Comics, anarchy, chaos magick and George Orwell

The founding fathers would turn in their graves. The British Library is hosting an exhibition of publications in a medium once accused of undermining literacy, decency and the very establishment itself: comics.

I haven’t yet visited Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, which has been curated by Paul Gravett, author of Comic Art, which I reviewed last month, but I have a shrewd idea of much of its contents because of my own involvement in the industry from the 1980s and ‘90s.

A frame from the original artwork of a page of ABC Warriors
from 2000AD comic that hangs in my studio.
Story by Pat Mills, art by Simon Bisley.

Deadline 3 - which published Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl

Previously I’ve been at pains to emphasise that comics are about much more than men in lycra, but we can’t ignore the lycra or the science fiction and fantasy, which is in strong evidence here. What deserves wide recognition, however, is the role of attitude in providing the energy of iconoclastic creativity that has seen so many writers and artists whose target audience was originally children become internationally hugely influential.

British comics and their creators have an anarchic spirit. In the late nineteenth century the 'Penny Dreadfuls' were sometimes considered so subversive and dangerous to the Establishment (in fomenting an industrial dispute) that at one point printing presses used for printing them were destroyed by the authorities, as documented in Martin Barker’s book Comics: Ideology, Power and the Critics.

There is a direct line from these through Fleetway’s Action comic to 2000AD, which in the late ‘70s and ‘80s saw the work of Pat Mills and John Wagner produce strips such as Nemesis the Warlock, which satirised corrupt organised religion, and Judge Dredd, which satirised just about everything including a corrupt totalitarian state (although sometimes Dredd seemed as though it was applauding the very summary dispensation of justice which it avowedly condemned).

Action was created in 1975 by Pat Mills for publishing house IPC. Soon banned for its violent content it nevertheless spawned 2000AD, the home of Judge Dredd.

Jamie's Tank Girl - whom he called a female Judge Dredd with bigger guns on speed.  

2000AD could have been deliberately designed to be the kind of left-wing comic imagined by George Orwell in this fascinating article he wrote about the heavily middle and upper class boys’ comics like Gem, Magnet, Hotspur, Wizard and so on.

These class-ridden, patriotic comics were produced by the ultra-conservative family-owned Scottish DC Thompson publishers, for much of the twentieth century - up until the days of punk rock - as staple fare for boys, a deliberate antidote to the previous, anarchic Penny Dreadfuls. Orwell describes them in depth in the article and observes their propaganda value as follows:

“the stuff is read somewhere between the ages of twelve and eighteen by a very large proportion, perhaps an actual majority, of English boys, including many who will never read anything else except newspapers; and along with it they are absorbing a set of beliefs which would be regarded as hopelessly out of date in the Central Office of the Conservative Party.”

The cover of Revolver 1, which serialised Grant
Morrison's deconstruction of Dan Dare

That aside, there is another ideological gradation that has Leo Baxendale’s Bash Street Kids (also published by DC Thompson in the Beano) and 2000AD at one end - produced by angry, anti-authoritarian working class writers and artists - and the middle class Frank Hampton’s neo-Imperialistic Dan Dare at the other.

Common to both is the preoccupation with slapstick humour, fantasy and science fiction as a way of boggling minds and examining present-day trends taken to extremes.

Orwell himself notes the value of Sci-Fi (which he calls Scientifiction) in this fascinating sentence:

“Whereas the Gem and Magnet derive from Dickens and Kipling, the Wizard, Champion, Modern Boy, etc., owe a great deal to H. G. Wells, who, rather than Jules Verne, is the father of ‘Scientifiction’.”

You can even position later writers, influenced by these earlier names, on this spectrum, such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison on the left, and Neil Gaiman more in centre-ground. Grant slyly subverted Dan Dare himself, imagining him as an older man morosely looking back on the glory days of space empire in the pages of Revolver in the late ‘80s.

The ‘80s was a key time, because it was then that the kids who had been brought up on the Beano and 2000AD hit adulthood and it became cool to continue reading comics. Inspired by Moore’s Watchmen and V for Vendetta, and the American Frank Miller’s Batman: Dark Knight Returns, younger artists and writers gave birth to an explosion of creativity.

The cover of Crisis issue 3 - probably the closest
ever to Orwell's dream of a left wing comic.

