#mari llwyd

[terr-hedgehog]

Riding in the shadows behind you on a pale white horse or whatever he said. (He is the pale white horse. It’s Mari Llwyd)

[theterrornaut]

MARI LLWYD!

[thestalkerbunny]

A Nadolig Llawen to us all-from the internet's favorite holiday icon-The Mari Llwyd

[toadlett]

I bought a phone holder thingy so i can film while using both my hands! Here is a botched mari llywd woodcut!

[confoundedcontraption]

Soon

Photo cred https://twitter.com/Liisabelle/

[vicsplinters]

Three years ago we went full Texas with our Mari Llywd

[bonefall]

Is there any mythology you want to add to the series other than the big cat clans? Like beasts of myth they have but we don’t? Or even stuff similar to what we have like catwolves or bloodcats (vampires)?

I will never not be disappointed that our mythical cats don’t appear in the clan lore, as if the clan cats have no imagination to create something new for in universe story telling purposes. Imagine the elders telling kits and apprentices stories of how a legendary hero killed a mighty manticore.

BUG

I wanna add more mythical bugs and it's still my goal to, at some point, reveal what a Tiger and a Lion look like to Clan cats. I want there to be stories of insects as large as a cat

I want to add DRAGONS too, but this time, acrually base them on dragonflies. Gigantic river hunters that used to catch otters as meals, which ancient warriors of LeopardClan had to outsmart

I also want to make more mythological entities based on breaking code commandments, like your face slowly turns into a hog's. Kind of like a werewolf or like... the picture of dorian gray, basically cautionary tales to be a good kitten and follow the law.

Cats turning into foxes works well too, since foxes are now less of a threat to be more in line with accurate ecology.

I also really love SOTC's story about Mouthclaw, the giant adder. I want to keep her and work her into something new, something to explain why only one type of snake is deadly and the others harmless. I want to give adders more reverence, too.

Like maybe they all used to be huge, but ONLY Mouthclaw chose not to do something underhanded. So, StarClan allowed her children to keep their venomous bites, but scornfully removed it from all the others. Power is a gift in Clan Culture.

Dunno yet.

If I add human myth monsters, it'll definitely be some fun folklore from the region instead of the popular sci-fi-guys like vampires! There's a bunch of cat cryptids in England, and I'm pretty partial to the Mari Llwyd, which is a kind of skeletal horse creature.

(I love the Mari Llwyd so much that I already gave ShadowClan a game based off the rhyming rounds you sing to ward it off)

[tyranniclark]

Blocking a thousand monarchist blogs so I can just get posts about Wales.

[arobutchsab]

this system is a puppy, a mari llwyd ursikitty and a HUMAN MALE

[viric-dreams]

I feel so dumb for only just realising that the Semi-Automated Mary Lloyd was a bastardisation of Mari Llwyd.

[celestial-kestrel]

Just wanted to say, I really liked your poet about the Mark Llwyd!

I'm Welsh myself, but never heard of her growing up. You're spot on about a lot of Welsh people learning about her solely through the internet.

I think that's why it's really important to clarify the points you made, I really learnt a lot!

I'm glad you really liked the post! I didn't really expect it to reach so many people and do the rounds. It makes me really wish I built on and clarified more of the points and gave more details overall haha. But seeing so many notes enjoying learning more about Mari Lwyd and seeing other Welsh people share memories of her too was kind of worth it.

[irradiate-space]

Listening to this book again, I'm struck by how the Christian winter traditions are woven through this book, but not because the book is, itself, Christian.

Will is newly eleven years old. His family celebrates Christian; they go caroling through the village, the village expects caroling. There is a Dickensian sense of the Christmas Spirit suffusing the charity which the villagers offer each other.

He gains magic powers. He is inducted into a cross-time family of Old Ones, stretching from Merlin himself to Will, who at elevent is the youngest and last of the Old Ones. Pyrokinesis, geases, transformations, invisibility, healing and flight and all the other usual magical tricks, are now Will's to command. He's thrust into a millennia-long conflict between the Dark and the Light, as an agent of The Light, fulfilling prophecies which have been handed down since time eternal.

You might think, that maybe, perhaps, an eleven-year-old boy raised in such a culturally-Christian setting, might develop doubts about Christianity. But that never happens. It never comes up - not prayer, not Jesus, not priests or the Church.

In later books, we meet expressions of other magical forces, in the Wild Magic that is neither Dark nor Light: the Greenwitch of Cornwall, King Arthur, Mari Llwyd, the Wanderer, Taliesin, smugglers and Revenuers, the Drowned Hundred and Gwyddno Garanhir, the Wild Hunt, druids, Stonehenge, and Carnival.

And so this book, and indeed this series, serves as a mirror not of Christianity, but instead of British spiritualism.

[scienceoftheidiot]

So I'm not doing any secret Santa this year (haven't in a while) but I still want to make some winter themed cards and art for family and friends and except for one I have absolutely no idea

Like last year I had the reindeer lino but I can't just give the same stuff every year 😅 and the sole lino I made this year is a horse skull (though my mom is such a big fan of my Mari Llwyd art that she stole it from me. Maybe she'll get a horse skull as retaliation).

Anyway. I should start on the one I have a rough idea about but for the rest I'm fried guys very fried (and single minded. Roy and Riza are monopolizing my brain power).

[redchameleos]

Seeing a bunch of the Mari Llwyd videos on YouTube with the Cwmafan lads putting on a show for various pubs puts such a stupid grin on my face this time of year I love our silly little traditions

[bonefall]

do the cats in your AU have any sort of unique games? i remember in one of your posts about the Aftergathering you mentioned something along those lines called 'scratchstone,' are there any others?

They do! Making a big entry on games is on my very long todo list

So far:

SCRATCHSTONE: a grid-based strategy game, so named because in the past, it would be 'scratched' into the dirt and played with stones. Fernstripe is very good at this game.

Untitled Song Game: ShadowClan plays a round game very similar to the Mari Llwyd game, if you know about that. The idea is that you sing back and forth, making rhyming excuses, until one of you loses. It's like wit-based rock/paper/scissors, and used to decide minor disputes.

"I WAS GONNA EAT THAT FROG"

"It's MY frog, YOU eat log!" (A challenge)

"You are a hog and a slobbering dog"

Keep going until the other can't find a good retort, or breaks the rhyme.

Teeterstrike: Like pattycake, played by sitting on your haunches and rhythmically pressing paws to the other cat. If you're really good at this it starts to look like fighting. Secretly a game that parents, chaperones, and educators play with kittens to introduce them to "timed strikes" before they become apprentices and start real training.

This doesn't include the canon games like Preystone or that Tag-knockoff, I want to include those too lmao

[misspjsuperior]

Loving how mijn man rocks my Mari Llwyd shirt ❣️ the red scarf 🧣 that evokes the red ribbons on the design (obscured here by the coat over it) was knitted with love from a dear friend as a Yule gift years ago 🥰

https://misspjsuperior.etsy.com/listing/1602750751