School: Lacken (C.), Cill Mhichíl (roll number 13827)
- Location:
- Lacken, Co. Clare
- Teacher: Bean Uí Mhaonaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0602, Page 017
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: Lacken (C.), Cill Mhichíl
- XML Page 017
- XML “Superstitions and Customs Pertaining to St Stephen's Feast Day”
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 customs pertaining to St Stephen's feast day are, the young folk unite in companies on Christmas day, and they make arrangements as to the following day.
Long ago the boys used to go out in the night with sticks and stones and a lamp, and they searched every bush and hedge for the wren, until they succeeded in catching him. The following day they dressed in old clothes, they wore an old hat with ribbons flying from it, and a mask so that they would not be known. The first one carried a bush of holly and they had the wren tied to it and they sang the wren verse.The wren the wren, the king of the birds,
St Stephen's day, he was caught on the furze
Although he is small, his family is great,
Get up old woman and give us a treat,
The wren is dry and so am I,
Give me a few pence, and we will let her fly.Now they are not allowed to carry the living wren, because it is cruelty to birds.
Now the young boys go around from house to house in disguise with a holly(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Bridget O' Leary
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Cahercannavan, Co. Clare
- Informant
- Mrs O' Leary
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 52
- Address
- Cahercannavan, Co. Clare
