132 
WREN. 
COMMON WREN. KITTY WREN. JIMPO. 
Sylvia troglodytes, PENNANT. 
Motacilla troglodytes, Montacu. BEWwICcK. 
Troglodytes vulgaris, TEMMINCK. 
as europaeus, CUVIER. 
_Sywia,  Sylva—A wood. Troglodytes—The name of an 
ancient race ‘of people, said to live in holes and caves. 
RicHarp DownpeEn, Esq., Mayor of Cork in the year 1845, 
will doubtless be rather surprised at seeing, if, which is perhaps 
rather problematical, he ever should see, his name at the head 
of an article in this ‘History of British Birds,’ but I place it 
there to do him all due honour for having issued a proclamation 
during his mayoralty to forbid, on the score of cruelty, the 
hunting of this little bird on St. Stephen’s Day by all the 
idle fellows of the country. There are different traditions as 
to the origin of this absurd custom,—one dating from the 
time of the incursions of the Danes, when it is said that a 
Wren perched on a drum, and there sang so loud as to awaken 
the enemy, who would otherwise have been slaughtered in 
their sleep; and the other from such a recent date as the 
reion of William III., when it is said that the noise of Wrens 
picking up the crumbs on a drum-head, in like manner saved 
his army from being cut off early in the morning by James 
II.; the result being to make these birds ever since objects 
of detestation to the Jacobites, and of favour with the 
Orangemen. It is however manifest that these traditions 
cannot both be true, and I shall therefore take the liberty 
of not believing either of them. Suffice it to say that on 
the Saint’s day in question, the ‘Wren Boys’ go about the 
hedges pelting the unfortunate victim with sticks and stones, 
