Bull baiting, drink and debauchery – wild times in Glamorgan

by Graham Loveluck Edwards

Glamorgan Star news 03/10/2023

2 minutes read

| Gŵyl Mabsant started out in the Middle Ages. Images: Adobe / GS.

ONCE A YEAR, life in pretty much every town and village in Glamorgan used to degenerate into an orgy of drinking and gaming known as the ‘gŵyl mabsant’.

It started out in the Middle Ages as a religious festival. The date of the festival varied from place to place, as it was linked to whichever saint the local parish church was dedicated to. But it always began on the Sunday following the saint’s feast day, and usually ran for a week, sometimes two.

By the 18th Century, the religious significance of the gŵyl mabsant had dwindled, and the festival was dying out, much to the consternation of local inn keepers, who had always done rather well out of it. Reluctant to see it end, they took charge and turned it into an altogether less ‘holy’ affair, with lots of boozing, blood sports and gambling at its heart. And that went down rather well with the 18th Century locals.

**| Bull baiting was a prominent event at the festivals.** *Image: Adobe.*

One of the staples of this event was bull baiting, which basically consisted of releasing a pack of dogs onto a bull. The account books of both the Cardiff Corporation and the township of Llantrisant list ‘bull ropes’ as town expenditure in 1712 and, of course, Llantrisant’s Bull Ring is so named as it was once the site of such events. The bull terriers of Llantrisant were famous in their day; a letter from Thomas Rees to Cadrawd, dated 12th January 1907, described ‘a celebrated breed of white [bull] terriers at Llantrisant’.

Sadly, this was not the only blood sport spectacle at these events. Cockfighting was also a common sight, so much so that we had our own local variant of it, known as Welsh Main.

| **Cockfighting has long been banned in the UK but continues in various forms elsewhere in the world.** *Image: Adobe.*

These blood sports have left their mark on modern language. The term ‘cockpit’, for example, is derived from their association with the similarly tight enclosures where birds were ‘pitted’ against each other. You yourself may have been ‘pitted’ against someone in your time.

Then, having defeated your rival, you could have been said to have ‘earned your spurs’, harking back to the tradition of champion birds being allowed to wear spurs on their heels as a mauling weapon. Even the expression ‘I’m game’, meaning I am up for taking part in something, references how fighting cocks were once known as ‘game birds’.

Some gŵyl mabsant became so famous that they would draw people from far and wide. Charles Wesley described the festivals taking place at St Fagans, Dinas Powys, Whitchurch and Michaelstone-super-Ely as ‘revels’ and ‘riots’. He was outraged by the goings on he had seen. And when it came to drunken debauchery it seems Whitchurch set the standard:

‘Tues. September 15th 1741… I was at another famous revel in Whitchurch which lasts a week and is honoured with the presence of the gentry and clergy, far and near. I put myself in their way, and called ‘awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light’.
Charles Wesley

Once the Temperance movement got a grip, these events became unfashionable and the tradition died out.

By Graham Loveluck Edwards

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