WREN 39 
Birds,” as the Druids called it, from house to house, solicit- 
ing contributions, and giving a feather for luck. These are 
considered an effectual preservative from shipwreck, and 
some fishermen will not venture out to sea without having 
first provided themselves with a few of these feathers to 
ensure their safe return. The “dreain” or Wren’s feathers 
are considered an effectual preservative against witchcraft. 
It was formerly the custom in the evening to inter the 
naked body with great solemnity in a secluded corner of 
the churchyard, and conclude the evening with wrestling 
and all manner of sports.’ 
During the last thirty years the performers have been 
more frequently without the Wren than otherwise, it no 
doubt being found that tender-hearted householders refused 
their contributions to parties with a dead bird. The custom, 
which at the commencement of that period was universal 
throughout the isle, has now to some extent died out, and 
has lost many of its peculiar features. 
Yet the writer, in passing through Onchan on the morn 
ing of 26th December 1903, saw no fewer than five ‘ Hunt 
the Wrens’ in that village, and in 1902 they were quite 
numerous in Douglas. As the result of more particular 
inquiries in 1904, he finds that there were in that year 
many parties in Douglas, and some also at Peel, Port St. 
Mary, and Kirk Michael. At Ramsey Mr. Cowen thinks the 
custom almost extinct, and the little party photographed 
by him the only one. At Castletown there were about 
four. 
The doggerel verses, always sung in English within the 
writer’s recollection, and it would seem for long before, will 
be found, with the air to which they are sung, in Mr. Moore’s 
above-cited work, also in his Manz Ballads, pp. 64, 252, and 
arranged in Mr. W. H. Gill’s Manx National Songs, p. 62. 
For comparison with the observance corresponding in 
