The story
- Welsh · borrowed fromMari Lwyd
- English todayMari Lwyd
Borrowed from Welsh Mari Lwyd, with soft mutation (after a feminine noun) of llwyd (“grey”). The first part may be a form of the name Mary or a use of the English word mare. See Wikipedia for fuller discussion of these and other possibilities. In Welsh the name is used with the definite article and consequent soft mutation, y Fari Lwyd.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.