The Mari Lwyd: The Gray Mare's Skull at the Midwinter Door and the Battle of Rhymes
In the dead nights between Christmas and Twelfth Night, in the valleys of south Wales, a knock would come at the door—and outside in the dark stood a dead horse, singing. The Mari Lwyd : a horse's skull, exhumed or kept from year to year, bleached and beribboned, its eye-sockets set with bottle-glass baubles, its jaw hinged with a spring to snap at the unwary, the whole mounted on a pole and carried by a man hidden under a white sheet, so that the creature stood taller than any living thing at the door. Around her clustered her party—the Leader with his staff and ribbons, Sergeant, Merryman, sometimes Punch and Judy with blackened faces—and what they wanted was entry . But entry, by the iron rule of the custom, could not be forced and could not be begged. It had to be won in verse . Through the closed door began the pwnco : the battle of rhymes, stanza against stanza, the dead horse's party singing their claim to come in, the household singing back their refusals, insults, and...