School: Coolbock (roll number 8013)
- Location:
- Coolbock, Co. Sligo
- Teacher: Tomás Ó Cathasaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0179, Page 0485
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- XML School: Coolbock
- XML Page 0485
- XML “Festival Customs”
Note: We will soon deprecate our XML Application Programming Interface and a new, comprehensive JSON API will be made available. Keep an eye on our website for further details.
On this page
- The Irish people practice many customs on certain feasts.
On ST. Stephen’s day a crowd of boys gather together or sometimes men dress themselves with old rags and old hats. They also get a false face and put it on their faces. They dress in this manner so that they will not be recognised.
Then they get some musical instruments such as a mouth organ or a violin. Then they go about from house to house playing music and dancing and singing songs about the wren. This is the one they usually sing.
The wren, the wren, the king of the birds brought on ST Stephen’s day in the forge up with the kettle and down with the pan.
Give us some money to bury the wren.
They also sing other songs much like the former. They follow on in this manner until evening comes. Then they divide the money equally among them. The adults spent this money on drink while the children spend it some other way.
On the 31st of January a number(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Joe Mc Gann
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Riverstown, Co. Sligo
- Informant
- Tomás Ó Cathasaigh
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 60
- Occupation
- Múinteoir
- Address
- Coolbock, Co. Sligo
