Christmas Poem: The Ballad of Mari Lwyd

Vernon Watkins (1906-67)

Prologue

(Spoken by the Announcer of the Ballad)

Mari Lwyd, Horse of Frost, Star-horse, and White Horse of the Sea, is carried to us.

The Dead return.

Those Exiles carry her, they who seem holy and have put on corruption, they who seem corrupt and have put on holiness.

They strain against the door.

They strain towards the fire which fosters and warms the Living.

The Living, who have cast them out, from their own fear, from their own fear of themselves, into the outer loneliness of death, rejected them, and cast them out for ever:

The Living cringe and warm themselves at the fire, shrinking from that loneliness, that singleness of heart. The Living are defended by the rich warmth of the flames which keeps that loneliness out.

Terrified, they hear the Dead tapping at the panes; then they rise up, armed with the warmth of firelight, and the condition of scorn.

It is New Year’s Night.

Midnight is burning like a taper.

In an hour, in less than an hour, it will be blown out. It is the moment of conscience.

The living moment.

The dead moment.

Listen.

(Pitchblack Darkness — A Long Table laid with a White Cloth — A Door on Stage Right — A Broad Window next to it — The Two Loads of a Pendulum — When light comes it is so contrived as to throw their shadows to the extreme ends of the room — Between these ends stylistic figures whose movements exaggerate human movements — A Skull may be suggested at one shadow-limit of the Pendulum, and a Fillet at the other.)

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
Now dead men rise in the frost of the stars
And fists on the coffins knock.
They dropped in their graves without one sound;
Then they were steady and stiff.
But now they tear through the frost of the ground
As heretic, drunkard and thief.

Why should you fear though they might pass
Ripping the stitch of grief,
The white sheet under the frosted glass,
Crisp and still as a leaf?
Or look through sockets that once were eyes
At the table and white cloth spread?
The terrible, picklock Charities
Raised the erected dead.

Under your walls they gnaw like mice;
Virtue is unmasked.
The hands of the clock betray your vice.
They give what none has asked.
For they have burrowed beneath the graves
And found what the good gave most:
Refuse cast by the righteous waves
In fossil, wraith and ghost.

Chalice and Wafer. Wine and Bread.
And the picklock, picklock, picklock tread.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Good men gone are evil become
And the men that you nailed down
Clamped in darkness, clamour for rum,
And ravish on beds of down
The vision your light denied them, laid
Above the neglected door;
And the chattering speech of skull and spade
Beckons the banished Poor.

Locked-out lepers with haloes come.
Put out the clock: the clock is dumb.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

The breath of a numb thing, loud and faint:
Something found and lost.
The minute drops in the minute-glass;
Conscience counts the cost.
What mounted, murderous thing goes past
The room of Pentecost?
Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.
What shudders free from the shroud so white
Stretched by the hands of the clock?
What is the sweat that springs in the hair?
Why do the knee-joints knock?
Bones of the night, in the naked air,
Knock, and you hear that knock.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

A knock of the sands on the glass of the grave,
A knock on the sands of the shore,
A knock of the horse’s head of the wave,
A beggar’s knock on the door.
A knock of a moth on the pane of light,
In the beat of the blood a knock.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

The sands in the glass, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock hands.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

[Light]

Figures:
Fasten the yard-gate, bolt the door,
And let the great fat drip.
The roar that we love is the frying-pan’s roar
On the flames, like a floating ship.
The old Nick will keep the flies from our sheep,
The tic, the flea and the louse.
Open the flagons. Uncork the deep
Beer of this bolted house.

[They stoop to the fire]

One Figure:
Unseen fingers are aching now
(Hark at the pendulum’s chain!)
Out of the night they have pulled the Plough,
Pulled the Dead Man’s Wain.
Bones of the dead are clattering, clinking,
Pulling the Plough from the shore.
Dead men’s fingers are feeling, knocking,
Knocking now on the door.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Another Figure:
Crammed with food the table creaks.
The dogs grow fat on the crumbs.
God bless our board that springs no leaks,
And here no ruffian comes,
No beggars itching with jackdaws’ eyes,
No fox on the trail of food,
No man with the plague from Hangman’s Rise,
No jay from Dead Man’s Wood.

Chalice and wafer that blessed the dead,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock tread.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Third Figure:
Bones of the dead should come on their knees
Under a pilgrim’s cloak,
But out in the dark what devils are these
That have smelt our kitchen-smoke?
Listen. Listen. Who comes near?
What man with a price on his head?
What load of dice, what leak in the beer
Has pulled your steps from the dead?