Pat Mills' and Carlos Ezquerra's Third World War deliberately made
very cool heroes out of disabled, black, gay or female characters. 

Eight years after my own story in Marvel's Captain Britain about the Northern Ireland Troubles was censored, Fleetway felt able to publish, in the overtly political Crisis comic, Garth Ennis' True Faith, (but even that graphic novel was scandalously withdrawn from sale, following complaints).

Crisis was, again, largely Pat Mills' brainchild. Overtly political and radical it ran the amazing anti-American Imperialism strip Third World War, which attacked CIA involvement in central and south American countries, a topic already tackled in comics by Alan Moore's and Bill Sienkiewicz's documentary graphic novel, Brought to Light.

The cover of Doc Chaos 1 by me, Lawrence Gray and
Phil Elliott published by Escape

As opposition to Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax spilled over onto the streets and while Spitting Image was on tv, independent creator-owned comics sprang up all over the place, from my own satirical Doc Chaos, published by Gravett's Escape imprint, to Deadline, from Brett Ewins and Steve Dillon, which came directly from a collision between comics and the new House music club culture, the true star of which was to become Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl.

And most of us know what happened when Hewlett met Blur's Damon Albarn: Gorillaz, the first band in history that was made up of comics characters.

Peter Stanbury's and Paul Gravett's Escape magazine
- beautifully designed, arty and hip. 

I must given a special mention to Don Melia and Lionel Gracey-Whitman for publishing Aargh!, Heartbreak Hotel magazine with the supplement BLAAM! Because the mere fact that this anti-homophobic publication could be a comic was testimony to how far the medium had come since the days of Wizard and Hotspur weekly comics in which homosexuality was a heavily suppressed element. Here is Orwell describing a  cover image: “a nearly naked man of terrific muscular development has just seized a lion by the tail and flung it thirty yards over the wall of an arena”.

Heartbreak Hotel issue 5 cover by Duncan Fegredo

The first comic explicitly for black people, Sphinx

Repossession Blues from the pages of Blaam!

A cover of chaos magick journal Chaos International 
which shows the use of comics iconography
- the exchange of ideas went both ways.

There was a huge amount of talent around in the ‘80s, much of which will be on evidence in the British Library show, but I find it fascinating that I, along with the far more successful Bryan Talbot, Grant Morrison, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, (particularly the first two) and probably Pat Mills (although I never met him) were also at the time heavily into chaos magick. We’d discuss this when we met occasionally at the bar that used to be at the foot of Centrepoint, near Titan Books’ offices where I worked, and Forbidden Planet bookshop, and at comics conventions.

Alan only went public on this more recently, but Grant overtly used his research in long-running strips such as the intensely surreal Doom Patrol and subsequently The Invisibles, both for DC.

It is not necessary to believe in any of the gods and forces invoked by magical ritual in chaos magick to utilise its effects. The point for all of us was that Nothing is Forbidden, Everything is Permitted, to use Aleister Crowley’s mantra. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" - a phrase deliberately echoed by Mills in the story at the top of this post.

Chaos magick provided an almost limitless kit of tools to access the far reaches of the imagination. I learned my tricks from a group that met every week in Greenwich, above Bulldog’s café, from the legendary Charlie Brewster, aka Choronzon 666.

I used this massive wellspring of creativity when writing The Z-Men for Brendan McCarthy. Brendan was a maverick comics artist who started work in 2000AD, later becoming like many comics artists a film storyboarder, who was renowned for his psychedelic, mystical artwork.

All of us were also heavily influenced by Dada and Surrealism – this was the premier topic of my undergraduate degree.  It is very obvious in Grant’s Doom Patrol - just read my favourite story The Painting That Ate Paris; and how else could you come up with a superhero who is an entire street (named - of course - Danny)?

Pure anarcho-comics: Hooligan Press & Pete Mastin's
Faction File collected from the pages of
squatting magazine Crowbar -
back full circle to the aims of the Penny Dreadfuls.

Arguably, the most successful comics writers working for American publishers in the ‘80s and ‘90s were Neil, Alan and Grant – Brits all. Frank Miller, also a giant, is American of course, and, while anarchic, is sympathetic to the other end of anarchism – right wing libertarian, which approves the right to bear arms and use them against Commie radicals.

