Were there horse cults in ancient Britain? Is there a cohesive thread connecting Macha, Epona and Rhiannon to hobby horses, the Mari Lwyd and the Uffington horse?
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Sometimes, many signposts seem to be directing us to a single destination. Yet, when we arrive there, we find it difficult to recognise any landmark as the definitive reality of the place we had intended to go. This may be one of those journeys.
| I don't remember when I first heard about the Welsh Mari Lwyd tradition, but it has fascinated me ever since. For those who don't know, the Mari Lwyd is made by fixing a mare's skull to a pole. Usually elaborately decorated, the head is carried by a person hidden under a robe made from a white sheet or something similar. The Mari is accompanied by a party (traditionally of men and boys) who carry it from house to house, seeking admission. This is done through an elaborate, partly improvised, battle of wits in rhyme. Generally, the householders ultimately "lose" the contest, and the Mari party gain admission, where merriment, eating, drinking and music follow before the Mari moves on to the next house. The tradition has a lot in common with other wassailing and mumming traditions, many of which occur around midwinter. What strikes a chord with me is the horse connection. Britain, Ireland and the Celtic world is rife with what appear to be remnants of a widespread horse cult or cults. I am only a very amateur historian, and I won't even attempt to draw concrete, historically "proven" connections between the many signs pointing in this direction. That's not to say that I will ignore what evidence and dating I understand, but rather to say that being who I am, and feeling what I feel, I will not ignore the empirical reality of my intuition, either. |  |
Mari Lwyd, Horse of Frost, Star-horse, and White Horse of the Sea, is carried to us.
The Dead return.
Those Exiles carry her, they who seem holy and have put on corruption, they who seem corrupt and have put on holiness.
They strain against the door.
They strain towards the fire which fosters and warms the Living.
The Uffington white horse, a chalk hill figure of a horse in Oxfordshire, is around 3,000 years old. Around the same time, somewhat similar horse figures were popular on local coinage. A little later, the worship of the horse goddess Epona was popular in Gaul, and became widely adopted by the Roman Cavalry. The sun god Bel, or Belenos, and sea god Manannan mac Lir also had strong connections with horses. In Welsh mythology, Rhiannon is linked strongly with horses, as is her probably Gaulish cognate Rigantona. In Ireland, the goddess Macha is an important figure, and as late as the 12th century we have Geraldus Cambrensis relating the coronation of an Irish king including the requirement that he mate with a mare.
We bring from Cader Idris
And those ancient valleys,
Mari of your sorrows,
Queen of the starry fillies.
 | Meanwhile, in folklore we find a rich assortment of kelpies, njuggles, water horses, and other supernatural equines which lure people onto their backs and try to drown them. Then there are the hobby horses and other mumming horses found throughout Britain and Ireland. Are all these things related? It's just possible that they are not. It's just possible that only vaguely related peoples, in different times and places, have felt a fascination, a love, an awe and some fear connected with the horse, both as a natural being and a supernatural one. My personal gnossis says otherwise. Call it intuition or call it something else, I personally do not believe that this is all just one big coincidence. I choose to connect these things, and I choose to connect them knowing that I can't possibly fully understand their historical origins. I don't know the ancient rites which probably once accompanied the honouring of horse deities, and I don't know why people were so fascinated with the idea of malevolent horses bent on drowning the unsuspecting. Neither do I know what prompts people to put on highly stylised hobby horse costumes and dance ecstatically through Cornish streets on May Day, or why so many traditional mummers' plays include a person dressed as a horse. I don't know why I feel a strange reverence for these things when I meet them, either - but I definitely do. |
Great light you shall gather,
For Mari here is holy;
She saw dark thorns harrow
Your God crowned with the holly
Mari Lwyd. What does it mean? Mari can be translated as both "mare" and "Mary". "Mare", in turn, as well as meaning a female horse, seems to refer also to creatures of the night, to incubi and to "nightmares". Lwyd means grey (or white or fair) and also pure or holy. A white horse is correctly referred to as "grey" because most white horses are born black or dark grey and their coats lighten with the passing years. (In Christian times white horses and other livestock were often kept by monastic orders as a way to distinguish their animals from those of the laity - who were forbidden from keeping them.) So Mari Lwyd can be interpreted as simply "grey mare" or holy mare, or as Holy (or fair) Mary - and part of the tradition surrounding her is the story that she represents a pregnant mare who was turned out of the Bethlehem stable to make way for Mary the mother of Christ to give birth. Whether this is a cipher for the replacement of the horse cult with Christianity is probably an open question.
