Mari Lwyd
by P. N. Harrison
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
We come together on this day every year, the two of us. We call it Nadolig here. Even in mainland Wales, they call it Christmas – the Yuletide. But old habits die hard here on our island. We see to it.
Peter arrives, carrying the pole and white shroud. I look down at the equine skull cradled under my arm. Together, these items will make the third member of our company tonight. Mari Lwyd, we call it. We both lost track of what the term means ages ago, but everyone on the island understands what it is. And the ritual that surrounds it.
We fit the horse’s skull on top of the pole, and Peter drapes the shroud over his shoulders. He has the task of carrying the… thing… throughout the night. I would trade with him if I could, if the Mari Lwyd permitted it. He doesn’t have to see his neighbors’ faces – their mortified visages as they open their doors. I do.
I lead my companions through the single road of our village. The Mari Lwyd hasn’t said anything yet, but I can almost hear its excitement. This is its night, its performance.
We arrive at the first house. I rap on the door, and there is a pause. I frown. Every decade or two someone refuses to come to the door. But, Francis Griffiths has lived on the island her entire life. She knows the ritual, and she knows its consequences. After a moment, the door cracks open.
I’ve never understood where the Mari Lwyd’s voice comes from. It isn’t from the horse skull. No, it sounds like it comes from within the sheet, like an invisible set of lungs blowing out the Mari Lwyd’s high-pitched song, the familiar words that everyone on the island knows so well.
We have come
to the door of the innocent
to ask your gift
to seek your hearth
Francis’s family has been on the island for generations. Even though her voice wavers, she knows her role in this production.
You have come
to the door of the innocent
I give my gifts
I give my hearth
I lead my party into the house. I used to hate the next part of the show, but over the years, I’ve come to take a bit of joy from it. I find it funny, the havoc that the Mari Lwyd carries into the household. Tonight, it seems to find a special delight out of shattering Francis’s finest plates and tableware. It cackles and neighs as it crunches its skeletal jaws down on the porcelain. I know it belonged to her grandmother. I remember her displaying it back when she owned the house.
Now that the Mari Lwyd has found its gifts, it is time that it enjoys its hearth. I lead my companions even further into the house. A roaring fire waits in the fireplace. Every house has a fireplace in this village. Francis rushes from the room and arrives back a moment later with a steaming mug in her hand. I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter what is in the mug, just as long as it is hot. Over the years, the villagers have offered the Mari Lwyd everything from coffee to mulled wine to black tea laced with cyanide. The Mari Lwyd enjoys them all equally. Tonight, Francis offers cider. Peter brings the mug to the Mari Lwyd’s teeth, and a moment later the hot liquid sifts through the skull and onto Peter. By the end of the night, his back will be drenched and scalded. For its part, our equine companion lets out a whinnying chuckle.
We step over the pile of devastated China as we depart the house. Behind me, I can hear Francis’s sobs. She isn’t usually one of the ones who cries from our visit, but her grandmother’s plates had survived a century of our house calls. I am sure the ordeal is quite difficult for her. I would ask her tomorrow if she is alright, but she won’t talk about what happens tonight after it is over. No one does. That is the way the islanders handle things.
We carry on like this, singing at the door of every house on the street. Everyone knows their parts. The Mari Lwyd is particularly exuberant this year. At Beverly Evans’s, it knocks the family photos that line the entry hallway off the wall and demands that Peter stamp them under his feet. Benjamin Myers, whose son Mike once fired his shotgun into the Mari Lwyd’s skull only to watch the pieces pull themselves back together, even knows his part. He has the gifts – the photos he has left of his son – laid out on the dining room table when we arrive. The Mari Lwyd tears into them eagerly, and Benjamin only sheds a few tears. I’m sure having the pictures, the memories, in the house has been hard for him.
Before long, we only have a few houses left. Our next stop is a nice little cliffside cottage. The previous owner, Carol Spivey, died earlier in the year, but a businessman from the mainland bought it. Ever since, a small stream of visitors has stayed there while they toured the island. Peter and I made a point to slip papers that explained what they needed to do under the door earlier in the week.
The light is on as we arrive at the door, and I can see the fire from the hearth blazing as I knock. That’s a good sign, at least. With the shrill voice I have heard two dozen times that night and hundreds of times throughout the previous centuries, the Mari Lwyd begins its song.
We have come
to the door of the innocent
to ask your gift
to seek your hearth
There is a long silence as the last word hangs in the air. After a minute, the Mari Lwyd neighs its frustration, and I knock again.
We have come
to the door of the innocent
to ask your gift
to seek your hearth
This time, we get a response. But it is not the terrified singsong that we have come to expect.
“Bugger off out there, will ya?”
The Mari Lwyd snarls at this outburst. I can tell that its patience won’t hold for much longer. I rap my fist against the door again.
We have come
to the door of the innocent
to ask–
“I said cut it out!”
The door swings open halfway through the verse. Standing in the entryway is a man dressed in his sleeping clothes. He is young and thin, clearly not of the hearty, stocky build so common on the island. He opens his mouth to speak again, but his voice comes out as a squeak as he sees the Mari Lwyd.
There is always a pause while the Mari Lwyd looms over its unwelcoming host. It is almost as if the sheer impudence of the situation renders it silent. If there were eyes inside the skull’s empty sockets, I am sure I would see them raging. I know I shouldn’t meet the man’s eyes in this moment – it’s always the eyes that interrupt my sleep during the rest of the year – but I find myself glancing in his direction, at his face. He is young, certainly a tourist drawn to the island by the beauty of the seascape behind the house. Just how rooted this season is to ritual is lost on him, just as it is for so many mainlanders.
Even with more than two hundred years behind me, I will never get used to the suddenness of what comes next. The man begins to shut the door, but he is too late. The skull jerks forward, splintering the side of the door in pursuit of the houseguest. He has only backed away two steps when the Mari Lwyd’s jaws clamp into his shoulder. I can hear his collarbone snap even over the snorts and whinnies that fill the hallway, and the Mari Lwyd lifts him into the air and shakes him with a violence that is both startling and brutal. Crimson stains the alabaster skull and linen cloth as the Mari Lwyd continues to gnash its jaws into its victim. Inside the cloak, I hear Peter shout as the gore pours through the skull’s mouth and onto him. We have never spoken about it, but I am sure this sensation, the feeling of warm lifeblood saturating his back, haunts him late in the summer nights, when our Nadolig vigil otherwise feels like a distant nightmare.
The ungrateful host is young and strong, and the thrashing goes on for longer than I am accustomed. But, just like always, the screams give way to a faint burbling and then to silence. The body goes limp in the Mari Lwyd’s teeth before it falls to the ground. We stand among the blood-wet floor and wooden splinters. The Mari Lwyd has claimed its gift.
I lead my companions out of the carnage. We have no time to dwell on what has happened. The rite is not over. We still have two houses left to visit tonight. And more in the next year, and the next. We approach the next house on the road, and I give three sharp knocks on the door. Behind me, I hear the piercing words of the Mari Lwyd’s song.
Old habits die hard here on our island.
We see to it.
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