COUNTRY MATTERS
Some relief for the poor wren boys Joe Kennedy
FROM a window of Ulysses Books — the antiquarian bookshop on Duke St, Dublin, near the noted watering holes of Davy Byrnes and the Bailey and adjoining the Duke where I had often met John McGahern — an image of wren boys stared out at me.
This was in a framed set of verses, with a little staff notation, set under a Jack Yeats woodcut of a snowy street scene of four youths tramping along, singing their lungs out. These particular wren boys look respectable and are a far cry from earlier times when one writer described them as “below buttermilk” — a low-life rabble that went around country town pubs in impromptu disguises, shout-singing popular ballads collecting money to “bury the wran”.
Wren boy activities traditionally began on St Stephen’s Day. And they never got a good press.
Patrick Kennedy, the 19th Century Co Wexford writer, in his Banks of the Boro described them as being “many degrees under Mayboys and mummers”. Amhlaidh O Suilleabhain, teacher, Callan, Co Kilkenny, wrote in his diary of 1829: “The rabble of the town going from door to door with a wren in a holly bush asking for money in order to be drunk later that evening.”
In Cork city, Lord Mayor Richard Dowden banned hunting of the birds in the city and environs on grounds of cruelty. This was a man ahead of his time who was no doubt helped by clergy who described wren boy activities as “an excuse for begging and its consequent debauchery”. This was effective as rag balls and ribbons began to replace birds in the holly bushes.
The wren boys, however, still kept up their business. In the last century there were still groups of young adults blacking their faces to “go out with the wran”, although children began to get involved, going from house to house rather than from pub to pub and making the custom more socially acceptable.
The wren boy recitations thus lived on. One would be: “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 family is great/Rise up landlady and give us a trate/ Up with the kettle, down with the pan/ A penny or twopence to bury the wran.”
The Carrick-on-Suir based poet Michael Coady (who has had a new collection, Given Light, just published by The Gallery Press), could remind me, I’m sure, of the following: ”As I was going to Killenaule I met a wran upon the wall/ I up with me wattle and knocked him down/ And brought him into Carrick town.” It is all part of folk memory.
The Clancy Brothers, also from Carrick, recorded wren boy snatches at New York’s Carnegie Hall many years ago. On the Yeats ballad sheet was a reminder of those rhymes: “I have a little box under me arm/ A shilling or two would do it no harm/ A shilling or two would bring relief/ To the poor wren boys on Christmas Eve.”
That’s something this particular poor wren boy endorses! And I couldn’t pass up that Cuala Press Ballad Sheet from 1979! * In the year past some readers have written kind words about me in letters to the Editor. I thank them sincerely as I do my regular contacts for sending me news of interesting sightings of birds and animals