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘Starving we come from Gruffydd Bryn
And a great meal we have lost.
We might have stayed by the fire of the inn
Sheltered from the frost.
And there a sweet girl stood and spread
The table with good things,
Felinfoel beer with a mountain’s head,
And a pheasant with hungry wings.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘There were jumping sausages, roasting pies,
And long loaves in the bin,
And a stump of Caerphilly to rest our eyes,
And a barrel rolling in.
But dry as the grave from Gruffydd Bryn
We are come without one rest;
And now you must let our Mari in:
She must inspire your feast.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘For She knows all from the birth of the Flood
To this moment where we stand
In a terrible frost that binds the blood
In a cramp that claws the hand.
Give us rhyme for rhyme through the wood of the door 135
Then open the door if you fail.
Our wit is come from the seawave’s roar,
The stars, and the stinging hail.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Go back. We have heard of dead men’s bones
That hunger out in the air.
Jealous they break through their burial-stones,
Their white hands joined in a prayer.
They rip the seams of their proper white clothes 145
And with red throats parched for gin,
With buckled knuckles and bottle-necked oaths
They hammer the door of an inn.

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost. 150

‘O pity us, brothers, through snow and rain
We are come from Harlech’s waves.
Tall spears were laid on the mountain.
We hid in the warriors’ caves.
We were afraid ‘O pity us, brothers, through snow and rain
We are come from Harlech’s waves.
Tall spears were laid on the mountain.
We hid in the warriors’ caves.
We were afraid when the sun went down, 155
When the stars flashed we were afraid;
But the small lights showed us Machynlleth town,
And bent on our knees we prayed.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Though you come from the grim wave’s monklike hood
And Harlech’s bitter coast,
White horses need white horses’ food:
We cannot feed a ghost.
Cast your Lwyd to the white spray’s crest 165
That pounds and rides the air.
Why should we break our lucky feast
For the braying of a mare?

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

‘In the black of En-gedi’s cave we hid;
We hid in the Fall of the Bride.
And the stars flew back from the lifted lid;
We saw those horsemen ride.
We hid all night in the cowl of the wave;
Chariots and kings we saw
In Goliath darkness, bright and brave
Felled by an ass’s jaw.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘O white is the starlight, white on the gate
And white on the bar of the door.
Our breath is white in the frost, our fate
Falls in the dull wave’s roar.
O rhyme with us now through the keyhole’s slit
And open the door if you fail.
The sea-frost, brothers, has spurred our wit,
Ay, and the killing hail.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

What thirst consumed by the leaping flames,
What thirst has brought you back
From the starry writing of holy names
The spittle of Hell turns black.
Austere star-energies, naked, white,
Roused you, but still you play
With a bottle drowned in a drunkard’s night,
Brought by the wicked spray.

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

The slinking dead, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock hands.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Hark, they are going; the footsteps shrink,
And the sea renews her cry.
The big stars stare and the small stars wink;
The Plough goes glittering by.
It was a trick of the turning tide
That brought those voices near.
Dead men pummelled the panes outside:
We caught the breath of the year.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

(Voice)
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Out in the night the nightmares ride;
And the nightmares’ hooves draw near.
Dead men pummel the panes outside,
And the living quake with fear.
Quietness stretches the pendulum’s chain
To the limit where terrors start,
Where the dead and the living find again
They beat with the selfsame heart.

In the coffin-glass and the window-pane
You beat with the selfsame heart.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

(Very faint)
‘We bring from white Hebron
And Ezekiel’s Valley,
From the dead sea of Harlech
And mountain-girt Dolgelley,
All that singing way
From Cader to Kidwelly,
A stiff, a star-struck thing
Blown by the stinging spray
And the stinging light of the stars,
Our white, stiff thing,
Death and breath of the frost,
That has known the room of glass,
Dropped by the Milky Way
To the needle and thread of the pass.’

Hark, they are coming back, those fellows
Giving the stars another name,
Blowing them up with a pair of bellows
From a jumping, thumping, murderous flame;
Men of the night with a legion of wrongs,
Fists in the dark that shudder with shame,
Hated lechers with holy songs,
Bastard bodies that bear no name.

(Loud and near)
‘We bring from Cader Idris
And those ancient valleys,
Mari of your sorrows,
Queen of the starry fillies.’

You’ll not play skittles with us,
White Spirit. Spray of malice;
Froth from an old barrel:
Tell us if that be holy.

‘Hers the white art that rouses
Light in the darkest palace,
Though black as a mole’s burrow:
Truly we come to bless.’

