THE WREN 259 



privacy of the hedge-row at the foot of which the bold, 

 pert little creatures are seeking their food. In old nests 

 in the thatch and holes in the walls, they find warmth 

 and shelter during the winter, a little batch of them 

 together. They are supposed to build special nests, 

 '' cocks' nests," they are called. A Staffordshire 

 acquaintance tells how, being curious as to the number 

 sleeping in one of these which he had previously noted 

 in a grotto in his grounds, he and gardener surprised 

 them one night by the light of a lanthorn, and no fewer 

 than six Wrens fluttered out of the nest. 



Another friend who was fishing near Brambridge, in 

 Hampshire, tells me that he knows one such nest under 

 the thatch of an under-keeper's cottage, and he has seen 

 five or six enter this in the early twilight of a winter even- 

 ing. On two different occasions, when a dogcart sent 

 to the keeper's cottage at which he puts up, was waiting 

 for him to drive to his day's fishing, a Wren settled on 

 the back of the standing horse, near the cottage door, 

 and remained there for a few minutes, as though enjoy- 

 ing the warmth coming through the creature's coat. 



In Ireland every Wren that can be seen is hunted 

 down and killed on St. Stephen's Day; and a Surrey 

 man tells me that up to twenty-five years ago he has 

 witnessed the same persecution in the home counties. 

 Tradition says that it is due in Ireland to the fact of a 

 party of Wrens hopping over a drum's head, and 

 thereby disturbing a sentinel, when a party of Irish were 

 on the point of surprising their enemies. 



Shakespeare writes of " the Wren with little quill," 

 in Bottom's song of birds; and again, in " Cymbeline," 

 Imogen says, " if there be yet left in Heaven as small 

 a drop of pity as a Wren's eye." The comparisons 



