FABLE AND FOLKLORE 119 



interesting enough to justify quoting the broad account 

 of the matter furnished by Swann: 47 



An old Irish custom on St. Stephen's Day, and one that 

 has not quite died out, was the "hunting of the wren" by boys. 

 When captured it was tied, alive but maimed, to a pole (or, 

 according to Vallancey — De Reb. Hib., IV, 13 — tied by the 

 leg in the center of two hoops placed at right angles with one 

 another) and paraded around the neighborhood, a few doggerel 

 verses being repeated at each house, while a donation was re- 

 quested, one version being; 



The wran, the wran, the king of all birds, 

 St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze, 

 Come, give us a bumper, or give us a cake, 

 Or give us a copper, for Charity's sake. 



Yarrell records a similar practice in Kerry, where the peasantry 

 on Christmas Day used to hunt the bird with two sticks, "one to 

 beat the bushes the other to fling at the bird." Bullock also 

 mentions it as prevalent in the Isle of Man, both on Christmas 

 Eve and St. Stephen's Day, and tells us it was founded on a 

 tradition of a beautiful fairy who lured the male inhabitants 

 to a watery grave in the sea, and who to escape subsequent de- 

 struction took the form of a wren, which form she was sup- 

 posed to be doomed by a spell to reassume each succeeding New 

 Year's Day, ultimately perishing by human hands. ... To my 

 own knowledge this custom of a "wren hunt" existed in Not- 

 tinghamshire also within recent times, the bird being hunted 

 along the hedgerows by boys armed with stones, but I do not 

 recollect that anything was done with the bird when killed or 

 maimed. . . . 



In connection with this belief [alluded to above] in the king- 

 ship over other birds, a Twelfth Day custom of parading a 

 caged wren in Pembrokeshire, with the lines recited, is described 

 in Swainson's Folklore of British Birds, O'Curry has recorded 

 that the wren, like the raven, was kept domesticated on account 

 of the auguries derived from it, which were employed by the 

 Druids. An Irish proverb asserts that "The fox is the cunning- 

 est beast in the world barring the wren." According to Dalyell 

 the wren is considered an unlucky token in Scotland, but the 

 robin a lucky one. 