I attribute all of their success not just to their supreme storytelling abilities but to their political views and their involvement in anything occult, arcane and extreme, because in these genres of comics, what readers demand is out-there imagination – and it takes some serious head-space distorting tricks to cultivate a mind that can repeatedly and frequently, on demand, to a punishing production schedule, come up with the mind-boggling concepts, characters and storylines required.

These lessons were not lost on the more recent wave of massively successful British writers, such as Warren Ellis and Brian Hitch, the creators of The Authority, (just read Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan for a taste of his brand of anarchy).

And I believe there are lessons here for all writers and artists who aim at children and teens, that most demanding of all audiences, to help them feed and stoke the furnaces of creativity and imagination.

I could even attempt to sum them up in the following seven guidelines. Bear in mind that these are methods I am suggesting, and in no way am I advocating tackling a particular kind of subject matter. These are ways of researching, preparing to write and draw, and of writing and drawing itself:

• Feed your mind with stuff from the far reaches of experience; and apply that to the everyday.
• You can’t be too extreme.
• JG Ballard's maxim: follow your obsessions.
• Never censor yourself – leave it to someone else.
• Boggle minds.
• Maximise drama.
• Above all - don’t take it too seriously.

Cycling in Bruges - A photo essay

 

Bruges, the ancient mediaeval town near Flanders fields in Belgium, is a city best cycled or walked around.

The authorities have made it easy by providing plenty of signage, bicycle lanes, and even free public bicycle pumps (below).

It's easy to hire bikes and even to cycle to the city along cycle tracks constructed alongside the railway lines, or bring a bike to the city by train. Of course it helps that Belgium is a flat country.

You'll find people of all ages cycling.

My wife Helen and I visited it earlier this month for the first time. I realise that with two million visitors the city gets each year, and with a 700 year old street plan, the authorities don't have much choice but to encourage cycling and walking. They do it by prioritising these modes in zones and at certain times of day.

Everybody who lives here, almost, rides a bike. There is a culture of it. You can see from the aerial photo below taken from the top of the bell tower (366 steps high - I counted them) - that there are more bikes than vehicles on the streets.

And people ride all kinds of bicycles.

I saw a man carrying two children on his bike, one on the front and another on the rear.

You can hire bikes easily and cheaply in many hire shops dotted around. We hired bikes and cycled on the lanes around the canal that encircles the city and goes past the old windmills. There is a bridge which rises and lowers to permit either canal traffic or cyclists and pedestrians.

I love going to cities and cycling round them.

There are so many bikes many people don't bother to lock them when they are parked, even though the city encourages you to do so with signs like the one above.

No wonder other cities in Belgium emulate Bruges. It is a city to which others come to learn about prioritising cycling and walking in their own urban areas.

Comics Art by Paul Gravett - a review

There are many books that act as an introduction to comics and graphic novels. A new one has just come out that is a worthy contribution to this list. It's written by an old pal of mine, Paul Gravett, who has single-handedly carved out a unique career for himself as the British go-to expert on anything to do with comics and been called by The Times "the greatest historian of the comics and graphic novel form in this country", which is absolutely true.

The book is called, appropriately, Comics Art, and published by Tate (the art gallery people, so it really is about art). The thing about this book is that you will hardly find any American Marvel or DC superheroes within its covers. And if you think that is all there is to comics, you're in for a big surprise. Even if you know Raymond Briggs, Hergé, Art Spiegelman and Marjene Satrapi  as comics authors and artists you'll find a treasure trove of other gems herein.

Did you know, for example, that it took a panel of experts many days to decide together when the first comic was produced? The occasion was a comics festival in Italy in 1989, and the panel decided upon an issue of a newspaper strip from Sunday, 25 October 1896 in the New York Journal called The Yellow Kid, because, amongst its characteristics, was the first use of speech balloons, together with a series of linear 'panels'.

This is a shame, because I thought I owned an earlier 'graphic novel', an English translation of Mr Oldbuck's Adventures, dating from around the 1880s, but in this instance there are no word balloons, just pictures with a caption beneath them telling the story.

The book examines all the different ways in which artists have been and are continuing, particularly nowadays, to stretch the possibilities of a medium that has really come of age: trying to use visual imagery instead of language to convey emotions such as Lighter Than My Shadow by Katie Green, about bulemia, messing around with associations, as with Seth's George Sprott, or playing around with the subjectivity of time passing, as with Pebble Island by Jon McNaught.

