Mystic Mares and the Marilwyd: Horses in Folk Customs and Myth
Ariadne Rainbird
Published independently in July 2025, 165 p. Paperback ISBN 979-8292537724. Order via Amazon
Mystic Mares and the Marilwyd is a richly illustrated and passionately researched book. The subtitle captures its scope: Horses in Folk Customs and Myth. Ariadne sets out to explore the horse’s significance – especially female horses (“mares”) – in folk traditions, mythic structures, and sacred rites, with special attention to the Welsh tradition of the “marŵlwyd” or “Marilwyd” (sometimes anglicized as “merry-maid” or “mearlwyd”) — the symbolic female figure or entity associated with horses, processions, and ritual. She is the ‘Night-Mare’ and Queen of Winter.
Ariadne’s enthusiasm for the subject shines through. The breadth of traditions covered — from Welsh processional figures through Celtic myth, to wider European horse-folk customs — gives the book a strong sense of being more than a catalogue: it is an invitation into a terrain where the horse is a mythic being rather than merely an animal.
One of the strongest features is the focus on female horses and female figures associated with equine symbolism. This is relatively rare in equestrian myth-studies, which tend to emphasise stallions, steeds of heroes, etc. Ariadne turns the attention to the mare, the mare-spirit, the Marilwyd figure. That pivot is refreshing and opens fresh questions about gender, power, nature, and ritual.
The book grounds mythic and symbolic themes in actual folk customs — processions, seasonal rituals, with horse-masques, and local traditions. In Welsh tradition, for example, a horse’s skull is carried around from door-to-door by a person in a white shroud, followed by a troop of singers in character costumes. This gives the reader something tangible and grounded, which helps make the mythic more accessible.
It is richly illustrated and intended for a somewhat general readership with interest in folklore, myth, equine culture, and nature spirituality. This helps to make the work visually engaging.
Given my background working with ‘people of the earth’, folklore, this book resonates strongly. Ariadne’s framing of the mare as a living being embedded in ritual, myth and natural-environmental relationships aligns with a worldview that honours animals, landscapes and traditions as more than resources. If you are exploring animals as persons, or equine-symbolic relationships in nature and culture, this book offers rich material.
Mystic Mares and the Marilwyd is a compelling, beautifully framed, and enthusiastically delivered work that fills a niche: it brings horses (and especially mares) into the world of myth, ritual, folklore and nature-spirit attunement. It is especially well-suited for readers who appreciate mythic-folklore studies, equine culture, nature-spirituality, and interdisciplinary reflections on animals and living beings.
Horse’s skull being paraded.. the Marilwyd
References:
Image horse’s skull being paraded… the Marilwyd https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Mari_Lwyd
From the chapter about Rhiannon… this is also available as a ‘Prayer Card’:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/910624815/rhiannon-prayer-card
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Other WRO reviews of books by Ariadne Rainbird:
To All The Blessed Gods: An Anthology of the Living Orphic Tradition:
