In many parts of Wales, Christmas meant rising early to attend the Plygain service at the local parish church. This was an ancient custom once practiced throughout Wales, ceasing towards the end of the last century (although in some cases it lasted a little longer). It was a survivor of a pre-reformation Christmas service modified to suit the new Protestant conditions. On Christmas morning, around three am, the local people would meet for a kind of carol service, which lasted about two hours, and included prayers, sermons, psalms and hymns. Sometimes the chapels in the area were used, but more often than not the service took place in the parish church. The local bards or poets would compose carols for the occasion, and these were written in the traditional metre and set to old airs. They would consist of numerous verses that the carol singers would memorise and sing unaccompanied in the church. Sometimes as many as fifteen carols would be sung. A remnant of one that has survived, when translated, went something like this:
Let us all go to the Plygains
To see our kind Saviour born today, Christmas Day
Let us leap, dance and praise him.
Between two and three hundred candles, many of them coloured, were placed on the communion table, pulpit rails, pews and windowsills. The women of the congregation would compete with each other to have the most ornate candle, which they decorated with coloured paper strips. The candles were lit Sunday after Sunday for as long as they lasted, and many say that the tradition was encouraged as it provided the church with cheap lighting for the evening services throughout the Winter. After the service, hot ale and toasted bread and cheese were served. However, those invited to the Christmas breakfast in Dolgellau, in the old county of Meironeth, would have been offered brwes (oatcake steeped in broth), hot milk, strong ale, cakes and cold meats. The main topic of conversation was the performance of the carollers at the plygain and the new carols by local poets.
In the farming areas of north Pembrokeshire, Christmas Day marked the beginning of Y Gwyliau - a three-day week holiday when farming was suspended. The plough was ceremoniously carried into the home and placed under the table in the room where food was eaten - the rwn ford, which was usually the kitchen. On Christmas Day all the surrounding farmers and cottagers were invited to the largest farm house to share a meal of goose, beef and plum pudding. In Llansanffriad, in the old county of Montgomeryshire, they had a unique way of serving goose: boned, stuffed with a boiled tongue then encased in pastry lined with mincemeat and eaten cold.
As the holiday festivities progressed, the farmers went from house to house and were invited into the rwn ford where they would sit around the table drinking beer, which was kept warm in a brass pan and filled regularly to ensure a ready supply to the steady stream of visitors. From time to time they would wet the plough, with their beer. This was to symbolise that, although temporarily, it had not been forgotten.
Thoughout the day various activities took place, which included informal toffe-making parties for the younger folk and visits to friends and relations while the goose was being cooked for Christmas dinner. Open air sports, such as squirrel hunting, rough and tumble games and football matches also took place. This was one of the few occasions when football was played, although it was more a game of muscle than skill, with little regard to the number of players in the field.
The best known of all the Welsh Christmas customs must be the Mari Llwyd or Grey Mare, which varied from each South Wales area. The custom possibly had pagan origins and may have dated back to a pre-Christian horse ceremony, although most believe it derived from Middle Age Mystery Plays. It involoved one member of a group of young men wearing a horse's skull, fitted with false ears and eyes and decked with ribbons. The eye sockets were fitted with thick bottle glass. The wearer would get beneath a white sheet and, with the skull fixed above the head, work the jaws, the lower of which had a string and spring fitted to it.
In the St David's area of Pembrokeshire, the decoration was slightley different. Here a canvas sheet, a couple of yards square such as a brethyn rhawn - horse hair sheet, or the sheet used over the kiln for drying corn was used. It was sewn at one of the corners for about a yard to form a snout and head. The eyes were made from large buttons and two brown harvest gloves were tacked in place for ears. The head was slightly stuffed with straw. A man stood underneath the canvas with a large pitchform stuck into the straw to enable him to turn the head about in every direction.