Paul is especially astute when analysing the political aspects, whether intended or not, of comics. For example, in a discussion of stereotypes in comics, he looks at ways in which comics have been used both to promote and to subvert stereotypical prejudices.

Perhaps the most courageous example of this is by Gene Yang, who challenged the offensive image of the buck-toothed Chinese stereotype and turned it to positive use as Cousin Chin-Kee, a satire of "the worst racist prejudice".

Paul looks at graphic reportage such as Ukrainian Notebooks by the Italian artist Igort, who spent months in that country unearthing stories about the famine engineered in 1932-3 by Stalin to enforce his farming collectivisation programme in which tens of thousands died. No wonder many Ukrainians now do not want to be part of Russia.

There has also been a massive trend recently for autobiography in comics which some feel has been overdone and itself has been subverted by a spoof autobiography (Momon by Thomas Boivin et al. masquerading under the name Judith Forest).

Artists are still extending the vocabulary of comics. One of my favourite examples which Paul quotes is Asterios Polyp by David Mazzuchelli, who not only introduces different typography and balloon shapes for different characters but messes around with different artistic styles for the characters at times in order to give further expression to their different points of view. Further, he deliberately limits his palate to blue and red (and their combinations) to enforce his creativity.

You can read Comics Art just by looking at the pictures and obtain a fantastic overview of the sheer creative possibilities of comics for telling stories of every particular kind.

Comics are not a genre, they are a medium like the novel or the film, and every conceivable type of genre has been tried within the medium. They are peculiarly subjective, just like reading a book, but reaching out to more senses and more associations in the mind of the reader.

I first met Paul when we worked together on a magazine with the unfortunate name of Pssst! back in the early 80s: we were both on the editorial committee and I was a contributor. Later, with his and Peter Stanbury's Escape imprint, he published some of my stories. Meanwhile he was amassing the most extensive library of graphic novels I have ever seen.

God knows how many he has now, but he has curated many shows and knows everybody who is anybody in the medium and industry, yet remains forever modest. This is a truly informative, inspiring and intelligent book.

The Secret Life of Children

I've been thinking about what I read that really turned me on at primary-school age - and why. It was work by authors who understood the secret life that children lead.

There was a great public library down the road, and, like some kind of ravenous termite, I burrowed through titles as fast as I could: first, E. Nesbitt, Biggles, the Jennings books, Just William, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, Swallows and Amazons, Robert Louis Stevenson and Peter Pan.

Adults hated this.

But reading these cost me nothing of my prized pocket money. If I cared about reading something enough to part with my precious cash, then I must have really wanted to read it, right? So what were these items?

Firstly, I'm almost ashamed to admit it now, but I bought the whole set of Enid Blyton's Mystery Of... paperbacks, featuring the Five Find-Outers. These were 2/6d each (12.5p nowadays - nothing. But given that I had 6d a week pocket money that was quite a big deal!).

These books epitomise everything that is completely wrong, from an adult's point of view, about Enid Blyton, being badly written, with sterotyped characters, and containing a character called Fatty. None of that mattered to me of course.

Apart from being page-turning whodunnits, there were three important other elements that made them attractive to this 8 or 9-year old: the children knew best, they solved mysteries without adult help, and the authority figure - usually a policeman - was completely stupid. I suspect the latter reason is particularly why adults frowned upon Blyton. But you can't knock the fact that she published a staggering 752 books in her life. That must be some kind of record. Even if they did have names like Noddy Loses His Clothes.

Matilda - probably the best model reader in the world.

There's something in the British psyche: Britons are well known for their sense of fair play combined with a healthy disrespect for authority. And I think I know why. Most children's books liked by children perpetrate the idea that children know best - and what is fair - and adults don't. Roald Dahl is the obvious example, just look at Matilda.

Then, I'd buy the Beano. Like thousands of other kids. You won't be surprised if I tell you that Leo Baxendale, whom I've had the pleasure to meet a few times, and who came up with the Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx, is an out and out anarchist and has been all his life. That's anarchist in the traditional British sense, going all the way back to the Levellers and Robin Hood.

Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids: anarcho-punks in the making.

He believed that property is theft to the extent that he eventually sued his publishers, DC Thompson, for not paying him any royalties despite the millions they were making from his work - and then settled out of court for an undisclosed sum to pay his mother's medical costs.

