The People's Songbag

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 5

The People's Songbag

rituals in Europe and one of the most puzzling. If it were possible to go far enough back one could no doubt connect it with the ancient dionysiac rites of death and resurrection which have filtered through to the British Isles from the Middle East; or with the pagan hunts undertaken at the winter solstice to banish evil influences during the seasonal crisis. As St. Stephen’s Day on December 26 is only four days after the solstice the latter connexion is not difficult. But it is more interesting to come closer to our own times and connect with St. Stephen himself the curious persecution of this beautiful and harmless little bird. The story is that when Stephen was escaping from the British a wren alighted on the gaoler’s face and awakened him in time to recapture the saint; and this would explain why Ulstermen do not persecute the wren once a year.

Cursed Wren The wren has seldom, been on good terms with Irish saints. In the legend of St. Moling, for instance, there is an account of the origin of the Wren Hunt in which Moling cursed the wren because it ate his pet fly: "He that marred for me the poor pet that used to be making music for me, let his dwelling be for ever in empty houses, with a wet drip therein continually. And let children and young persons be destroying him.”

The French also explain the Wren Hunt in Christian terms, but take it back to the founder Of Christianity. When Jesus was hiding in the garden, they say, a wren betrayed Him. These accounts tend to reinforce the case for a pagan origin insofar as they suggest that the wren was displaced by Christianity from high status in sorcery. In Irish

writings the wren is described as a winged sorcerer; in English manuscripts as a Druid bird able to make predictions; and Manx fishermen, who believed that a sea sprite, accompanied by storms, haunted the herring shoals in the form of a wren, carried a dead wren in their boats to counter the evil.