We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for every one.”
After going from house to house and collecting all the money they could, they laid the wren on a bier “with the utmost solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manks language, which they call her knell; after which Christmas begins.” After the burial the company outside the churchyard formed a circle and danced to music. About the middle of the present century the burial of the wren took place in the Isle of Man on St. Stephen's Day (December 26th). Boys went from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in the centre of two hoops which crossed each other at right angles and were decorated with evergreens and ribbons. The bearers sang certain lines in which reference was made to boiling and eating the bird. If at the close of the song they received a small coin, they gave in return a feather of the wren; so that before the end of the day the bird often hung almost featherless. The wren was then buried, no longer in the churchyard, but on the sea-shore or in some waste place. The feathers distributed were preserved with religious care, it being believed that every feather was an effectual preservative from shipwreck for a year, and a fisherman would have been thought very foolhardy who had not one of them.[430]
In Ireland the “hunting of the wren” still takes place in parts of Leinster and Connaught. On Christmas Day or St. Stephen's Day the boys hunt and kill the wren, fasten it in the middle of a mass of holly and ivy on the top of a broomstick, and on St. Stephen's Day go about with it from house to house, singing—
“The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the furze;
Although he is little, his family's great,
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat.”
Money or food (bread, butter, eggs, etc.) were given them, upon which they feasted in the evening. Sometimes in Ireland, as in the Isle of Man, the bird was hung by the leg in the centre of two hoops crossing each other at right angles.[431] In Essex a similar custom used to be observed at Christmas, and the verses sung by the boys were almost identical with those sung in Ireland.[432] In Pembrokeshire a wren, called the King, used to be carried about on Twelfth Day in a box with glass windows surmounted by a wheel, from which hung various coloured ribbons. The men and boys who carried it from house to house sang songs, in one of which they wished “joy, health, love, and peace” to the inmates of the house.[433]
In the first half of this century similar customs were still observed in various parts of the south of France. Thus at Carcassone, every year on the first Sunday of December the young people of the street Saint Jean used to go out of the town armed with sticks, with which they beat the bushes, looking for wrens. The first to strike down one of these birds was proclaimed King. Then they returned to the town in procession, headed by the King, who carried the wren on a pole. On the evening of the last day of the year the King and all who had hunted the wren marched through the streets of the town with torches and music. At the door of every house they stopped, [pg 144] and one of them wrote with chalk on the door vive le roi! with the number of the year which was about to begin. On the morning of Twelfth Day the King again marched in procession with great pomp, wearing a crown and a blue mantle and carrying a sceptre. In front of him was borne the wren fastened to the top of a pole, which was adorned with a wreath of olive, oak, and mistletoe. After hearing high mass in the church, surrounded by his officers and guards, he visited the bishop, mayor, magistrates, and the chief inhabitants, collecting money to defray the expenses of the royal banquet which took place in the evening.[434] At Entraigues men and boys used to hunt the wren on Christmas Eve. When they caught one alive they presented it to the priest, who, after the midnight mass, set the bird free in the church. At Mirabeau the priest blessed the bird. If the men failed to catch a wren and the women succeeded in doing so, the women had the right to mock and insult the men, and to blacken their faces with mud and soot, if they caught them.[435] At La Ciotat, near Marseilles, a large body of men armed with swords and pistols used to hunt the wren every year about the end of December. When a wren was caught it was hung on the middle of a pole which two men carried, as if it were a heavy burden. Thus they paraded round the town; the bird was weighed in a great pair of scales; and then the company sat down to table and made merry.[436]