Mari Briga will be the Mandua Briga Seed Group’s Mari Lwyd. The words ‘Mari’ and ‘Mandua’ both mean ‘mare’ (one is Welsh and one is Gallo-Brittonic) so are essentially interchangeable, but for the sake of clarity in communicating who she is, we have chosen to give her the primary name of ‘Mari Briga’.
The origins of the Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare are shrouded in mystery. Most likely, it is connected to the various traditions of the ‘Obby ‘Oss and Beasts that proliferate in the local folk customs and traditions of many British towns, often around May Day or Beltane.
The Mari, however, is quite specific. She seems to have clear associations with death, and a particularly frightening appearance as a horse’s skull draped in a white, shroud-like cloth, decorated and carried from door to door and from inn to inn in the dark part of the year. As far as can be deduced, the Mari custom is indigenous to Wales, particularly South of Wales, and was originally a Christmas or New Year custom. The Mari is accompanied by a rowdy group of followers, one of whom is the ‘Ostler’, who handles and speaks for her. When they come to a house, or an inn, they know and are traditionally refused entry there follows a battle of poetic wits, called a pwnco. If the inhabitants of the house won, then the revellers would move on. If not, the door was opened and the Mari would enter, causing havoc, snapping at the people within, galloping around and generally making a nuisance of herself. Offerings of beer, food or money are made to the group, and they move on to the next establishment. There is a general belief that their visit will bring blessing to the house for the new year.
While many may like to see the custom of the Mari going back to pre-Christian times, there is, unsurprisingly, little evidence of this – the earliest mentions in the literature being no earlier than 1800. However, there is a very real sense in which this does not matter. The custom of the Mari is enjoying a resurgence in Wales as a conscious attempt to rekindle their native traditions, however, it is also becoming increasingly popular with modern Pagan groups throughout Britain and beyond. This is, perhaps, not surprising, as modern Paganism increasingly engages with the folklore and folk traditions of Britain. While most of these were devised, or at least heavily modified, by the Victorians in their eagerness for authentic ancient traditions, they do, nonetheless, form a coherent and emotionally powerful system of practices and symbols that sits well within the ethos and aesthetic of contemporary Paganism. There is something deeply ‘Pagan’ about a shrouded horse’s skull accompanied by revellers going from house to house during the dark half of the year. A rich mythology has grown up around the Mari within Paganism, which is no less powerful for being recent – all mythology begins somewhere, after all, and that of the Mari certainly fits well into the modern British Pagan zeitgeist!
For some Pagans she is the dark side of the sovereignty goddess associated with the horse – Epona or Rhiannon. She is accompanied by the dead and comes as a reminder of mortality and as a psychopomp, the embodiment of winter. There is, of course, not a scrap of evidence, either that Rhiannon was ever regarded as a goddess, or associated with sovereignty (although her connection to horses is hard to ignore) but once again, this is not important. It is a powerful image and it works ritually, mythologically and emotionally – and that is what makes it so powerful. The Mari may not always have been a winter goddess bringing blessings to those who are poetically gifted enough to earn her approval – but she most certainly is now. It is very much to be hoped that as the custom spreads from Wales and Britain into the wider world, the association with poetry remains.
A further mythology has begun to build around the Mari in recent times. In this case, she is once again associated with the sovereignty of Britain in equine form, and specifically with the White Horse of Uffington. In this account, she is thrown out of her stable whilst heavily pregnant in order to make room for Mary to give birth to the Christ Child. Since then she has wandered from door to door ‘Seeking the warmth of welcome’ – asking to be let in. In this form of the story she becomes symbolic of the Pagan revival and the rise of old gods and ways displaced by Christianity. There is, of course, no evidence of this at all in medieval, or even 19th Century sources. (The revellers who accompanied the Mari in 19th Century Wales would have been scandalised by the suggestion that they were anything other than good Christians!) This is an entirely new myth – but one that meets the needs of the times for British Paganism brilliantly. This story is brilliantly expressed in a song – The Mari Lwyd, written by the story-teller Hugh Lupton and sung by the folk singer Chris Wood.
