busyI'm just about keeping up, though I finished Day 11 and Day 12 today so I'll have to do Day 13 and Day 14 tomorrow.
The prompt for Day 11 was to find an article in your target language about the month of January in the country where your language is spoken. Write a summary. I found this article in Welsh about the Mari Lwyd. There's a short film (about 5 minutes) made in the 1960s of the Mari Lwyd visiting a house.
Link to article and video here...
Some of you may already be familiar with the tradition, but for those of you who aren't, here's the English translation of the main points of the article.
A remarkably strange custom connected with the New Year and the period of Christmas is the Mari Lwyd. The Mari was a horse's skull draped with cloth and ribbons. The skull was put on a pole so that a person under the cloth could open and close the mouth.
A group of men led the Mari and visited each house or pub in the area where they sang merry verses asking for an invitation to come in. The owner of the house answered the song challenge before deciding to allow entrance or not. This exchange could continue for a little while and it was unlucky to prevent the entrance of the Mari Lwyd.
Afterwards, in the house, the group amused the family and accepted food and drink in exchange for them being allowed to come in.
But not every home welcomed the noisy company and a decline was seen in the custom since the end of the 19th century.
Despite the traditions of the Mari happening across the period of Christmas and the New Year, it is especially connected with Epiphany (Twelfth Night), January 6.
At the end of the film one of the men recounts a little of the history of the tradition of the Mari in the area. If you want to see some of the Mari Lwyd skulls, go to the Welsh Folk Museum in Saint Fagans, near Cardiff.
