Now well into December - originally the tenth month of the Roman calendar - we are leaning ever closer towards Christmas, a time of Christian celebration on the birth of Jesus.
Amidst the religious and secular celebrations, elements of the natural world are also evident, woven into the fabric of the season. Our much-loved robin, associated with the birth of Jesus, is seen on cards and forms part of many decorations. Its links to the season emerge from a blending of myth and reality.
The robin is one of the few birds which continues to sing, though not as vigorously, through these dark winter days, sharing its plaintive tune from bare branches and hedges, something noted by 18th century English poet William Cowper who wrote of the bird in winter, “The redbreast warbles still, but is content / With slender notes, and more than half suppressed”.
Legend tells us that the robin helped keep the fire alight for the baby Jesus in the stable by fanning its wings, helping the air to circulate. It is also said that the bird helped Mary while she was fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod, with Joseph and the infant. In her haste, Mary sustained many cuts from thorns and brambles, causing her to bleed.
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The robin followed, however, and covered all the blood stains with debris to leave no trace for Herod’s army. Recognition of the robin’s kindly act is found in Kerry and Clare, where the Irish name Spideog Mhuire, Mary’s robin, is used for the bird.
While Christmas Day carries hope and joy at the infant birth, Saint Stephen’s day awaits with a very different story of revenge through the ancient tradition of Wren boy processions.
On this day, Lá an Dreoilín, day of the wren, boys and men in costumes hunted the wren to death and paraded it on a holly bush from door to door through villages, chanting, in mumming style, uncomplimentary verses. This, because the wren’s noisy, chastising song is said to have betrayed Saint Stephen, revealing his hiding place to the killers who stoned him to death.
The bird was also alleged to have made Christ’s whereabouts known to the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane and, by tapping on a drum, to have alerted Cromwell’s forces to an imminent attack from Irish soldiers.
For these treacherous acts, the bird has incurred the wrath of local communities on Stephen’s day, chanting refrains as they march, like:
“The wran, the wran, the king of all birds
On St. Stephen’s Day, he was caught in the furze
Merry Christmas and a glad New year.
So up with the kettle down with the pan
Give us a penny to bury the wran”
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This lively event, much tamer now with the use of an imitation wren, still occurs in towns and villages along the west coast of Ireland, where processions are accompanied by music and dance.
In the past, the wren would have been buried at the close of day with monies raised at the doors likely used to fuel an evening of merriment in the local hostelry. Sigerson Clifford’s famous ballad The Boys of Barr na Sráide from the 1950s recounts the young men of his youth from Cahersiveen, Co Kerry, involved in hunting the ‘wran’, with the words: “Now with cudgels stout we roamed about to hunt the dreolín/We searched for birds in every furze from Litir to Dooneen/We sang for joy beneath the sky; life held no print or plan/And we the boys from Barr na Sráide went hunting for the wran.”
Beannachtaí na Nollag oraibh go léir.
