Iain Sinclair on the Mari Llwyd
In Edge of the Orison, Sinclair compares some Morris dancers that he sees in middle England to the Mari Llwyd enactments of his youth in south Wales.
'Not like the revenant mob, the drunks and madmen of my Welsh youth; the Mari Llwyd rhymers who pranced, house to house, on New Year's Eve. Excavated horse's head, scarlet lipped, draped in a white sheet. Bells. Footsteps in the snow. The dead try to gain entrance. To fire, warmth, cakes and ale. Improvised poetry, verse for verse, is the only way of keeping them out.'
Edge of the Orison (Hamish Hamilton, 2005) , p.184
'Not like the revenant mob, the drunks and madmen of my Welsh youth; the Mari Llwyd rhymers who pranced, house to house, on New Year's Eve. Excavated horse's head, scarlet lipped, draped in a white sheet. Bells. Footsteps in the snow. The dead try to gain entrance. To fire, warmth, cakes and ale. Improvised poetry, verse for verse, is the only way of keeping them out.'
Edge of the Orison (Hamish Hamilton, 2005) , p.184
