Wrens in literature and culture

The wren features in the writings of Chaucer and Shakespeare, William Blake and John Clare, and most famously, in Edward Lear’s comic verse: Two owls and a hen, four larks and a wren, have all built their nests in my beard. The wren also appeared on Britain’s smallest coin, the farthing, from 1937 to 1960 when it was finally withdrawn from circulation (there were four farthings in a pre-decimal coinage penny). But the most intriguing way that wrens feature in British and Irish culture is the old annual ritual of the ‘wren hunt’, in which groups of boys would pursue a wren around their village each Boxing Day, before capturing or killing it and demanding a reward.