You come from drunkards’ houses
And bent, picklock alleys.
You come to thieve or borrow:
Your starved loins poke and press.

‘Great light you shall gather,
For Mari here is holy;
She saw dark thorns harrow
Your God crowned with the holly.’

Have you watched snowflakes wither?
They fasten, then fade slowly,
Hither and thither blowing:
Your words are falling still.

‘Deeper sadness knowing
Than death’s great melancholy,
We journeyed from Calgarw,
From that skull-shaped hill.

A white horse frozen blind,
Hurled from a seawave’s hollow,
Fostered by spray and wind,
Profane and priestlike thing!

‘She has those precious secrets
Known to the minstrel solely,
Experienced in the marrow,
Quick to tame beasts unruly.’

She should have been a whistle
For that tames our collie;
He darts on like an arrow,
Then he creeps up slowly.

‘O, if she were a whistle
She would not call your collie,
But through this keyhole narrow
Try, your wits to rally.’

Go back to Cader Idris, 295
To your Dry Bones Valley.
Death shall pounce to-morrow,
And break upon your folly.

‘Clustered thick are the stars,
And the fire-irons lying still; 300
Dust in the iron bars;
Frost on the window-sill.
The fire warms many hands,
But there where the shadows press
A single point of light 305
Can bring great loneliness.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘In the black of the churchyard yew we lay
And the long roots taught us much.
We groped for the sober light of day,
Light that we dared not touch.
The sleet of the stars fell cold and thin
Till we turned, and it touched our crown;
Then we yearned for the heat in the marrow of sin,
For the fire of a drinkers’ town.’

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

‘But brightest brimstone light on him
And burn his rafters black
That will not give when his fears are dim
The treasure found in the sack.
In the mouth of the sack, in the stifled breath,
In the sweat of the hands, in the noose,
In the black of the sack, in the night of death
Shines what you dare not lose.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘Under the womb of teeming night
Our Mari tries your faith;
And She has Charity’s crown of light:
Spectre she knows and wraith;
How sweet-tongued children are wickedly born
By a swivelling devil’s thrust
Mounting the night with a murderous horn,
Riding the starry gust.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘Under the edge of the spray of the stars,
In the hollow dark of a wave,
We heard the fire-irons stirring the bars,
Laying the ash of the grave.
We saw your faith in the pin of the tongs
Laying your fears at rest;
You buried our bones with your drinking-songs
And murdered what you love best.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘But the pin goes in to the inmost dark
Where the dead and living meet,
And the clock is stopped by the shock of the spark
Or the stealthy patter of sleet.
Where disdain has cast to its utmost pitch
The strands of the finished thread,
The clock goes out, and the ashes twitch,
Roused by the breaking of bread.’

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Go back, with your drowned and drunken eyes
And your crooked mouths so small
And your Mari foaled of the starry skies:
Go back to the seawave’s fall.
If we lift and slide the bolt in the door
What can our warm beer buy?
What can you give for the food we store
But a slice of starving sky?

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.
Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘O who has woven the skein of the hair,
And who has knotted the ropes of the fist,
And who has hollowed the bones of the eyes?
One of you answer: the hands have kissed.
I see in your eyes white terror,
I see in your locked hands hate.
Press, we are one step nearer
The live coals in the grate.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

The slinking dead, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock hands.

Hark, they are going; the footsteps shrink,
And the sea renews her cry.
The big stars stare and the small stars wink;
The Plough goes glittering by.
It was a trick of the turning tide
That brought those voices near.
Dead men pummelled the panes outside:
We caught the breath of the year.

(Voice)
Dread and quiet, evil and good:
Frost in the night has mixed their blood.

Thieving and giving, good and evil:
The beggar’s a saint, and the saint a devil.

Mari Lwyd, Lwyd Mari:
A sacred thing through the night they carry.

Betrayed are the living, betrayed the dead:
All are confused by a horse’s head.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Lazarus comes in a shroud so white
Out of the hands of the clock.
While baskets are gathered of loaves of light,
Rape is picking the lock.
Hungering fingers, bones of the night,
Knock, knock, knock.

Figures:
Bones of the dead with their crooked eyes
And their crooked mouths so small,
Night-nags foaled of the starry skies,
Threatening our feast, they call.
We face the terrible masquerade
Of robbers dressed like the dead.
The cold star-energies make us afraid,
Afraid of that picklock tread.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

A starlit crucifix hits their knees
And a chain of bloodstained beads
Drops to the fork where the fingers seize
Their good and evil deeds.
Those blasphemous hands can change our mind
Or mood with a craftsman’s skill;
Under their blessing they blast and blind,
Maim, ravish, and kill.