All of this, hopefully, goes some way to explaining why a Druid Seed Group, in the North of England, many miles from the South of Wales, should be looking to adopt a Mari. There is more to it than that though. The name of our seed group, Mandua Briga, is linked to a far more local association with a mare who carries the dead to the Otherworld. Barely 6 miles from Darlington, where we are based, is Stanwick fort, an Iron Age fort unrivalled in size in most of Europe. It was, in all probability, the seat of Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantes. One possible translation of her name is the ‘The Mare Who Sends’ (Xavier Delamarre, Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise, 2003, pages 108 and 215). A bronze horse’s head found in 1843 at Melsonby, just beyond the south east corner of the Stanwick fortifications, and now in the British Museum lends further weight to the association between the site and horses.
In 2019 an artefact was sold through an online auction house that, although far cruder, was of striking similarity to the Stanwick horse head. Sadly the artefact had no provenance and all we know about it is that it was the property of a West Yorkshire collector and acquired on the UK art market, but having belonged to someone from West Yorkshire suggests that it was found within the territory of the Brigantes – and it may even have been found close to Stanwick.
A further association was discovered by archaeologist Professor Colin Haselgrove and his team who excavated Stanwick in the 1980s. An adult male buried in the rampart behind the central ‘Tofts’ area of the site had an inverted horse’s skull carefully placed above his body in an unusual burial rite. This was radiocarbon dated to approximately 90BC-80AD.
At this point, all is conjecture, but an interpretation of Stanwick as a cultic site associated not only with care of the sick, but also of the dead, with horses playing a significant role as psychopomps fits the evidence as well as any other interpretation. Hence, we feel that there is a strong local, spiritual significance to our Mari.
Darlington and nearby Richmond in North Yorkshire have traditions of ‘Osses, in the case of Richmond dating back into the 19th Century and revived in the 1990s. Both of these are black, possibly reflecting a northern version of the custom, although this quote from Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England by William Henderson, published in 1866, suggests that some may have been white:
Throughout Yorkshire, and formerly indeed all England over, the Christmas visitants are mummers, disguised in finery of different sorts, with blackened faces or masks, and carrying with them an image of a white horse … I believe that the Christmas mummers represent the yule host, or wild hunt, and that the man of the party is Wodin or Odin. The horse is evidently the white steed, Gleipmir, of the ancient god.
Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England by William Henderson, 1866, page 70-71
The song that accompanies T’Owd ‘Oss of Richmond was first published in 1857 by Robert Bell in his book Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, so we know that the tradition had been going since the mid-19th Century at least. It may even have been in existence since the early 1800s, as William Wise in his newspaper articles in the Richmond and Ripon Chronicle in the 1880s recalled T’Owd ‘Oss in his boyhood during the 1830s:
The most exciting Christmas custom was that of the ‘Poor Old Horse’ which perambulated the town from one public house to another.
Richmond, Yorkshire in the 1830s: Being the reminiscences of William Wise ‘An Old Richmond Lad’, edited by Leslie P. Wenham, 1977
The Darlington Mummers were formed in 1965 and are the oldest revivalist mummers team in the country. Their ‘Oss, as member Ric Spencer recounts in the Facebook page Darlington Mummers Scrapbook:
was made in around 1965 for a Mummers play we learnt for Whitby Folk Festival. The play had lots of characters, including 2 women, a recruiting sergeant, and a farmer’s man, me, who led a horse. The skull came from a dead racehorse from Richmond and was prepared by Ian Wood who was a butcher who buried it in lime for 6 months. It was then painted black and red, which were traditional colours, and mounted of a stout pole to carry. The jaw was also hinged. The late Jim Smith was the horse, the body was an old blanket, never spoke, just reared when needed. The horse still exists and it used in other plays.
This video explores the northern horse traditions of Souling plays and the Richmond ‘Oss:
Give us time and we may look to gaining an ‘Oss as well as a Mari, but in the meantime please join us on our journey to birth MARI BRIGA, the shining, or exalted mare (or, just as accurately, the High Horse!)
