School: Carnadough (C.), Newtowncashel
- Location:
- Cornadowagh, Co. Longford
- Teacher: Bean Uí Chathasaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0753, Page 522
Image and data © National Folklore Collection, UCD.
See copyright details.
DownloadOpen data
Available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
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
- There are a lot of feasts during the year, such as Christmas day, St Stephens day, Whit Monday, Shrove Tuesday, Spy Wednesday, Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
On St Stephens day a crowd of boys dress themselves in a funny way and they go from house to house gathering money for the wren. They dance and play music with flutes, melodions, pipes and French fiddles.
This is the song that they sing.
"The "Wren "The "Wren
The kings of all birds
On St Stephens day
He was caught in the furze
Up with the kettle and down with the pan
Give me the money to bury the wren.
When St Stephen was on the run from the soldiers it was said that he went to hide in a tree. The soldiers came and they sat down under the tree to rest themselves. It was the wren that was in that tree. Fear struck the wren and he flew out of the tree.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Brigid Casey
- Gender
- Female
- Age
- 13
- Address
- Cornadowagh, Co. Longford
