Picture this: It’s half past eight on a frozen January evening in Chepstow. You’re three cups of tea into a perfectly reasonable night in front of the telly when there’s singing outside your front door. But it’s not carolers — Christmas is over, thank god — and it’s not drunk teenagers either. You peer through the curtains and there, swaying slightly in your front garden, is a horse skull on a stick. A horse skull. Draped in a grubby white sheet, festooned with ribbons and bells, with its jaw hinged so it can snap open and shut. And the people holding it — your neighbours, possibly — are singing at you. In Welsh. Demanding entry to your house.
Welcome to the Mari Lwyd. The Grey Mare has come calling, and she won’t take no for an answer unless you can out-rhyme her.
Right. So. The Mari Lwyd is barmy even by British standards, and we’re a country that still has Morris dancers and cheese-rolling down lethal hills. Here’s how it works: a group of people — let’s be honest, they’ve usually had a drink — rock up to your door with a decorated horse skull. They sing a verse demanding hospitality. You’re meant to sing back, offering reasons why they absolutely cannot come in. They counter with another verse. You respond. Back and forth it goes, this pwnco (poetry battle), getting increasingly creative and occasionally insulting, until either you run out of rhymes or they do.
If they win — and they usually do, because they’ve been practising all month and you’re ambushed in your slippers — you have to let them in. Feed them. Water them. Watch the Mari Lwyd terrorise your cat and snap her jaws at your guests, particularly any young women, because apparently that’s meant to be lucky or fertile or something equally pagan that the chapels tried very hard to forget about.
It’s absolutely mental. Which is probably why it nearly disappeared.
The Mari Lwyd didn’t fit with respectable Wales — or more accurately, with the version of Wales that England preferred. Too rowdy. Too pagan. Too Welsh-language. Too much like having a party when you should be in chapel being quiet and grateful. Centuries of English cultural suppression had already done a number on Welsh traditions and language by the time the chapels finished the job. Anything that looked too old, too strange, too specifically Welsh got stamped out or anglicised until it was harmless.
By the 1970s, only a handful of villages still bothered, and even there it was mostly a few old blokes who remembered the songs from before the war. Everyone assumed it would die with them. Another Welsh tradition buried alongside the language schools were still beating out of children just a generation before.
But it didn’t die. Something wonderfully odd occurred instead. Around the millennium, a few things converged: folklorists at St Fagans started properly documenting what was left of the tradition. The internet arrived in Welsh valleys. And a generation of young Welsh people discovered that their grandparents’ embarrassing pagan horse-skull nonsense was actually brilliant.
Suddenly what had been passed down through squinting at your dad doing it could be learned from YouTube. Traditional songs that only three old men in Llangynwyd could remember were now on Spotify playlists. WhatsApp groups formed to organise mumming routes. Some hipster in Cardiff made an Instagram-worthy Mari Lwyd and it went viral.
The Mari Lwyd became, against all odds, cool.
Search for it now on TikTok and you’ll find dozens of processions, costume tutorials for decorating your skull (ribbon placement is apparently crucial), musicians sharing traditional verses alongside their own increasingly cheeky compositions. There are Mari Lwyd meetup groups. Google Maps plotting mumming routes through Monmouth. People arguing in Facebook comments about the “authentic” way to attach the jaw mechanism, as if their great-grandfather didn’t just use whatever wire he had lying about.
The technology isn’t killing the tradition. If anything, it’s given it permission to come back from the dead. Which is fitting, really, for a reanimated horse skull.
Look, there’s a whole tedious argument about how smartphones are killing authentic culture, turning everything into content, making us all shallow digital zombies, etc. etc. You’ve heard it. Probably from someone who then posted about it on Twitter.
But the Mari Lwyd’s resurrection suggests something more interesting. Yes, people are Instagramming their Mari processions. They’re also actually going out with the Mari. In the cold. In January. Knocking on real doors and hoping their neighbours won’t just call the police about the horse skull situation.
I can tell you this because it happened to me. A few years back, after leaving an abusive relationship, I was properly lost. Cut off from friends, family, any sense of place or belonging. Then I stumbled across the Mari Lwyd — this completely mental tradition I’d somehow never heard of despite being Welsh-adjacent — and something clicked.
Started going to Mari processions. Made a skull. Learned the songs. Turned up at doors with a group of strangers who became friends. There’s something about performing a ritual together — especially one this daft — that bypasses all the usual social awkwardness and fear. You’re too busy trying to remember the next verse and wondering if your Mari’s jaw mechanism will hold together to worry about whether people like you.
The Mari gave me back my voice. Literally — you have to sing, improvise, engage in poetry battles on doorsteps. You can’t do that while staying small and quiet and unnoticeable. The tradition demands you take up space, make noise, be part of something bigger than your own fear.
And I’m not the only one. Friends in the Mari community have told me how the tradition helped them leave abusive relationships too. How having this community — this weird, welcoming group of people who just want to sing at neighbours with decorated horse skulls — gave them the confidence to rebuild their lives. One friend said showing up with the Mari was the first time in years she’d done something just for joy, not because someone else expected it of her.
Started a Facebook group — Mari Lwyd & Friends — thinking maybe twenty people would join. It’s got 1,200 members now. Artists, historians, complete beginners, people from Wales and people from Wisconsin. All connected by this bizarre horse skull tradition. They share costume tips, organise processions, support each other through the dark months. It’s become this accidental community of practice and mutual care.
Here’s the clever bit: the digital stuff gives people permission. When a tradition’s mostly died out, trying to revive it feels presumptuous. Who are you to claim this? What if you do it wrong? But when you can watch shaky footage from the 1970s, read firsthand accounts, listen to recordings of the actual songs, you’re not making it up. You’re continuing something real.