February 2022 – Mari Briga Arrives!
We now have the mare’s skull who will become our Mari. Many thanks to Trevor Jones and Liz Williams who run The Witchcraft Shop in Glastonbury for finding her for us. We don’t know too much about her – we know that she is a mare, that she is from Britain and that she either died a natural death or was put to sleep by a vet. She was not killed in a slaughterhouse and we were very specific about this. She is a big girl and judging by her teeth clearly was an old girl who lived a long life. We were so excited to meet her! The video below shows us taking her out of the box and welcoming her.
March 2022 – Our Stanwick Horse Mask Replica has been cast!
We are thrilled that the immensely talented jeweller Mike Shorer is working with us to create a replica of the Stanwick Horse Mask. Mike’s father Peter Shorer worked at the British Museum and created a replica of the Stanwick Horse Mask in 1994 which was exhibited at the Through Celtic Mists: Life and Ritual in the Iron Age exhibition at Northampton Central Museum in 1997. Sadly Mike’s father passed away over 10 years ago but he left Mike his extraordinary collection of moulds of historic pieces held at the British Museum, including the one of the Stanwick Horse Mask.
Although when we contacted Mike he told us that the Stanwick Horse Mask mould was not one of the range of 350 pieces that his Historic Jewellery Reproduction company uses, he let us know that he would check his father’s studio to see if he could find his father’s original mould. Luckily he did find it and he spent some time creating a master pattern from this, which he sent to his bronze casters in Birmingham so it could be cast using the lost wax process. Mike has now contacted us to say that he has had several bronzes cast of the Stanwick Horse Mask, and in his own words they look “Magnificent”! Our plan is for the Stanwick Horse Mask replica to eventually decorate the forehead of Mari Briga.
Here is some more information about Mike and his historic replicas:
July 2022 – Our Stanwick Bronze Replicas from Mike Shorer arrive!
The bronze replicas of the Stanwick Horse Mask and the two smaller men’s heads that accompany it in the British Museum have finally arrived and they are sensational! We are absolutely overwhelmed with the bronzes, they are incredible, totally breathtaking in their closeness to the originals. We literally could not stop looking at them when we finally opened the parcel. We would like to thank Mike Shorer so much for the work he has done, there is literally no one else in the world who could have created such authentic and magnificent bronzes as he has done and we are immensely grateful.
We hope it is OK with Mike to quote from one of his emails:
I have to thank you, on behalf of myself and my late father, for commissioning the bronzes. These are two of many pieces he moulded and electroformed as master patterns for future projects that he sadly ran out of time with, so I am hugely thankful that your request made me finally get them cast.
July 2024 – Welcome Mari Briga!
For over two years now our horse skull who we wanted to become our Mari Lwyd / Hobby ‘Oss / Mast Beast Mari Briga AKA Mandua Briga has been sitting on top of Jenny’s bookcase in her front room, reflecting the lack of activity in the Seed Group as a whole over this period of time due to a combination of caring responsibilities, close family bereavement and Jenny needing to finish her PhD.
However! Determined to get things moving and hopefully to get Mari Briga ready for this coming Samhain, and at the latest for early January next year for Wassailing, we contacted the hugely talented David Pitt AKA ‘The Crowman’ and ‘The Mari Midwife’, who is based in Swansea, to ask if we could commission him to help us. Here is one of his videos:
To date David has made 13 Mari Lwyds, including The Green Cob which was featured on folklore artist Ben Edge‘s well known painting THE MARI LWYD (2019):
The Green Cob was also due to make her theatre debut at the National Theatre in London in their recent production of Nye, starring Michael Sheen, in a dream sequence – but sadly this was cut from the final production due to time constraints.
