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The wren, the wren the king of all birds
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the firs.
Although he is little, his honor is great
Jump up me lads and give us a treat!
All the wise Winter Wrens in the Medieval British Isles did their best to spend the day after Christmas, the feast of St. Stephen, hunkered down still and quiet, deep in their favorite hedgerow--for the "Wrenboys" were out to get them. Each year, on the morning of December 26th, a mob of boys chased the first Winter Wren they found through ditches and hedges, over hill and dale, until the bird dropped dead from exhaustion and fright or one of the boys got close enough to deliver a good smack with a stick. Once they had their wren, the bird was stuck on a pole and paraded around town while the Wrenboys sang the Wren Song. If the people of the town knew what was good for them, when the Wrenboys appeared on their doorstep, they gave them a treat of food or drink in exchange for a feather plucked from the body of the wren.
This ritual called "Hunting the Wren" or sometimes just "The Wren," was held in honor of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr. According to Irish folklore, when St. Stephen was running for his life from the mob intent on killing him, he saw a holly bush that he figured would make a perfect hiding place. Sure enough, the mob ran past the holly bush and Stephen breathed a sigh of relief. Just then, a Winter Wren began flapping his wings and calling noisily. The mob turned on its heels, found young Stephen, and made him a martyr. (Father Paul, my Junior High religion teacher, once observed that "St. Stephen was the first teenager to get stoned.")
Celtic tribes hunted the wren for centuries before the first Christian missionaries scraped the bottom of their boats on Ireland's shores. But their motivations were a little different from those of their descendents. Like many of our aspiring politicians today, the Celts were in favor of term limits for their leaders. Unlike our elected politicians, though, the Celts actually enforced term limits. Every seven years the Celtic king was ritually sacrificed at a public ceremony in order to make way for the new king. (It was easy for those in attendance to recognize the new king, even if they had never seen him: he was the guy holding the knife sticking out of his predecessor's back.) The wren, as king of the birds, was a protected creature, but on the day the king was killed, a wren would also be sacrificed and put on parade. If you couldn't get close enough to see the real sacrifice, you could at least take part in the symbolic sacrifice. As was the case with many pre-Christian rituals, The Wren was modified in order to comply with the new religious codes. Rather than celebrating the ritual sacrifice of a pagan king, the Christian Saint Stephen became the core around which The Wren practice revolved.
We have to take a couple more steps back in time--mythological time as well as historical time--in order to discover how the Celts came to hold the wren as king of the birds. According to folklore, the birds decided to hold a congress at which they would choose a king. History does not record which sub-committee came up with the election process, and the minutes have long since been lost to the ages, anyway, but it was put to a vote and agreed that the bird who could fly the highest for the longest amount of time would be crowned king. Off they went, each bird trying to out-bird the other birds. All the birds but the Eagle had soon given up, and the Eagle, too, though triumphant, finally tired and started his descent. At that very moment the Wren leapt from his hiding place in the Eagle's tail, circled up just a little bit higher than his royal raptorness, and stole the crown. Thus the Wrenboys sing, "Although he is little, his honor is great."
People in the British Isles have gotten a lot of mileage out of The Wren myth. In a version of the story that echoes the St. Stephen myth, a band of Irish warriors sneaking up on a camp of sleeping Vikings were betrayed by a wren that beat its wings on their shields. Likewise, there are numerous versions of the song "Hunting the Wren." Since the wren is a symbol of royalty, singing The Wren song was a safe way for peasants to express their unhappiness with their king without being drawn and quartered--a very English way of dealing with those guilty of treason. In one particularly bloody version called "Cutty Wren," the wren is killed "With great guns and great cannon," carried away "On four strong men's shoulders," its wings and ribs divided up and given to the people. The revolutionary versions of the wren songs can be traced back to periods of English history marked by social unrest and peasant revolts. Often, characters such as Robin Hood are central figures. Wren songs like "Cutty Wren" are also a lot of fun to listen to if you're in a bad mood, since malice and spite flow freely from every note.
Hunting the Wren didn't catch on in North America, despite the large number of immigrants from the British Isles, and Ireland in particular. Yet the large Christmas "side hunts" that were popular in the United States well into this century are similar in some respects to the ancient wren hunts. Teams of hunters competing for trophies slaughtered untold numbers of birds and mammals during these holiday hunts, and in 1900 Frank Chapman organized the first Audubon Christmas Bird Count in hopes that he could convince people to count birds at Christmas rather than shoot them. Today the data collected during CBCs are used by scientists to chart population trends of wintering birds. But the ancient spirit of The Wren remains with us as we break into groups and fan out into the country side, "hunt" the birds all day, then return at dusk to eat dinner and tell stories of the birds we tallied. This year, if you find the King of Birds, consider yourself lucky, and insist that the other birders in your group buy you the King of Beers, or at least a cup of coffee!
Following is just one version of the many different Wren songs. I think this one does a good job capturing the general spirit of The Wren myth. And while it's meant to be sung, it reads well as poetry. The next time a group of carolers arrives at your house demanding Christmas pudding and vowing "we won't go until we get some," answer them with this:
The Wren Song
The wren, the wren, the king of all birds
St. Stephen's Day was caught in the firs.
Although he is little, his honor is great
Jump up me lads and give us a treat!
We followed the wren three miles or more
Three miles or more, three miles or more;
Through hedges and ditches and heaps of snow
At six o'clock in the morning.
Rolley, Rolley, where is your nest?
It's in the bush that I love best.
It's in the bush, the holly tree
Where all the boys do follow me.
As I went out to hunt and all
I met a wren upon the wall.
Up with me wattle* and gave him a fall
And brought him here to show you all.
I have a little box under me arm
A tuppence or penny will do it no harm.
For we are the boys who come your way
To bring in the wren on St. Stephen's Day.
* A wattle is a stick or a bundle of sticks.
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