Well into the early 20th century, gangs of young boys, called “wren boys,” would have trooped out with cudgels and wattle sticks to beat the bushes in the surrounding countryside, startling wrens out of hedge and thicket, exhausting the birds through repeated flushing, until they were too tired to evade their hunters.
Traditional wren days in the past didn’t end so joyously for the wrens, however. Participants gather in the days leading up to Wren Day to make the distinctive straw suits-which look a little like a cross between a haystack and a wookie-that they’ll wear as part of a parade of mummers, musicians and other motley characters that joyously tromp through the streets of towns like Dingle, in south-western Ireland. The ritual is also still performed in Ireland to this day, again with a replica bird nailed to the wren pole. George Waldron, author of A Description of the Isle of Man, published in 1731, described the ritual: “they go to hunt the wren, and after having found one of these poor birds, they kill her, and lay her on a bier with the utmost solemnity, bringing her to the parish church, and burying her with a whimsical kind of solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell.” Waldron doesn’t offer any interpretation of the ritual he only describes it with the faint (and sometimes not-so-faint) disdain with which he, an Englishman, seems to describe everything these perplexing, uncouth foreigners are doing, referring to their Christmastide customs as “infinitely more fatiguing.” Later authors are willing to offer up all manner of explanations for the origin of and meaning behind the ritual we’ll cover some of those later on. A replica wren is used now, but traditionally the wren would have been a real one, hunted and paraded before the dancing took place. The wren pole, made of two willow hoops set crosswise, is dressed with ivy and ribbons, with a wren dangling by its legs from the top. On the Isle of Man, the ritual is known as “Hunt the Wren.” It’s still celebrated every December 26th, and involves participants dancing in a ring, while a child standing in the center holds the ritual’s most important artifact-the wren pole. Welcome to Rime, where we’re hunting tales from the history of poetry.
“The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,” the chant begins and on Wren Day that king, a tiny bird, is hunted and laid to rest, only to sing again with the rising sun. Its roots lie in ancient sun-worship and symbolic sacrifice the death of the old year and the birth of the new. Wren Day is named after an ancient, pre-Christian ritual once common to Britain and France it’s called “Hunting the Wren,” and it’s still enacted in parts of those regions today. Stephen’s Day-but one that might be less familiar is Wren Day. December 26th is known by many names-Boxing Day, St.
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