So hugely luckily for us, David agreed to travel up to Darlington to stay for a couple of days to bring Mari Briga to life, and he arrived on Monday 8th July, bringing with him a few of his Mari Lwyds including The Green Cob:
He also brought with him Mari Trecopr – Coppertown Mari, who was the first Mari he created in 2011 from the skull of a wild Welsh pony:
David got cracking and the first job was to drill a hole in the upper part of the skull to insert the piece of plastic tubing you can see on the table below, which holds the pole (or ‘mast’) by which the skull is raised up and carried around:
This involved the use of an electric drill and truly the most terrifying power tool attachment I have ever seen, called a ‘holesaw’, which you can see in David’s right hand here:
It turns out that horse skulls, even of very old horses like ours, are extremely tough (and also smell really bad when they are drilled), so the holesaw didn’t quite go through and David needed to finish the hole off with a chunky flat headed screwdriver acting as a chisel and a few good thumps from a hammer:
Once the hole had been completed and the plastic tubing cut to size and inserted, it was secured and reinforced with Milliput epoxy putty:
While that was drying, David glued in all of the teeth with Gorilla wood glue and then began starting the supports for the attachment of the ‘shroud’ which covers the person holding the pole, and also for the attachment of the mane and bells and various other dangly shiny things, which he built out of garden cane:
He then attached the bar for the ‘snap’ (which will make sense if you go back and watch his video at the beginning), drilling notches in the jaw and then gluing it with very strong glue to hold it in place:
During all that, we managed to actually help with something (instead of just watching David work and offering him tea) by wrapping the cable ties securing the jaws with twine to hold them in place more firmly.
David also started to create Mari Briga‘s eyes, backing two curtain rings with cardboard, which would have an LED light inserted through the middle as, inspired by Mari Môn, the Mari Lwyd of The Anglesey Druid Order, we wanted Mari Briga‘s eyes to light up:
We managed to actually help with something again as we cut out Mari Briga‘s ears from some suede that David had brought along, and he then glued some copper sheet to them to help give the ears shape and strength and to make them shiny. We wanted copper for the ears to represent the copper mining around Scotch Corner in the Iron Age, used in the manufacture of metal-alloy pellets and possibly coins which the Brigantes traded with other tribes and the Romans and contributed to the great wealth of Queen Cartimandua.
We also managed to cut out some thin leather for the tongue (Mari Lwyds have tongues – who knew?) following the ‘here’s one I prepared earlier’ template that David provided:
Mari Briga‘s ears are spring-loaded! This allows for a possible (and in fact highly probable) scenario where the person under the ‘Oss may mis-judge the height of a doorway etc and knock the ears – this way they (to a certain extent) bounce back rather than just coming off straight away.
At this point we called it a day and ordered an Indian takeaway. Mari Briga looked fairly happy with developments so far:
So on to Day 2. While we polished up the Stanwick Bronzes, David fitted Mari Briga‘s spring-loaded ears and they looked AMAZING:
He fitted the curtain ring eyes backed with cardboard as ‘placeholders’ while we thought about how we would create Mari Briga‘s eyes, so crucial to her impact and presence. He also wrapped the pole (a broom handle) that you can see in the background of the picture below with twine for a much better grip.
The incredible replica of the Stanwick Horse Mask that was made for us by Mike Shorer was all polished up and ready to go on. David felt that it would be best to cushion it and provide extra thickness for the screws to hold it on the skull by using some of the suede material that he had used for the ears:
The Stanwick Horse mask replica goes on:
David re-attached the ears and, now that the epoxy resin had dried overnight and was totally solid and also that Mari Briga‘s jaws were securely cable-tied in place, he fitted the pole to try the ‘snap’:
It was at this point that things started to become REAL and Mari Briga really started to emerge:
We tested the weight – heavy, but manageable with a harness (which David will make for us later while we are in the process of decorating Mari Briga) – and we looked at where the loop should be positioned on the pole in order to attach it to the harness:
Jenny tried the ‘snap’:
We still had the conundrum of what to do about Mari Briga‘s eyes, what could we use for them? David had put in curtain rings backed with cardboard as ‘placeholders’ and he then added smaller curtain rings inside the bigger ones to give us an idea of how we might build up the eyes. It was at this point that Jenny had an utterly inspired idea. A very good friend of hers is Mike Poole who makes historic reproduction handmade glass beads and runs Tillerman Beads. Jenny had one of his beads – a beautiful green and yellow lampwork reproduction of a glass spindle whorl:
It fitted!