Although the custom no longer exists, it continued in places like Mumbles and Port Eynon, on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales well into this century. Each area had its own unique decorated skull and a traditional song which was sung at each farm or cottage. One version went as follows:
Once I was a young horse,
And in my stable gay
I had the best of everything
Of barley oats and hay.
But now I am an old horse
My course is getting small
I'm 'bliged to eat the sour grass
That grows beneath the wall.
Poor old horse, let him die
Poor old horse, let him die.
I've eaten all my oats and hay
Devoured all my straw
I can hardly move about,
Nor can my carriage draw.
With these poor weary limbs of mine
I've travelled many miles
Over hedges, bramble bushes
Gates and narrow stiles.
Poor old horse, let him die
Poor old horse, let him die.
The group of men would visit the houses in the village and surrounding areas to collect money for charity, although some occupants would pay them not to call.
To add to the excitement, the party would, at first, be refused admittance with bolts being firmly drawn across the door. Eventually, a male member of the household would unbolt the door, amid screams and protests from the women inside. Once inside the house, the Mari Llwyd would gallop around snapping its jaws, chasing and biting the women and peering into every corner of the room. Finally the Mari Llwyd would tire of its fun and normality would resume. The occupants would then serve food and drink to the party. Wen it was time to leave, they would depart, singing a verse in Welsh which when translated went something like this:
Farewell gentle folk,
We have been made welcome
God's blessing be upon your home,
And upon all whom dwell therein.
In the seaside resort of Mumbles the skull used belonged to a horse called Shaper, who had been with the same family for over a hundred years. It apparently had its original, although slighty yellow, teeth. It was the custom to bury the horse's head in the ground after each year's activities, and ceremoniously dig it up again just before the following year's festivities.
Tenby had a slightly different version. There a man would dress up as The Lord Mayor of Penniless Cove and, wearing a mask decorated with flowers or ribbons, was carried on a chair by attendants with flags and violins. Instead of collecting money, he blessed each house and gave the party something for Christmas.
Another ancient custom, that has puzzled ethnologists for years, is the carrying of a wren in a wren-house from house to house on Twelfth Night. Local variations of the custom are known throughout Wales, and an early Pembrokeshire version is given by Edward Lluyd (1660-1709) published in his Parochialia, and translated in 1910 by G.I. Peate in Archaeologica Cambrensis:
They are accustomed in Pembrokeshire etc. to carry a wren in a bier on Twelfth Night; from a young man to his sweetheart, that if two or three bear it in a bier (covered) with ribbons, and sing carols. They also go to other houses where there are no sweethearts and there will be beer etc. And Bier from the country they call Cutty Wren - Little Wren.
This custom was still being performed in the 19th Century, and a collection at the Welsh Folk Museum as St Fagan's near Cardiff includes a wren-house from Marloes, made in 1869. Like the bier described by Lluyd, it is decorated with ribbons and was carried in procession on Twelfth Night, the wren having been caught and imprisoned beforehand. As the procession wound its way to each house, they sang a traditional song which went like this:
Joy, health, love and peace; we're here in this place;
By your leave here we sing concerning our King.
Our King is well drest in silks of the best
And the ribbons so rare, no King can compare.
Over hedges and stiles we have travelled many miles.
We were four footment in taking this wren
We were four at watch and were high of a match
Now Christmas is past, Twelfth Day is the last.
To the old year adieu, great joy to the new.
Please turn the King in.
In Tenby the custom differed slightly. The wren was placed in a small ornamented box, or paper house, with a square of glass at either end. Two ro four men carried the container, elevated on four poles fixed to the corners, groaning under the weight, and signing a song which contained the following verse:
O! Where are you going? says Milder to Melder,
O! whre are you going? says the younger to the elder,
O! I cannot tell you, says Festel to Fose,
We're going to the woods, says John the Red Nose.
Interestingly the version used around 1890, in the Solva district, again differs as the house was substituted by a lantern decked with ribbons, and a sparrow used in place of the wren.