Under the womb of teeming night
Our Mari tries your faith;
And She has Charity’s crown of light:
Spectre she knows and wraith;
Records of Mari Lwyd only go back to the 1790s, I'm told. However, since Wales was, at least at one level, a devoutly Christian country at this time, it's unlikely that the Welsh suddenly thought "Let's put a mare's head on a pole and pretend it's a magic horse," in the 1700s without a deeply rooted precedent. The Cornish 'obby 'oss tradition was recorded somewhat earlier, but it is still unlikely that it sprang into being fully formed just before someone thought it was worth writing about. The truth is, we don't know where these things came from, and we probably never will. In both traditions, there are aspects of wildness, of fertility rites, and of playfulness and energy raising activity. Things long associated with horses. Is this how early people perceived their horse deities? Did they dress up as horses to create a closer contact with these deities - to offer them a familiar looking form to inhabit or possess during some kind of ritual? Again - we don't know.
Mari Lwyd, Lwyd Mari:
A sacred thing through the night they carry.
Betrayed are the living, betrayed the dead:
All are confused by a horse’s head.
What you might feel when you see a horse, or when you see a Mari Lwyd is a very personal thing. There is your primal response, which should always be given its rightful place. You may find the appearance of a skull and a white sheet scary. The snapping jaws may give you nightmares. Of course, many people find themselves frightened by up close contact with a real horse, too! You may also feel awe or reverence - but I guarantee that you will feel something a little out of the ordinary!
O white is the frost on the breath-bleared panes
And the starlike fire within,
And our Mari is white in her starry reins
Starved through flesh and skin.
It is a skull we carry
In the ribbons of a bride.
And what of her snapping jaws? The snapping jaws of the Mari, of the hobby hoss who chases the maidens of Padstow to shrieks of fear and delight. Does this echo the strange beaked mouth of the Uffington horse - so often remarked at as being un-horse-like? Is it an accident that the Mari in her sheet so resembles Mary in her veil and robes? We are in goddess territory here, maybe in shaman territory, too. We are warm in the house, smugly awaiting the opportunity to be open-handed, and we are bone-cold at the window, desperate to gain admission to life inside. Perhaps we are required to know both realities.
Poetic quotes from Ballad of the Mari Lwyd by Vernon Watkins (1906 - 1967)
If you enjoyed this, you might also like Epona's Call.
I'm offering a six week online course about the horses goddesses starting in January!
This six week online class will explore the goddesses Epona, Macha, and Rhiannon in detail, as well as looking at the changing relationship between humans and horses. Like other classes I have taught, this series will feature a largely objective “academic” component, including some reading, and a talk from me each week, with time for questions.
In a departure from my usual approach, I will lead a short devotional to the horse goddesses and horse spirits at the end of each class session. I will do my best to create these in a way that should be comfortable for most anyone, but if students would like to excuse themselves from this part of the session, that is perfectly fine.
The course outline is available at this link.
This six week online class will explore the goddesses Epona, Macha, and Rhiannon in detail, as well as looking at the changing relationship between humans and horses. Like other classes I have taught, this series will feature a largely objective “academic” component, including some reading, and a talk from me each week, with time for questions.
In a departure from my usual approach, I will lead a short devotional to the horse goddesses and horse spirits at the end of each class session. I will do my best to create these in a way that should be comfortable for most anyone, but if students would like to excuse themselves from this part of the session, that is perfectly fine.
The course outline is available at this link.
Celtic Horse Goddess Course
Six-seek course meeting on
Saturday, January 9th, 16th, 23rd, 30th,
February 6th and 13th, 2021.
at 11am Pacific/2pm Eastern/7pm UK time.
$
75.00
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