In another article in an occasional series looking at the Bard’s Birds, Steve Sutherland says forget the robin redbreast, it’s the wren that tradition declares the true bird of Christmas, although the tale is somewhat tragic.
“THE poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight
Her young ones in her nest, against the owl.” Macbeth (iv. 2)
This is Lady Macbeth condemning MacDuff as a coward for fleeing to England abandoning his wife and children to their dreadful fate at the hands of her husband, the newly crowned, superstitious and paranoid king. Shakespeare presumably chose the wren to represent instinctive bravery in the face of the predator owl because it’s one of the UK’s tiniest birds, definitely the shortest. It’s so small, in fact, that it’s hard to spot – a bustle in your hedgerow, as Led Zeppelin put it, a quick twitch out of the corner of your eye and it’s gone.
But the Bard was more spot-on than he probably knew in describing the wren as “poor” because, the appallingly maligned magpie apart, no other British bird has been so undeservedly mistreated by mankind. Thanks to Hallmark and the like, the robin’s the bird we most associate with Christmas, but pity the wren at Yuletide. On and around St. Stephen’s Day – 26th December – which is also known as Boxing Day and, in certain parts of Ireland and the Isle of Man, as Wren Day, the wee thing is hunted down and slaughtered. Why? Nobody knows for sure but there are various theories. It’s thought the roots of the dreadful rite extend back to pre-Christian times marking the dawning of the new solar year following the winter solstice. It’s surmised that wrens, one of the few birds thought to continue singing throughout the winter, were offered as a sacrificial part of the Samhain ritual which symbolised the death of the darkest season.
A Little Bird Told Me So – This Marsh Wren is singing his song hoping to attract a mate. I have extracted his image from its background and isolated it on white so that you can use it on your artwork – with a speech bubble if you wish. The original version of this photo is also in my portfolio..
As was often the case, once Christianity took hold, the ancient superstition was assimilated into the new religion and a tale was spun to paint the bird as treacherous. The story goes that within a few months of Christ’s crucifixion, St Stephen claimed to have had a vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God up in heaven. This proclamation was deemed blasphemous by the authorities, and Stephen, in fear of his life, was forced into a bush, hiding from his pursuers, until a wren broke into song and gave him away. Stephen was subsequently stoned to death in public, becoming the first Christian martyr. And that’s why groups of men known as the Wren Boys gather together on the day after Christmas to hunt the wren, stoning it to death, then carrying its corpse around – stuck on top of a pole decorated with holly, ivy, tinsel, ribbons and coloured paper or interred in a small wooden coffin. Sometimes the wren’s body would be hung inside a ball-shaped frame made from two wreaths of holly or ivy, called the Wren Bush while, in some villages, the wren’s body was displayed in a small wooden box with windows, decorated with greenery and ribbons, called the Wren House. The person who had killed the wren was believed to have good luck for a year. The lads went door to door singing, “Penny for the ‘wran’” to “bury the wran”, much like the more widespread “Penny for the guy” on bonfire night. If the householder stumped up with a coin or two, they were given a feather plucked from the bird which was kept or worn as a charm against witchcraft. The Manx population even held a funeral for the wren at the end of the day in the parish churchyard by torchlight and danced around the wren pole.
According to local folklorist Mona Douglas, to complete the ceremonies a living wren was placed in a cage inside the Wren Bush and the people once more proceeded to dance around it. This wren was then set free, before the bush was burned on the dead wren’s grave.
If you were wondering how on earth anyone could actually catch or kill a wren with a stone, it being so tiny and all, here’s what some hunters used to do. They would wait until night-time and then seek them out in the thatches of cottages where they nested. They’d get a lamp and shine the lamp into the wren’s nest and it would come out, blinded, whereupon they’d grab the bird and hasten to their dastardly business.
And if they failed in their mission, the Wren Boys would sometimes try to fake it, trimming a potato to make it look like a wren, with, say, matches or twigs for a beak and legs. Householders, wise to the ruse, would ask to see the wren jump and then refuse to pay up. Strangely, the Wren Boys often wore dresses and hid or painted their faces in a bid to thwart evil fairies who were thought to prefer abducting boys over girls. Apparently the Irish believed that Cliona, some kind of fairy queen, would rise, either from the ocean or the underworld, and sing to seduce young men, luring them to a watery grave. The story’s pretty much the same in the Isle of Man, except Cliona is known as Tehi Tegi, “the beautiful gatherer”, instead. She would enchant the local men to follow her around in the hope of marrying her, neglecting their homes and fields in the process. She led her suitors to the river and drowned them. It’s said that she was finally caught in the act upon which she was transformed into a wren and cursed to return every year just after the winter solstice, whereupon she was hunted and killed, the feathers of the dead bird then used as magical protection to prevent fishermen from drowning.
Another version has St Maughold arriving on the island whereupon he converted the populace to Christianity and banished all the fairies except for their queen who assumed the form of a wren. As a bird, it was believed, she could be killed and her evil power put an end to forever. Trouble is, the folks were pretty scared to do the wren in and it was said that dire calamity would befall whoever undertook the deed, they and their family cursed forever.
As the centuries passed, some of the Wren Boys wore straw suits, a sartorial echo of the straw disguises worn in the 18th and 19th centuries during Ireland’s agrarian wars. To this day, where the custom survives, the masks and costumes worn on Wren Day can reflect feelings and prejudices within Irish communities and society. For example, masks of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher still feature in the processions.
It’s also worth noting that the Irish word for wren is dreoilín, which comes from Draoi Éan, which means the Druids’ Bird which the Christian religion sought to stamp out as part of its thrust to purge the isles of the pagan ways. The enmity against our tiny victim is doubled in Ireland by another story that blames it for alerting a band of Vikings to the approach of the Irish army by pecking at breadcrumbs left on a drum which awakened the Norse horde enabling them to defeat the Irish. Also, to add even more injury to insult, there’s another yarn that has a flock of wrens wakening Cromwell’s sleeping soldiers with their wingbeats just before the Irish army was about to attack.
In the Wren Boys’ song, the wren is referred to as “the king of birds” based on an ancient story which goes something like this: Every species of bird gathered together to elect their king and it was decided that whichever bird could fly the highest would win the crown. The eagle easily flew above all the others but the cunning wren was hiding on his back and when the eagle was exhausted and could fly no higher, the wren took off and flew on up to claim the title.
The Welsh also got a look-in at doing the dirty on our tiny warbler. There’s a legend about a mythical hero who got his name by striking a wren with an arrow, “between the tendon and the bone of its leg”, causing his mother, to say, “it is with a skilful hand that the fair-haired one has hit it” which roughly translates as Lleu Llaw Gyffes. If you fancy a musical accompaniment to the contents of this article, may I recommend Hunting the Wren by Irish folk renegades Lankum on their 2019 LP The Livelong Day. And should you be moved at Christmastime to contact the RSPB concerning the rotten treatment dished out to out little feathered friend, be comforted by the fact that modern day Wren Boys are faking it.
Thankfully, the last documented account of someone actually killing a wren for the occasion was recorded way back in the 1890s.