School: Ballydurrow
- Location:
- Ballaghdorragh, Co. Cavan
- Teacher: S. Ó Hadarnáin
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0998, Page 354
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: Ballydurrow
- XML Page 354
- 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 best known and most observed festival of the whole year is that on St. Stephen's day.
For some days before it, the boys searchf or wrens and kill them so as to have a dead wren to stick in a matchbox when going on their rounds. Early on St. Stephen's day boys and girls dressed up in many disguises go round from house to house singing a rhyme about the wren such as
"The wren, the wren, the King of all birds
St Stephen's day we were caught in the furs
Althoug he is small, his family is great
Rise up yon landlady and give us a treat
Up with the kettle and down with the pan
Out with some money or we'll bury the wren.
It was supposed that to leave the wren about your house or bury it was very unlucky. Some of the wren boys have musical instruments and in this district they sing or dance at each house. Some groups travel far on bicycles or in motors. The small boys and girls go round in the daytime and the full-grown people at night. The(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Charles Smith
- Gender
- Male
- Informant
- John Hetherton
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Ballaghdorragh, Co. Cavan