And I bought Marvel comics, whether imported or reprinted in the pages of comics Wham!, Smash!, Pow!, Fantastic! or Terrific! - hundreds of them, because they blew my mind with their sheer imagination. But in retrospect, I reflect that there was something else, something very special that made superheroes attractive to me - and to all kids who love them:

They have secret identities.

Pure magic. My name is Thorpe. I WAS Thor!

When bullied, persecuted Peter Parker became Spiderman, he left behind all of his troubles. When puny Bruce Banner transformed into the incredible Hulk, he could smash anybody. When the selfless and lame Don Blake hit his walking stick on the ground, it became Mjolnir, and he was the mighty God of Thunder, a noble Asgardian.

But all of these were secrets known only to themselves - and to me, the reader.

Stan Lee wrote all of these. He is a genius. Like Dahl, Blyton and Baxendale he knew how to create the equivalent of crystal meth on paper. Addictive or what?

These writers are not equal by the way. Today, I can't recall a single Blyton plotline. (And was she the first kids' writer to trademark her name as an instantly-recognisable signature? Is that part of her success - and should we all do this?) By contrast, very many of Stan the Man's stories and characters are burned into my brain. I'd say he was the most prolific of all these writers, and his inventions are the most successful (whether in terms of readership, sales or influence.)

Back to the subject of secret identities. It's not just that every kid longs to have special powers that could help them defeat their enemies (flying, super-strength, invisibility), it's that children have secret lives as well. For many grown-ups these secret lives are forgotten as they get older.

As a child I remember wondering why it was that adults seemed no longer to remember what it was like to be a child themselves, and vowed that I would do my best not to let the memory fade. I don't know whether I do - very well - but I certainly recall that feeling with great intensity.

The powerful idea that you have a secret self, with a special life known only to you, in which you accomplish remarkable deeds, heroic feats - and nobody else (adult) understands, nobody must even know about this - is surely experienced by all children!

They are all, almost perpetually, engaged in one quest or another, one struggle, one battle, or one tumultuous adventure, whether it is emotional, adventurous, imaginative or intellectual. This is what's going on inside children's minds. All the time.

And this is what the best games, books, TV, films and so on both feed on, and feed into, in the fertile forming minds of children.

Always have. Always will.

An Invitation to Join an Exciting New Publishing (Ad)Venture

I'm part of an exciting new publishing initiative, open to anyone to join, which aims to multiply the opportunities for authors by grouping together publishing and marketing services to help writers reach a higher profile more cost-effectively.

The need for a new approach to publishing by authors

New technology is transforming publishing, due to the spread of print-on-demand and the ebook revolution, matched to social media and the plethora of channels and platforms through which creative content can be delivered.

As a result, self-publishing is now not only attractive but desirable. Such books accounted for more than 20% of crime, science fiction, romance and humour ebooks sold in the UK in 2012, according to Bowker, a trend that will undoubtedly be shown to have continued in 2013 once the figures are out.

Publishing models are changing too. Nielsen BookData says ebooks will overtake paperback sales in 2014. Many companies have sprung up to make it easier for authors to publish their own work, offering print-on-demand and ebook services. Mainstream publishers such as Faber and Penguin have also bought up one or two of these companies and added such services to their traditional ones, revealing that they realise this is the future.

Authors consequently have more power and more choice, but some companies are charging over the odds for their services. It can be bewildering deciding who to choose as your publishing services partner.

You want value for money and an efficient service. And, since marketing - especially social marketing - is such a huge part of the publishing process, then choosing a company that understands and succeeds in this area is essential. Making sure you stand out is the central challenge.

But what if a publishing service included you as part of its strengths?

That's part of the concept behind an exciting new not-for-profit publishing co-operative venture I've helped to form. Launching this month, it's called Cambria Publishing Co-op.

It places itself squarely in the new publishing model. The main idea is that anyone, wherever they live, can join and receive discounts on services offered by other members as part of the benefits.

Because it's not-for-profit and a legally registered co-operative, it helps to ensure that members don't get ripped off.

In this game there is strength in numbers. So, the more trade service providers and authors band together, then the higher the collective profile they will achieve.

