WREN. 173 



Wren is a favourite pastime of the peasantry of Kerry on 

 Christmas clay. This they do, each using two sticks, one to 

 beat the bushes, the other to fling at the bird. It was the 

 boast of an old man, who lately died at the age of one 

 hundred, that he had hunted the Wren for the last eighty 

 years on Christmas day. On St. Stephen^ day the 

 children exhibit the slaughtered birds on an ivy-bush 

 decked with ribbons of various colours, and carry them 

 about, singing the well-known song, commencing 



** The Wren, the Wren, the king of all birds," &c. 



and thus collect money to " bury the Wren." Mr. R. Ball 

 informs me that this persecution of the bird in the south is 

 falling into disuse, like other superstitious ceremonies. In 

 Dr. William H. Drummond's "Eights of Animals" the 

 cruelty practised towards the Wren in the south of Ireland 

 (for in the north the practice is quite unknown) is dwelt 

 upon, and a tradition narrated, attributing its origin to 

 political motives. In the first number of Mr. and Mrs. S. 

 C. HalPs " Ireland," a very full and well told account of 

 the " hunting of the Wren " appears. The legend there 

 given as current among the peasantry, is not, however, con- 

 fined to them, for Mr. Macgillivray, in his British Birds, ap- 

 parently without knowing anything of the Irish fable, relates 

 the very same as told by the inhabitants of the Hebrides, 

 and a detailed account of the Wren being called a King-bird 

 over a considerable part of the European Continent will be 

 found in one of the volumes of the Library of Entertain- 

 ing Knowledge, entitled the " Habits of Birds," page 49. 



The beak is rather shorter than the head, slender, slightly 

 curved and pointed ; the upper mandible dark brown, the 

 under mandible pale wood brown ; the irides hazel ; over 

 the eye and ear-coverts a streak of pale wood brown ; the 



