Mari Lwyd (Companions of Christmas)

*** We have finished selling these sets for 2023. We will begin taking orders for them again in spring of 2024. Thank you! ***

One of the SchweizerCraft "Companions of Christmas" series (#CC26)

Mari Lwyd was a gray mare belonging to Taliesin, a poet hailed as “chief of the bards” in sixth century Wales. Taliesin frequently called on Awen, the Welsh muse, for inspiration, and Awen became so captivated by his verses that she determined that he would never again leave her cottage and stay with her forever in the forest glades on the edge of the Glamorgan pastureland.

Mari Lwyd, left tethered outside, was no fan of this plan. She was hungry, and thirsty, and if her rider wasn’t to be released to feed and water her, then the least Awen could do was let her into the cottage so that Taliesin could care for her there.

Mari Lwyd, so long the companion of a great poet, had learned to think as a poet thinks, and so, when she called on Awen to let her in, she did so in rhyme. Awen, not wanting her time with Taliesin interrupted, used rhyme in return to refuse her request, and Mari offered a different argument in favor of an invitation, which was likewise refused. Back and forth they went, neither failing to find the proper words, and their exchange went for so long that eventually Mari Lwyd was nothing but bones.

So engaged by the mare’s clever rhymes was she that Awen hadn’t spared a thought to her captive, but, a longing for him suddenly him popping into her head, she turned to him, and saw that he, too, had long become nothing but bones. Awen found herself at a loss for words, and, unable to offer further excuses to bar Mari Lwyd’s entrance, allowed her into the cottage, where the skeletal mare helped herself to the holiday food and drinks that Awen had prepared for her late paramour.

Now, each Christmas Eve, Mari Lwyd roams the roads and byways of Glamorgan, led by the silent ghost of Taliesin, asking, in rhyme, entry into homes which she suspects contain holiday fare for her to eat. As it was with Awen, she can only be kept out by rebuttal to her invitation in rhyme, but should those who would bar her entrance fail to provide a suitable excuse in verse, she and her entourage face no obstacle in entering and turning the home into their own boisterous feasting hall.

1/8” finished hardboard, roughly 4.5” tall

This figure can be purchased individually here, or with the 25-figure Advent Collection.

Figure comes with a 3 x 8.5” card telling her story. The card fits in the story shelf on the Santa’s Workshop DisPlayset.