38 WREN 
through the rocky ravine, amidst the boulders and bracken 
of the rough hillside, and in the rock-fissures of the wild 
coast, as well as in the neglected garden hedge with its 
mossy hawthorn stumps, or the farm-steading, where in 
winter it finds its food. A steep, shaded, and overhung 
bank is perhaps its favourite home. 
In August 1881 Mr. Graves found a nest at Crosby 
with four fresh eggs. He has been told by Mr. W. J. 
Clague that for twelve consecutive years there was a nest 
in a hole by the lintel near the back door of his house 
at Ballabeg. Mr. Kermode mentions a white specimen at 
Tholt-e-Will in 1899. 
A Wren is noted at Langness lighthouse, 10th March 
1885, another on 22nd April 1886, and four or five 
Wrens, 17th October 1885; while large flocks of migrants 
reported from the Chickens from 8th to 12th of same 
month are stated to have been partly composed of this 
species (7). 
The quaint personality of the Wren is with us associated 
with the curious celebration on 26th December, for a more 
detailed discussion of which the reader may be referred to 
Mr. Moore’s Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man, p. 133, et seg. I 
will only quote the brief account (there copied from Manz 
Society, vol. xxi.) by the late William Harrison. 
‘This custom is still kept upon St. Stephen’s day, chiefly 
by boys, who at early dawn* sally out armed with long 
sticks, beating the bushes until they find one of these birds, 
when they commence the chase with great shoutings, 
following it from bush to bush, and when killed it is sus- 
pended in a garland of ribbons, flowers, and evergreens. 
The procession then commences, carrying that “King of 
1 Townley (1789) says: ‘If they can catch or kill the poor Wren before sun- 
rising, they firmly believe that it ensures a good herring fishing the next season.’ 
(Vol. i. p. 311.) 
