The Folklore of Birds by Edward A. Armstrong

Author:Edward A. Armstrong
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

WALES

In a version from Carmarthenshire it is emphasized that the Hunt must be conducted in the old way rather than the new. The wren is to be killed with bow and arrow rather than with cannon and guns, to be cut up with hatchets and cleavers rather than with knives and forks, and to be boiled in cauldrons and pans rather than kettles and pots. The reference to firearms indicates that the song took its present form after their introduction, but the theme must be older and the emphasis on the use of ancient implements, as in France, illustrates the forces of conservatism at work to maintain traditions passed on from much earlier times. The mention of knives and forks in the Manx variant shows that this part of the song cannot be earlier than the eighteenth century, for these were not in general use until after 1726.

In Wales, the Wren Hunt was particularly associated with Twelfth Night, but the date of the celebration varied. Owen, writing at the end of last century, remarked that he had a dim recollection of participating in the Hunt on St. Stephen’s Day, but Peate states that it took place in readiness for the procession on Twelfth Day. Edward Lhuyd (ob. 1709), one of the earliest authorities, refers to the procession in Pembrokeshire on Twelfth Night, and as other writers endorse this, there can be no doubt of its accuracy. In the ‘sixties, however, the Wren Procession took place in Cardiff on St. Stephen’s Day, but this was due to Irish influence—an example of the reanimation and modification of a ceremony through influence from a related cultural stream separated from it long before. Sir W. Goscombe John wrote in 1929: “I remember as a child groups of young roughs—they were generally Irish, I think, going round the Canton district of Cardiff on Boxing Day with a holly-tree decked with ribbons and a dead wran with a bottle of spirits attached. The song they sang included the well-known lines, ‘St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze’.” Such an importation increases the probability that the Galloway observance was introduced from elsewhere. In Pembrokeshire, at Epiphany, a boy came round with coloured paper streamers in his hat and a wren in a cage. He sang:

Come and make your offering

To the smallest, yet the king,

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