none where Mari Lwyd had gone. The snows were thick and white still as they blanketed the hillside beyond their front door, endless and unspoilt. There was nothing out there at all, in fact, save for a distant smell of pipe smoke curling on the winter wind.