Margaret Rossiter: Where have all the wren-boys gone on St Stephen's Day

It is now many many decades since I last saw the wren boys on the streets of Clonmel on St Stephen’s Day, and at that stage the tradition was already in decline. The boys called themselves “wran boys” and were known locally as such.

They were, usually, boys from the neighbourhood (girls were never involved) who blackened their faces with soot, or wore contorted masks and went from door to door, singing about the “dreoilín” (the wren), and were rewarded with a penny or two. They wore “fancy dress”, usually adult clothes, pieces of discarded curtains, old sheets, scraps of this and that.

They travelled in groups of three or four and were supposed to be a little bit scary and unidentifiable but everybody knew they were Johnny and Michael from the street or Jimmy and Bob from the adjoining street. Some member of the group usually carried a branch of holly, decorated with coloured paper. According to tradition, a dead wren should also decorate the holly, but apparently this cruel appendage had long been abandoned. Why was that lovely little bird, the wren, amongst the smallest of our native birds, associated with this clearly very ancient tradition?

What did it do to deserve such a fate? We do not know, except the tradition was preserved in some of the many verses of the wren boys ditty in the St Stephen’s Day performance.

“When I was going to Killenaule
I met a Wran upon the wall
I up with me stick and I gave him a fall
And I knocked him into the Wran Boys’ Hall.”

And again…

“The Wran, the Wran, the king of all birds
On St Stephen’s Day he was caught in the furze
Although he is little his honour is great
Cheer up Mrs Murphy and five us a traat (treat).”

Again, according to tradition, the bird was supposed to be hunted and caught on a few days prior to Christmas Day.
While the content of the song changed from district to district, and even from street to street, the introductory verse was always the same:

“Hubble a bubble, a dreoilín, a dreoilín, a dreoilín,
Hubble a bubble, a tambourine…..”

Although the wren boys were a feature specific to St Stephen’s Day in Ireland, it is assumed they were not, in fact, marking the death of the first-ever Christian martyr and that the tradition long predates Christianity and goes back to prehistoric times. There were similar displays and events in Bavaria and in Central Europe to mark this time of year, and which, in some form or other, existed until the early decades of the last century. There was the same presentation of being scary and being unidentifiable.

The modern theory is that all pre-dated written history and that they owe their origins (perhaps to the cave dwellers) to a marking of mid-winter; the anticipation of the return of light for darkness, Good for Evil. Were the ancient wren boys putting “the frighteners” on winter? Who knows?

For that matter, who knows the origins or the functions of other very localised groups - The Mummies of Wexford, the Strawboys of Kerry, the Morris Dancers of England, all of which, once upon a time, marked some time, or some event, now lost in a very, very distant past. It could well be asked if these ancient ceremonies have any relevance whatsoever in a world where humankind has already walked on the moon, sent scientific equipment to the planets, and is now exploring outer space. Yet, it would be interesting to know why the wren became the wran of the wren boys, and survived until relatively recent times in our celebration of the Christmas season.
Does anybody out there know?