making a mari lwyd puppet: 3

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And I tell you, there must be no making a mari lwyd puppet: 4, because I must must must finish this today. Still no feet, alas, as I spent most of yesterday dyeing and drying the sheet/shroud, and thereafter fiddling about attaching it to the puppet while ensuring it was:

a) secure while not appearing ‘nailed-on’

b) not flattened too close to the skull

and

c) hanging in such a way as to both conceal and reveal

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All that may sound simple enough, but oh my eyes, how tricky and subtle a task it proved to get right! Having finally finished it to my satisfaction, I fiddled about for two hours deciding on, and then against, and then on again, attaching ears! (Currently said ears are lying on the kitchen table looking like long-dead slugs, because I seem completely incapable of making firm decisions this weekend. The ear jury is still out.)

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Maquette Mari and puppet Mari hanging out together.

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Violet Alfords’ wonderful book The Hobby Horse and other Animal Masks (Merlin Press 1978) is always by my side when I work on Mari matters, not because there’s all that much about the Mari Lwyd in it… there isn’t… but because she offers a convincing family-tree of the many European hobby horse traditions. Moreover she has a brisk style that makes the book trot along at a lively pace, and I know whenever I turn to it the pages will fall open at something to arrest my attention or take me down an interesting byway. Here she is on The Minehead Horse.

‘Our last West Country horse lives in Minehead on the coast of Somerset, looking across the the silver Severn Sea to where his Welsh cousin rears a frightening head. He is the Sailor’s Horse and is in the keeping of people dwelling on the Quay. He is very large, about seven feet long, his neck and hindquarters both curve in a striking fashion; he too had snappers when his head was covered with hare skin. He has lost his head but has a long rope tail, once a cow’s tail, six feet or more of it,  for it has to be used on occasion. His hangings are of canvas, sometimes painted with large circles, sometimes with ‘Sailor’s Horse’ in large letters. His upper curves are covered with ends and tags of ribbons and cloth, silk and velvet. His carrier, like his brother in Padstow, is part man, part horse, his head thrust into a tall, conical cap, the face of which is the man’s face. An unreliable observation has been repeated again and again – that a ship is carried about at Minehead. This is not so, it is the horse.’

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I like Violet. She takes no hostages!

UPDATE

It’s Sunday night and we have feet. And kneecaps!

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