School: Belpatrick, Collon (roll number 10537)
- Location:
- Belpatrick, Co. Louth
- Teacher: Bean Uí Dhonnagáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0677, Page 199
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: Belpatrick, Collon
- XML Page 199
- XML “St Stephen's 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
- On this day young men, and boys and girls dress up and go beating the bushes until they get a wren which they take with them, and go around from house to house singing songs, playing music and dancing.
They say:-"The wren, the wren the king of birds
On St. Stephen's Day was caught in furze.
Up with kettle and down with pan
And give us money to bury the wren."They get money etc., at each house.Long ago they dressed up to represent different characters, and were called "Mummers".
One would dress as a Doctor and would say:- in answer to the question "What can you cure" :-"I can cure the plague within
The plague without.
The rheumatism or the gout.
Get me a woman four score and ten.
With her toe broken and I'll set it again"