We held it in place temporarily with some blu tack and it looked brilliant:
And because it was a bead it had a hole in the centre – a hole that the LED lightbulb fitted through perfectly – and created THIS!!!
David attached the shroud to Mari Briga and went under it:
And at that very moment, Mari Briga was born. She was ALIVE!!!
We were speechless. Mari Briga was finally in the room with us and presence radiated from her.
Once Mari Briga was back on the table Jenny couldn’t resist trying the illuminated bells that she bought for her from a shop in Whitby. They looked fantastic, and made her copper ears and the bronze Stanwick Horse mask glow:
David brought out another Mari that he had brought with him, his own build of the flat-pack Mari that he had designed for Trac Cymru, which looked fantastic, covered in varnished papier-mâché from an old book in Welsh to strengthen and decorate it:
He had made some copper ears for it too, and they looked great:
Jenny actually has one of David’s flat pack Mari’s and has had it for a few years now, but has just not been able to find the time to get round to assembling it. David agreed to take it back home to Swansea with him and put it together for us (who better?) and so in a few months time we will hopefully have two Maris!
So Mari Briga is finally with us! She looks quite pleased about it.
For now Mari Briga is resting on Jenny’s dining room table, being kept company by Jenny’s awesome figure of Brighid, which was completely made from scratch right down to spinning the wool, making the dye and weaving the dress (which I really would like her to write about making sometime – nudge, nudge). Welcome Mari Briga!
David is a fantastic craftsman and such a lovely person, it was a thoroughly enjoyable two days and a privilege to watch him at work and help him as much as we could in his process of creating a Mari Lwyd. He told us that Mari Briga was the fastest Mari Lywd that he had ever created!
Now the part that we can really do – decorating her – starts!
We noticed on the Tillerman Beads website that Mike has created a reproduction of a glass bead found in an early Anglo Saxon round barrow fairly close to us at Hawnby in North Yorkshire, near Rievaulx Abbey:
Here is the information about the site at Hawnby from the Gazetteer of Early Anglo Saxon Burial Sites:
The Historic England listing gives more details about the specific location of the findspot, and the bead is held by The British Museum, although not currently on display:
If we can get a pair of Mike’s reproductions of this bead then we will use these for Mari Briga‘s eyes. As they are handmade and each one is unique, each of her eyes will be a little bit different – which we think is great.
Alternatively, there may perhaps be the possibility of commissioning Mike to create a reproduction of one of the glass beads found during excavations in 1984-5 at the Pagan Anglo Saxon cemetery at Norton near Stockton or in 2005-7 at Street House Anglo Saxon cemetery near Loftus if a suitable bead from either of those sites exists. A visit to Kirkleatham Museum near Redcar to see the artefacts from both sites awaits!
If history had worked out differently, it might even have been possible for Mari Briga‘s eyes to have been made from glass beads reproduced from those found at an early Anglo Saxon cemetery in the centre of Darlington. In 1876 workmen digging a sewer between Dodds Street and Selbourne Terrace, just off Greenbank Road found six skeletons of men, women and a child. “A large necklace, composed of amber, glass and stone beads” was one of the grave goods that was found. Most of the artefacts ended up in the possession of a Mr. J. T. Abbott, a Darlington chemist and antiquarian.
In 1888 J. T. Abbott’s collection of antiquities was auctioned at Sotheby’s. The necklace was sold to a Mr. Ready for 15 shillings and was never seen again.
More information about the Anglo Saxon cemetery in Darlington can be found here.
For Mari Briga‘s mane Jenny will use her experience in natural dyeing to dye the wool that we will be using. The colours we would like to use include those that reference the pigments found at Scotch Corner dated to AD15-AD70 – rose madder, Egyptian blue and azurite. These were described by archaeologists as “an exceptional and intriguing rare find” (for more information see Contact, Concord and Conquest: Britons and Romans at Scotch Corner Digital Monograph, 2020, pages 544-5). Out of the three, rose madder is the only textile dye. Egyptian blue and azurite would have been ground into powder and used as paint on wall plaster, sculpture and figurines, or perhaps for use on the body. Woad will give us comparable blues for textile dyeing. We are planning some natural dyeing workshops in the next few months and we would love it if people came along; we will announce these on the Events page on this website and also on the Mandua Briga Seed Group’s Facebook page and WhatsApp group.