The Chepstow group that reformed in 2018 — after decades of nothing — credits YouTube videos of old Mari processions with giving them the nerve to start. They watched the recordings, learned the songs, cobbled together a Mari Lwyd, and turned up at their first door absolutely terrified. The videos didn’t replace the experience. They enabled it.
Say you’re intrigued by the idea of terrorising your neighbours with a decorated horse skull (and frankly, who isn’t?). Here’s what you’re getting into.
The Mari herself — ideally a real horse skull, which is easier to obtain than you’d think if you know any farmers or can sweet-talk a knackery. Mount it on a pole, drape it in a white sheet that hides the person operating it, articulate the jaw with springs or wire so it snaps properly. Add ribbons, bells, maybe some glass eyes if you’re feeling fancy. Some groups use convincing replicas if sourcing actual horse bones proves awkward, which is fair enough.
The party — someone has to carry the Mari (that’s the sweaty job, inside the sheet, working the jaw mechanism). You need a Leader who knows the songs and can think of rhymes on the spot. Then various hangers-on with instruments — accordions, fiddles, whatever you’ve got. Hip flasks are traditional and, let’s be honest, probably necessary.
The pwnco — this is the poetry battle, and it’s where things get properly fun. You rock up to a house singing, demanding entry. If they know the tradition, they sing back with reasons you can’t come in — you’ll eat all the food, scare the children, break things. You counter with increasingly creative verses. This can go on for ages. Eventually either you win through superior rhyming or they graciously admit defeat and let you in for drinks and snacks.
The songs — a mix of traditional Welsh verses (often actually in Welsh, which is brilliant if you can manage it) and improvised English ones. St Fagans has documented loads of traditional verses that you’re free to nick and adapt. Most groups cobble together their own songbooks from various sources.
The whole thing is beautifully chaotic. No two processions are quite the same. That’s rather the point.
You don’t need to be Welsh to appreciate a good horse skull mumming, though it does help to have a certain tolerance for weirdness and January weather. What the Mari Lwyd represents — gathering in the dark months, inverting normal social rules, demanding poetry from your neighbours — those are fairly universal human needs, turns out.
Start small. Maybe your first mumming is just your household visiting next door with songs and a promise of cake. The core is: show up unexpectedly, sing at people, see what happens. You can scale up to the horse skull later.
Be respectful but not precious. If you’re outside traditional Mari Lwyd territory, just be honest about it. “We’ve borrowed this brilliant Welsh tradition because January is grim and we needed something daft to do” is a perfectly valid position. Better than pretending your family’s been doing this for generations when they absolutely haven’t.
Use your phone, obviously. Film it for documentation, not for going viral. Create WhatsApp groups for logistics. Let the technology serve the actual gathering, not replace it. It’s a tool. Use it like one.
Learn the actual songs. There’s something powerful about singing verses that people sang in 1823, even if your Welsh pronunciation is shocking. St Fagans has recordings online. Practise in your kitchen. Accept that you’ll feel daft. Lean into it.
Embrace the awkward. First time you knock on a door with a horse skull will be mortifying. That’s fine. We’ve lost our tolerance for public strangeness. The Mari Lwyd gives you permission to be weird in community. Take it.
If you’re in South Wales or the borders in January, here’s where Mari Lwyds tend to appear. Chepstow usually does something around Twelfth Night, early January, sometimes combined with English wassailing traditions in the border areas. Llangynwyd is one of the oldest continuous traditions — proper old-school. Swansea has several groups active now; check local pubs. St Fagans Museum sometimes hosts demonstrations if you want to spectate before committing. Monmouth and the Herefordshire borders are worth watching too — in places like Hereford you might see the Mari meet the wassailers, which is where the Welsh and English traditions collide.
One note: the Mari Lwyd isn’t wassailing. That’s a separate English tradition about blessing apple trees. In the border counties — Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire — sometimes you get both happening, which is its own kind of magic.
Most groups are friendly about newcomers joining. Show up, join the singing, have a go at the rhyming. It’s more fun than watching, obviously.
Here’s the thing about the Mari Lwyd: folk culture was never static. It’s always adapted, incorporated new bits, dropped old bits that stopped working. The idea that there’s a “pure” version of any tradition that must be preserved unchanged is itself modern — and often pushed by the same people who worry that technology corrupts everything.
What matters isn’t whether you organise your mumming party on WhatsApp. What matters is whether actual people gather in actual places, make actual noise, sing to actual neighbours, and experience that particular mix of joy, terror, and community that comes from performing a ritual together. With a horse skull. In January.
The Mari Lwyd lives because people want her to live. The skull clicks her jaw not just in museums or on YouTube, but on cold doorsteps where someone’s desperately trying to remember the next verse and someone else is laughing and reaching for the door handle. Old and new together, both keeping each other going. Which is exactly how folk traditions have always worked, if you actually look at them.
The Grey Mare’s out there. She’s demanding poetry. You’d better have your rhymes ready.
Seen a Mari Lwyd? Got your own Mari stories? Other traditions being revived in your area? Drop them in the comments — we’re building something here, and your experiences count.
Resources: Museum of Welsh Life — Mari Lwyd Collection · Traditional verses and songs at St Fagans · Mari Lwyd & Friends Facebook group (1,200+ members sharing tips, organising processions, supporting each other) · Search “Mari Lwyd [your area]” for local groups.
Coming next: Apple tree wassailing — the English tradition of blessing orchards, and how it connects to modern orchard conservation (sometimes it even meets the Mari in the border counties). Then: Forest of Dean foraging in winter, and a Welsh cawl recipe that teaches you patience.