The Wren
Wren Boys, Athea, Co.Limerick, 1947, courtesy Irish Folklore Commission
The curious tradition of Lá an Dreoilín or ‘Wren Day’, once widely observed on December 26th throughout Ireland, has now been absorbed into street parades and other innocuous events. The original ‘Wren Boys’, however, could be disquieting and, like the kindred ‘Straw Boys’, occasionally somewhat menacing. With painted faces, disguised in old clothes, and wearing hats decorated with tinsel, straw and holly, they would arrive at houses unannounced, invite themselves in, and then entertain the occupants with songs and airs played on fiddles, bodhráns, accordions, tin whistles and flutes. After a brief performance and demands for money ‘to bury the wren’, they would disappear as suddenly as they had arrived.
Even more sinister was the dead bird that the ‘Wren Boys’ used to bring with them on their celebrations. In the days before Christmas, and sometimes on the day itself, they would scour woods, fields, bogs, and anywhere else they thought a wren might be, and when they found one it would be killed. On December 26th, St.Stephen’s Day, they would parade the tiny corpse on top of a pole or holly branch that had been dressed in ribbons and coloured paper. ‘For some weeks preceding Christmas, crowds of village boys may be seen peering into the hedges, in search of the ‘tiny wren’, and when one is discovered the whole assemble and give eager chase to, until they have slain, the little bird’, wrote S.C.Hall in 1841. ‘In the hunt, the utmost excitement prevails; shouting, screeching, and rushing; all sorts of missiles are flung at the puny mark; and not infrequently, they light upon the head of some less innocent being. From bush to bush, from hedge to hedge, is the wren pursued until bagged with as much pride and pleasure, as the cock of the woods by the more ambitious sportsman’.
As is often the case with old traditions, the meaning and significance of the wren hunt is unclear. One explanation is that the bird was guilty of treachery: when Irish forces were about to catch a group of Oliver Cromwell’s invading troops by surprise, the song of a wren perched on one of the soldier’s drums woke the sleeping sentries and saved the camp from capture. Another story concerns the betrayal of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr; the bird is said to have flapped its wings to attract pursuers when he was hiding from them. It is possible, too, that Irish antipathy to the wren had its origins in the Middle Ages, when the Church did its best to undermine and overturn pagan practices: its origin may lie in a Celtic midwinter ritual, or in Druidic beliefs: the wren is called dreoilín in Irish, and sometimes translated as ‘druid bird’.
The deep ambiguity of the wren in Irish culture is at the heart of the dark and powerful song ‘Hunting the Wren’, by the group Lankum, in which the writer, Ian Lynch, juxtaposes the old tradition with accounts of the 19th century ‘Wrens of the Curragh’, a community of outsiders, including unmarried mothers, alcoholics, prostitutes, vagrants, and ex-convicts, who lived rough in nest-like shelters of gorse near the army camp on the plains of Co. Kildare. Charles Dickens, who created a character called ‘Jenny Wren’ in Our Mutual Friend, first serialised in 1864-65, wrote about them in the same year. ‘There are’, he said, ‘in certain parts of Ireland and especially upon the Curragh of Kildare, hundreds of women, many of them brought up respectably, a few perhaps luxuriously, now living day after day, week after week, and month after month, in a state of solid heavy wretchedness, that no mere act of imagination can conceive. Exposed to sun and frost, to rain and snow, to the tempestuous east winds, and the bitter blast of the north, whether it be June or January, they live in the open air, with no covering but the wide vault of heaven, with so little clothing that even the blanket sent down out of heaven in a heavy fall of snow is eagerly welcomed by these miserable outcasts’.
Even beyond Ireland, the wren’s associations and symbolism are surprisingly complex. Small, inconspicuous, and sometimes mistaken for a mouse, it is said to be the first and loudest bird to sing in the morning. As such the wren is often associated with the sun, but as a member of the troglodytidae species, it also has connections with caves and the underground, doubtless because it occasionally nests in a hole in the earth. The wren is often considered to be a trickster. One of Aesop’s fables tells of a contest held by the birds to determine which could fly the highest and would be called the King. The eagle soared above all of them, but he didn't know he was carrying a hidden wren, who flew a yard or so above higher than him when he reached the peak of his flight.
For further exploration:
About ‘Wren Day’: https://pilgrimagemedievalireland.com/2016/12/25/an-irish-st-stephens-day-tradition-la-an-dreoilinwren-day/
A modern variation: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/these-masked-singers-carry-on-an-irish-christmas-tradition
From the 1930s Schools Folklore project: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5009341/5008779/5130307?ChapterID=5009341
The Wren of the Curragh: https://kildare.ie/ehistory/index.php/the-wrens-of-the-curragh-part-1-1867-original-pamphlet/ (other parts also available on this site)
Lankum’s ‘Hunting the Wren’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUReQ9GhT8s
The lyrics of ‘Hunting the Wren’: https://genius.com/Lankum-hunting-the-wren-lyrics
Wren Boys, Ballinskelligs, c.1938