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 (see our page here for more information) 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, 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!
By some strange coincidence (or synchronicity?), we have discovered that the bead from Tillerman Beads that we used for Mari Briga‘s eye is very similar to a bead found at the 7th century high-status Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Street House near Loftus on the North Yorkshire coast:
There may be the possibility of commissioning Mike to create a (or another?) direct reproduction of this lovely bead so we can have this for Mari Briga‘s other eye. As Mike’s beads are handmade each one is unique so each of her eyes will be a little bit different – which we think is great.
We also noticed on the Tillerman Beads website that Mike has created a reproduction of a glass bead found in an early Anglo Saxon round barrow at Hawnby, near Rievaulx Abbey, in North Yorkshire – also fairly close to us:
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:
We might get both the green and the blue beads and swap them around depending on how Mari Briga tells us she feels, or maybe even have one blue eye and one green eye – we will have to wait and let us know what she tells us she would like!
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!