The slinking dead, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock hands.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Resurrection’s wings and corruption’s moth
Beat on the window-pane.
The tombs are ripped like a table-cloth,
And madmen teach the sane.
A voice redresses those ancient wrongs
With a wrong more deep than all.
Holy Charity’s bastard songs
Burst from a seawave’s fall.

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘Hell curse this house for a badger’s holt
If we find no man devout.
God singe this doorway, hinge and bolt,
If you keep our evil out.
Long-limbed we hung in the taunting trees
And cried in our great thirst:
Give us a drink, light breaks our knees.
Give, or the house is cursed.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Snatch off that mask from a drinker’s mouth
All lit by phosphorus up.
Men of the night, I know your drouth;
Your mouths would blister the cup.
When the big stars stare and the small stars wink
You cry it’s the break of day.
Out of our sight; you are blind with drink:
Ride your Mari away.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘Pity our penitent fingers now
Telling the beads of a chain.
Out of the night we have pulled the Plough,
Pulled the Dead Man’s Wain.
Out of the torment of huge night
Where the cruel stars are hung,
We have come with blessing to heal your sight
If first you will cool our tongue.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Go back, with your drowned and drunken eyes
And your crooked mouths so small
And your Mari foaled of the starry skies:
Go back to the seawave’s fall.
If we lift and slide the bolt in the door
What can our warm beer buy?
What can you give for the food we store
But a slice of starving sky?

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

‘Surely, surely you’ll open the door
Now that you know our sins;
For all grows good that was foul before
Where the spark of heaven begins.
Where the spark that cleaves to the chimney’s groove
Is blown to the freezing weather
It is men’s good that breaks their love,
Their evil draws them together.’

Chalice and Wafer, Wine and Bread.
And the picklock, picklock, picklock tread.

‘Know you are one with Cain the farm
And Dai of Dowlais pit;
You have thieved with Benjamin’s robber’s arm;
With Delilah you lay by night.
You cheated death with Barabbas the Cross
When the dice of Hell came down.
You prayed with Jo in the prisoners’ fosse
And ran about Rahab’s town.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘O, had we never drunk a drop
You might receive us then,
Men of the snow-deep mountain-top
And soot-faced mining men.
Do you not hear like an anvil ring
The smith of the rock of coal
Who fell on his steel like that great king
And sundered body and soul?’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

‘O crouch and cringe by the bounding flame
And close your eyelids fast.
Out of the breath of the year we came.
The breath of the year has passed.
The wits of a skull are far too great
Being out of the hands of the clock.
When Mari Lwyd knocks on the door,
In charity answer that knock.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

Go back. We have heard of dead men’s bones
That hunger out in the air.
Jealous they break through their burial-stones,
Their white hands joined in a prayer.
They rip the seams of their proper white clothes
And with red throats parched for gin,
With buckled knuckles and bottle-necked oaths
They hammer the door of an inn.

‘O a ham-bone high on a ceiling-hook
And a goose with a golden skin,
And the roaring flames of the food you cook:
For God’s sake let us in!
To see the white beer rise in the glass
And the brown jump out of the jug
Would lift those stiffened loons in the grass
Like lambs to the darling dug.’

Sinner and saint, sinner and saint:
A horse’s head in the frost.

Go back to your Hell, there are clean souls here,
Go back to your barns of muck.
Go back to your Hell, and leave our beer,
And your Mari bring you luck.
We’ll feel you with stones, we’ll strip you clean
In the stars, if you’re not gone.
But Jesus! why are you all unseen
On whom our lamplight shone?

The slinking dead, the shrinking sands,
And the picklock, picklock, picklock hands.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

(Voice)
Eyes on the cloth. Eyes on the plate.
Rigor mortis straightens the figure.
Striking the clock when the hands are straight,
You have seen a god in the eyes of the beggar.

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

(Faint)
‘O white is the frost on the breath-bleared panes
And the starlike fire within,
And our Mari is white in her starry reins
Starved through flesh and skin.
It is a skull we carry
In the ribbons of a bride.
Bones of the Nightfrost parry
Bones of the Fire inside.’

(Loud and near)
‘None can look out and bear that sight,
None can bear that shock.
The Mari’s shadow is too bright,
Her brilliance is too black.
None can bear that terror
When the pendulum swings back
Of the stiff and stuffed and stifled thing
Gleaming in the sack.’

Midnight. Midnight. Midnight. Midnight.
Hark at the hands of the clock.

(From Ballad of the Mari Lwyd, and other poems. Vernon Watkins, 1941)