Cambria Publishing is collaborating and partnering with academic institutions and other agencies to provide a ‘scale’ of operations not achievable by smaller individuals and businesses operating alone - a ‘community’ of like-minded people with complementary skills.

I myself have run a publishing concern as well as being an author, a commissioning editor and book and book cover designer. My other partners have between them a similar level of experience in other areas of modern publishing from print magazine, books and eBooks, to creating websites, blogs, video channels and social media.

Founding members

They include Cambria Books, which has a thriving list of titles aimed at commercial and specialised markets, and Cambria Magazine, a long-standing, independent and well-respected cultural title with 80,000 subscribers around the world.

Cambria Books publishes books for older children up to adults, fiction, poetry and non-fiction, and welcomes submissions. Existing books for teens include Bel Roberts' Surfing Through Minefields and my own Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect (for both of which yours truly designed the covers).


Although both companies are based in Wales, as is the head office (at the University of Wales, Trinity St David's), membership of the Co-op is open to anyone, anywhere. The whole point of the publishing revolution is that it transcends geographical boundaries.

Besides the magazine, we are partnering with Denis Campbell's UK Progressive and Americymru, who both have large audiences in the USA and make copious use of social media, to promote our authors and services, with YouTube video interviews with authors.

Who can join?

Membership is open to all creatives such as writers, authors, artists and those that publish content and make use of the trade skills and services that make this possible.

Examples of trade members include: book and book cover designers, artists, illustrators, marketeers, publicists, social media marketing service specialists (Vine, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube etc.), readers, proofreaders, editors, publishers, printers and any others who provide services that enable a publishing business to function effectively.

Why join?

Members of the co-op will receive discounted services. Entry membership costs just £10 for which you get:

• a newsletter;
• discounts on published books and freebies;
• invitations and free entry to events/launches.

Other membership levels (Trade, etc.) and benefits are listed here.

We hope you will join us! Click here to find out more. If you have any enquiries, email my partner Chris Jones.

If you know of anyone who might be interested, pass it on!

On the Trail of the Mari Lwyd

Imagine it's a dark midwinter night. You're out on a windy street in Wales. Suddenly an apparition appears before you: a white garbed ghostly figure over six feet tall.

From its ragged cowl protrudes a skull - but no human skull - it has a long snout, huge eyes and many teeth set in a long jaw that snaps together repeatedly as it comes towards you.

Now you notice a band of musicians who strike up a tune, a troupe of strangely-garbed figures.

'Our' Mari Lwyd.

Don't be afraid. It's only me and my associates. We're reviving an old midwinter tradition.

The tradition is called the Mari Lwyd (it means Grey Mary in Welsh). It has links with Punch and Judy, the need to bring cheer during the dark midwinter nights, and I've even discovered a connection that Susan Cooper made in her The Dark is Rising series between the Mari Lwyd and Merlin.

I encountered this tradition for the first time in the midwinter of 2011-12 when my wife Helen, a fiddle player, was asked to accompany two artists who live in Carmarthen and who are obsessed with the Mari (as it's known for short).

Phil Larcher peeps out at Helen!

The artists, Phil Larcher and Viv Morgan, are obsessed to the extent that their entire apartment is decorated with pictures and objects they have made of Maris.

Phyllis Kinney's excellent book Welsh Traditional Music describes the tradition as follows:

"The Mari Lwyd was a horses skull draped in yards of white canvas and looking like a ghostly spirit except for the adornment of coloured ribbons [we use red and green from the Welsh flag], black bottle-glass eyes [ours has flashing lights] and black cloth or leather ears. Hidden underneath the canvas, a man with a 5 foot pole operated the Mari's jaw, which was on a spring, enabling it to snap."

Viv Morgan leading the Mari Lwyd
(Phil Larcher) into a pub.

A host of traditional characters used to accompany the spectral mare: the Ostler or Leader, plus a Corporal, Sargeant, Punch, Judy and Merryman. There are many local variations, and records of the tradition are sporadic and rare throughout Wales. Moreover some areas have completely forgotten about the tradition, despite the recent revival in interest, whereas in others some individuals, upon seeing the Mari coming down the street, give a shout of recognition.

They remember it from their childhoods.

Essentially what used to happen was that the party would knock on a door of a house and a ritualised exchange of banter would occur, each with an occasion for a specific piece of music.

