Last Friday, St Stephen’s Day in Ireland, Boxing Day across the water, saw the annual phenomenon of the Wrenboys do their thing in town and country. Or, as the word is pronounced in my West of Ireland part of the world, Wranboys.
It’s supposed to be about chasing the wren, “the king of all birds”, but nowadays it mainly involves lots of painted children going house to house rhyming their rhymes or playing a tune for . . . money.
In the evening, generally, more seriously disguised adults go pub to pub playing music and accepting donations. Remember the song they sing and which others among us also sang on Wrenboys Days in our childhood:
The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St Stephen's Day was caught in the furze,
Although he was little his honour was great,
Jump up me lads and give him a treat. Chorus:
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
And give us a penny to bury the wren. And that all important final verse:
I have a little box under me arm,
Under me arm, under me arm.
I have a little box under me arm,
A penny or tuppence would do it no harm. Chorus:
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
And give us a penny to bury the wren.
The tradition is said to have originated in Celtic mythology where the wren was associated with the passing year. The bird is also believed to have been associated with the druids. This, it seems, has as much to do with the bird’s name in Irish, dreoilín, which some suggest can be translated as “druid’s bird”.
It is thought possible druids worshipped the wren and for this reason Christians opposed it and celebrated the killing of the bird at Christmas time as a symbol of their new order. There are also stories of betrayal involving the bird. For instance it was believed a wren betrayed Irish soldiers during the Viking invasion by beating its wing on their shields. It was supposed to have done the same when Cromwell visited eight centuries later in the 1640s and it was claimed a wren betrayed St Stephen, on whose feast Wrenboys Day takes place.
Wren, from the Old English wrenna, is a variation on the earlier werna, a Germanic word of uncertain origin. inaword@irishtimes.com
