The knock came after dark, in the week of the new year. Four men, and a horse skull on a pole. A white sheet over the one who carried it. Glass in the eye sockets. The jaw on a string.
They sang for the door. She sang no. That contest is called the pwnco. In Llangynwyd a house often opened after the first song. She did not. She had one more verse. Then none.
She let them in. Punch had to promise not to rake the fire. The skull ran the room and snapped its teeth at the warm air. The leader pretended to hold it. They took ale. The grate stayed lit.
The woman is mine. One house, one night, the last verse failing her. I did not put her in Llangynwyd, and I did not give the skull a sermon. The rest of this page is the custom, and I am only repeating what I opened.
The Mari Lwyd is a South Wales wassail. A horse skull, or sometimes a wooden or paper head, goes on a pole. Ribbons. A white sheet over the carrier. Sometimes glass in the eyes, and a string so the jaw can bite. Four to seven men, around Christmas and New Year, starting at dusk. They sing for entry. The house sings a refusal. That exchange is the pwnco. When the house runs out of verses, the party comes in for food and ale, and the skull snaps and runs while the leader pretends to restrain it.
Llangynwyd is the exception I used. An account of that village says the house usually opened after the first verse, with no argument. Nantgarw is the fire. There, Punch rapped the door with a poker, and the house made him promise not to touch the grate, or he would rake it out before he left.
The first published account is J. Evans, A Tour through Part of North Wales, 1800. I did not open the book tonight. I am taking that sentence from the English Wikipedia entry, which quotes the shape of it: a man in blankets, a made horse head, a party, a knock, a fright, a verse or a small payment.
Mari Lwyd is still argued. E. C. Cawte, and later Iorwerth Peate, favored grey mare. Peate had earlier said holy Mary. Marie Trevelyan's grey death is contested. I am not picking one at a door.
I am also not calling it a pagan survival. The same entry says that reading has lost scholarly support, for lack of evidence, and that the hobby-horse fashion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the more cautious guess. A guess is not a source I will lean on.