120 BIRDS IN LEGEND 



Explanations of this revolting yet long persistent cus- 

 tom have been many and various. A totemic sort of 

 theory is that the bird "was once regarded as sacred, and 

 the Christmas hunting is the survival of an annual cus- 

 tom of slaying the divine animal, such as is found among 

 primitive peoples. The carrying of its body from door 

 to door is apparently intended to convey to each house a 

 portion of its virtues." I know of no facts in history to 

 support this theory as applied to the Keltic race. One 

 authority tells us that the "crime" for which the bird 

 must be punished so ferociously is that it has "a drop o' 

 the de'il's blood in its veins," but so has the magpie, which 

 is not persecuted. 



Lady Wilde 60 assures us that "the wren is mortally 

 hated by the Irish for on one occasion, when the Irish 

 troops were approaching to attack a portion of Thomas 

 Cromwell's army the wrens came and perched on the 

 Irish drums, and by their tapping and noise aroused the 

 English soldiers, who fell on the Irish troops and killed 

 them all." For this tragic incident we are given no time 

 or place; and it happens that the same report was made 

 respecting a battle between Irish and Danish invaders 

 some 800 years before Cromwell's campaigns in the 

 Emerald Isle or anywhere else. 



The real clue to the puzzle is contained in the fact that 

 in their barbarous hunt for wrens the men and boys kept 

 yelling words that in Cormac's Glossary (10th century) 

 are explained as "draoi-en," Druid-bird. We know that 

 the Druid priests were accustomed to draw auguries from 

 the chirpings of the wren — a divination to which the 

 early Christian missionaries objected strenuously. It is 

 probable that they condemned the little songster as a 

 symbol of heathen rites, and encouraged their converts to 