1. The arrival phase has verses greeting the householders and challenging them to a contest; 
2. there is then a spontaneous improvised debate in verse (called the pwnco), largely an exchange of good-natured insults; 
3. if the party is then invited indoors (it may not be) havoc could be caused. For instance Punch might use his poker to put out the fire, unless he'd been made to promise not to before entry, or Judy might scatter the ashes over the room. There is even a suggestion that the Mari might be looking for a baby in the house; 
4. the hosts give the guests drink (!) and a wassailling song is sung as the visitors wish good luck to their hosts; 
5. a further song is sung as the party leaves.

Here are the words of the Mari Lwyd Farewell song:

Dymunwn ich' lawenydd
I gynnal blwyddyn newydd
Trapari'r gwr dincian cloch
Well, well y bo chwi beunydd.

In our part of Wales, Carmarthenshire, as the tradition is being revived we do not visit people's houses but pubs instead. This is the second year I've been involved and the group has got larger partly because my wife has been running a Welsh tunes workshop in which we have been rehearsing the music.


Phil Larcher and Viv Morgan with their Mari Lwyd in the White Horse, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire, in January 2012 with fiddler Helen Adam.

The Mari Lwyd in The Parrot pub, Carmarthen on
December 15. You might spot yours truly playing the guitar.
Viv Morgan is to my right, Helen on the left.

We made two visits last year towards the end of December. In Carmarthen we stayed in one pub, The Parrot, all evening and were given a cake baked specially for the occasion!

In Llandovery our large party (two fiddlers, guitar, five percussionists including a monk, a flautist and an accordionist - my son Nemos - plus assorted singers) were turned away from the first pub. The second permitted us to terrorise the diners - who didn't know what had hit them!

We visited two more pubs and, halfway through the evening, a twmpath, or ceilidh in the community hall which we proceeded to disrupt - much to the dancers' enjoyment.

When we went to the final pub we found someone who obviously knew we were coming who was wearing a massive papier maché head with a top hat, whom I took to be the Merryman and who danced to our music.

But what are the origins of this madness?

Samhain decoration on the Mari's costume.

Given the link with Punch and Judy, one line of ancestry may lead back to the 16th-century Italian commedia dell'arte, a touring troupe of actors with stock characters. Punch derives from the Neapolitan stock character of Pulcinella, a manifestation of the Lord of Misrule and Trickster figure found in many old mythologies. His wife was originally called Joan.

The Mari Lwyd ritual has also been described as "a pre-Christian horse ceremony" associated with many similar customs throughout the world. Some aspects of it, including some of the music, suggest considerable age.

The Mari could be associated with the Welsh mythic figure Rhiannon, who first appears in the Mabinogion, the Welsh cycle of old stories, riding a shining white horse.

Our Mari is decorated with pagan symbols. The Leader, Viv, carries a broom whose staff is richly decorated, topped with a small black bird, and whose brush is made with freshly picked herbs.


Susan Cooper's brilliant The Dark Is Rising epic cycle of five children's fantasy books includes a character called Merryman. He is one of the Old Ones, on the side of Light. The second book, The Dark Is Rising, and the final book, Silver on the Tree, are set around Aberdyfi, south Gwynedd, in the area where her parents and grandparents lived, and it is likely Susan would have known of the Mari Lwyd tradition.

One of the manifestations of Merryman in the book cycle is Merlin.

You might ask where a horse's skull might be obtained. If you look, they come to you. Viv and Phil swear that they found theirs hanging in the branches of a tree one day when they went for a walk following a storm.

The ritual is not associated with any particular day of the year, just any time around midwinter and the turning of the year, and so it can be repeated in different places. We have one further date on January 11 in Llandeilo, where we will be visiting three pubs during the course of the evening. Perhaps we'll see you.

Traditionally, the host are supposed to give us a drink in each one, but I don't think the publicans have yet cottoned on to this.

Nevertheless it's the best excuse for a pub crawl and a lot of fun on a dark midwinter night that I've come across in a long time. And the Tricksters and Lords of Misrule demand their time. There are those who would like to tame them - but they will not be tamed. Maris are wild.

They have a life of their own. They have been spotted gathering together when the night is dark in wooded valleys where caves can be found.

If you should hear the snapping of jaws and the sound of hooves one dark night - don't venture near. The Maris don't care to be watched by the uninitiated.

Photos: Phil Larcher.