For Mari Briga‘s ‘shroud’, which covers the person carrying the pole and skull, one of the ideas that we are thinking about is an honouring of the horse sacrifice found close to the Northern Henge at Thornborough. In December 2003 a pit containing the articulated remains of several horses was discovered during salvage archaeology excavations being carried out just to the north of Nosterfield village, around half a mile to the north of the Northern Henge, prior to the proposed extension to the existing Tarmac gravel quarry. This rare ritual burial of four horses was radiocarbon dated to the late Iron Age with a 95% probability of being dated from 100BC-90AD and probably more specifically to 45BC-30AD, around the time of the first invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar and just before the second invasion of the Romans.
Deep ploughing of the site had virtually destroyed the top two horses. The two lower horses had been placed on their right sides and carefully arranged as if they were rearing up and prancing. Both animals were male and around 7 years old. One was 14.2 hands high and the other 14.6 so they were large ponies or small horses. They both had slight arthritis in their spines and hips which indicates that they were working animals, either being used for riding by someone no more than 5 foot 4 in height or pulling a cart, perhaps a chariot. The horse labelled C1732 (the one that looks as if he is rearing up and looking backwards) had been lame at some point. The horse burial was around five meters away and in direct alignment to a large middle Iron Age square barrow, although no human bones were found in the centre of the barrow or in its ditches, presumably ploughed out as the top two horses had been.
More information about the horse burial can be found at The Nosterfield Project by Mike Griffiths & Associates (archived at archive.org), last updated February 2007, and also pages 317-331 in Holes in the Landscape: Seventeen Years of Archaeological Investigations at Nosterfield Quarry, North Yorkshire by Antony Dickson & Guy Hopkinson, 2011 – this latter document appears to have been taken out of the public domain a few years ago when the Mike Griffiths & Associates website archaeologicalplanningconsultancy.co.uk was taken down. It’s an important publication and I’m aware that some people have been searching for it, so I have archived it below. You can download the PDF here:
Holes-In-The-LandscapeWe would like to embroider the prancing horses from Thornborough Henges around the bottom of Mari Briga‘s ‘shroud’. We have put together a few preliminary drawings and will work on these over the next few months:
And finally, for astrology nerds, I have looked up Mari Briga‘s “Birth” Chart – dated Tuesday 9th July 2024 at 17.06, which is the moment David went under the ‘shroud’ and she “awoke” and was finally with us. She is a Scorpio Rising (of course), Sun in Cancer – ruled by the Moon, and her 10th House – which is her reputation and what she will be known for in the world – is in Virgo which indicates a strong connection with education.
Thank you for following Mari Briga‘s journey so far!
Further Information & Reading about the Mari Lwyd and T’Owd’Oss of Richmond :
Vernon Watkins The Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, 1941
HEX have an excellent article about the history of the Mari Lwyd on their website.
The Welsh Wassail Tradition: The Mari Lwyd
Custom revived: Richmond Poor Owd Oss
Julia Smith – Fairs, Feasts and Frolics: Customs and Traditions in Yorkshire, 1989
Julia Smith – ‘Richmond’s Christmas Customs’ in The Dalesman, December 1991
Quentin Cooper and Paul Sullivan – Maypoles, Martyrs & Mayhem: 366 days of British customs, myths and eccentricities, 1994
Leslie P. Wenham (editor) – Richmond, Yorkshire in the 1830s: Being the reminiscences of William Wise ‘An Old Richmond Lad’, 1977
A visual history of the Mari Lwyd is here:
Another good introduction to the Mari Lwyd is here:
Examples of the practice of pwnco from the mid 20th Century can be seen here:
and a choral version here: