I wrote my first post an age ago – actually in 2019. Aiming to give a platform to overlooked history, I invited readers to look at what’s under our feet. The day-to-day stuff we don’t even notice, that we don’t value, because it’s become distorted and diminished, or just plain forgotten. In that distant post, I used as an example the seemingly quaint custom of the Wren Hunt.
Throughout the British Isles and beyond, mostly in what’s now called the celtic fringe, notably Ireland and the Isle of Man, wren-hunting ceremonies take place over the Christmas period.
Typically, the revellers, dressed up in bizarre finery, carry a ribboned pole, on top of which sits the figure of the captured wren. Historically, it was a live bird, imprisoned in a little cage! (Nowadays, I’ve heard tales of plastic budgies as substitutes)… The participants invite folk, usually in song, to celebrate the wren, “king of all the birds”, sometimes asking for a little donation as tribute. If that request is turned down, the revellers wish misfortune upon the curmudgeons. Sometimes they distribute feathers for good luck throughout the next year. The ceremony usually ends with a public gathering, with much merriment in the form of song, dance and other tomfoolery.
Participants, enjoying the fun, might not always realise the ancient nature of their ceremony. Folk-lorists and anthropologists think that the origins of the wren hunt lay back in the neolithic period, when our ancestors were making the shift from hunter-gathering societies to farming. That transition started around 9,000 years ago.
Irish wrens
My most recent post (on gargoyles, as it happens), was my fiftieth. So, at “fifty not-out”, I thought it time to fulfill the promise I made in that first post. A promise to take a more detailed look at the ancient roots of the wren hunt. In a happy piece of serendipity, just as I was starting to get my research notes in shape, I met up with my old Irish friend, JD. Over a drink or two, I mentioned my latest blog topic. To my utmost surprise, he revealed himself to be an actual “wren boy” ! In fact, on his last Christmas visit home to Ireland, he’d taken part in a wren ceremony on St. Stephen’s day (that’s Boxing day, to my English readers).
JD described how he and a band of fellow “wrenners”, both boys and girls, gathered together and donned their traditional straw wren hats. There followed folk songs, and Irish jigs and reels. The wrenners danced Céilís, such as “The Walls of Limerick”. They crowned a “king of the wren boys” and sang this old traditional song, to celebrate St. Stephen’s Day…“The wren, the wren, the King of all birds, on St, Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze”.
Here’s a lovely picture of JD in his wren attire…
And with a hundred year gap, here’s an old picture of Lá an Dreoilín, or Wren Day, in Ireland in 1922
How do we know?
JD and his fellow wren-hunters were taking part in the revival of an ancient Irish tradition. It was organised in Mullinavat, by the South Kilkenny Historical Society. But how ancient is it? Well, how about, stretching right back to neolithic times?
“Hmm, so,” you ask, “how exactly then, do you justify putting the ceremony origins back into pre-history? There were no written records, no archaeological finds of dead wrens. It’s all just guess-work, isn’t it?”. Admittedly, to a certain extent, yes, it’s all just guess-work. However, it’s informed academic guesswork, based on anthropological research.
Hunters to farmers
Here’s an anthropologist’s view of what might have been happening those nine thousand-odd years ago. The old hunter-gatherer folk in Europe disappeared – whether through assimilation or destruction, the jury’s still out on that – and replaced by new folk from the east of Eurasia. The new arrivals brought with them new ideas, superior weapon technology, and a strange new way of living: they grew food, rather than hunted it. That’s all verified by archaeology and by DNA analysis of human and plant remains.
The newcomers knew how vital to survival good weather was, a decent crop was essential. How best to ensure next season’s good harvest? By keeping the gods happy and on your side. And, there was no better way to please the gods than with a sacrifice. But it had to be a meaningful sacrifice, one that offered up something – or rather, someone – valued, or even sacred.
So, chosen individuals were honoured and revered throughout the growing and harvest seasons. Then, at the darkest part of the year, but just when the hours of daylight started to lengthen and the planting season was in sight, a change happened. The chosen ones were sacrificed to the gods as tribute. In return the clan hoped for a good harvest next season, and the certainty that the hoped-for hours of daylight would indeed increase. It’s no coincidence that wren ceremonies take place very near to the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.
Some anthropologists think that, after the sacrifice, the community ate the remains of the victims, in order to absorb the power bestowed by the gods . A new sacrificial delegate was then adopted, treated with deference and respect – until their day came in the depths of winter, a year hence.
Raiders of the lost past
I can almost see readers scratching their heads at this point. Exactly how do anthropologists make the leap from neolithic human sacrifices to hunting wrens, nine thousand years later?
They use comparative analysis. Disciplines such as ethno-anthropology examine aspects of modern culture. Wren hunting, for example: its associated customs, the folksongs, the rituals. They chart their cultural spread over geography and time, and analyse the similarities and differences between them. In that way, they can try and pinpoint any potential “common ancestors”. It’s similar to how researchers attempt to find the origins of nursery rhymes, as I described in my recent post I Spy Tom Thumb.
I found an impressive piece of anthropological research. It’s a bit of a mouthful, called Hunting the wren : transformation of bird to symbol : a study in human-animal relationships. You can access it for free here…The author Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence was a renowned American ethno-anthropologist. Here’s my modest attempt to summarise her arguments:
Animal magic
How could a human sacrifice evolve into the sacrifice of a poor wren? Atwood makes the case for shamanism and totemism. In both there’s a close personal relationship between human and animal.
Totemism is where an animal represents the spirit of a clan or tribe – still seen today in native American culture. There’s still vestiges of it in the clan system of Scotland. For example, the symbol of Clan Campbell is a boar’s head, Clan MacGregor a lion’s, and Clan Munro an eagle’s. 
In totemism there’s also an enduring tradition of eating an animal in order to gain its power.
The ability to shape-shift between animal and human is core to shamanistic belief. You see traces of it throughout global folklore. Gods, such as Norse Loki and Greek Zeus regularly changed from human into animal form as a disguise.
There are shapeshifting werewolves and vampires aplenty in folklore. In Scotland, selkies change from seals to women, by shedding their skin. Witches, of course, were well-known for changing into hares or cats at will. In my post Swan Songs, I wrote how shape-shifting “swan maidens” feature heavily in European folklore
Wren vs Robin
So, it’s possible to see how an animal – or bird in our case – came to represent the annual human sacrifice. Over thousands of years, we forgot the meaning of that transformation, and just the symbol remained. But clues are still there. Just as the wren was the symbol of the sacrifice of the “king” at the end of the dying year, the robin was the symbol of the new “king”, in the year to come. You often see them portrayed together.
Atwood points out that you can still see this symbolism at work every Christmas. Look at the cards that drop through your letter-box. Plenty of cheerful robins. But also, if you examine Victorian cards, or indeed, many modern cards, you’ll see the wren and the robin together, representing the old year and the new year to come.
Hero to Zero
The fortunes of the wren changed so rapidly. People revered the wren as the king of all the birds throughout the year, but then cruelly hunted and killed it on a dark mid-winters day. Something that is honoured and revered is bought low and sacrificed. Atwood points out how such customs – called reversals or inversions by anthropologists – happen often, especially around the time of the winter solstice. The world turns topsy turvy, and the lowest become exalted and the highest are cast down.
Think of Saturnalia, the Roman winter festival where a lowly slave was nominated as King, and masters must serve their slaves. The same sentiment echoed at medieval Christmas festivals, with the appointment of a Lord of Misrule. The nominated one was often a lowly household servant, and the great and powerful in the household deferred to them for the twelve days of celebration.
There was an old custom throughout Europe, where “boy bishops” took over the running of the church, from St. Nicholas’ day until Holy Innocents’ day – that’s from the 6th until 28th December. (Incidentally, this tradition continues in England today, at Hereford Cathedral, amongst others).
Of course, the Christian festival of Christmas itself represents the birth of an exalted king, whose inversion and sacrifice follows later in the year at Easter. (Incidentally, anthropologists point out the Christian story’s similarities with that of Mithras, the Roman soldier deity. His birthday, Dies Natali Solis Invicti, “birthday of the unconquered sun” falls on… 25th December).
Robin the Bobbin
For anthropologists, folksongs are a smoking gun leading to the origins of tradition. The common folk have few written records, but their songs form a strong oral tradition, passed down through the generations. And there’s tons of wren songs.
You find songs celebrating the royal status of wrens throughout Europe. Varieties of “The wren, the wren, the king of all birds”, the ancient folk song (sang by JD in Kilkenny), and an integral part of wren hunting ceremonies, has been collected across Britain, including from Essex, Yorkshire and Lancashire. In Ireland, versions have been identified in Limerick and Galway, as well as Kilkenny. There is a variation sung in Vermont, USA, no doubt taken by emigrants travelling across the ocean.
Just as widespread though, are versions of Robin the Bobbin, sometimes known as The Cutty Wren. (Cutty is an archaic word meaning little, or short). This ancient folksong describes the hunting of the wren, and what befell the poor bird’s body after death. It has a “question and response” structure, which is very old indeed. It may well be a faint echo of the ritual chanting connected with ancient human sacrifice.
Here’s a typical version of the song:
You can identify the gory elements of the surmised neolithic ritual described by anthropologists. There’s the hunting and killing of the sacrificial victim, and then the preparation of the body…and the subsequent cannibalistic feast. Strong stuff, if you look below the surface.
A multitude of robins
Some years ago now, I wrote a post about that old folk song, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It fascinated me then – and now – how many variations of its theme exist, and how wide was its geographical spread. Exactly the same case can be made for Robbin the Bobbin, also often sung at the wren-hunting ceremonies.
In researching for this post, I started to list its many variants and their geographical derivations. I gave up after the first dozen or so. Here’s how far I got: 
To me, this strongly supports the case made by anthropologists. In the absence of written evidence, you can analyse living folk culture, such as Robin the Bobbin’s song, to winkle out ancient, deeply rooted themes. Cultural archaeology: digging for meaning.
Druids
Because wren hunting ceremonies are more prevalent in the Isle of Man and Ireland, and indeed Wales, many people think of the rituals as being celtic, and therefore originating from the rituals of druids. But the anthropological evidence of the wide geographical spread shows that it’s far older. The druids did exactly what modern wren hunters do. They echoed a faint memory that folk barely remembered, and understood less. There’s probably more than an element of truth in what happened to poor old Edward Woodward, in that 1970s classic film, The Wicker Man.
Hiding in plain sight
Once you start to look, you see the clues all around. Nursery rhymes are a good place to start. Read the words of Who killed cock robin?, and you’ll immediately detect the same themes that we’ve just examined. There’s even the question and response structure we saw earlier.
Besides lots of wren-hunting in the celtic nations, there are ceremonies in England, where folk dress up in topsy-turvey fancy dress and parade the streets, hunting for a victim. In Middleton in Suffolk, they hold a Cutty Wren ceremony on Boxing Day, with all the components you’d expect to see in a wren-hunting ritual.
Annually in May, in Combe Martin in North Devon, people dress up in outlandish costumes to hunt the Earl of Rone. On the surface, it’s to commemorate the capture of the fugitive Earl of Tyrone who escaped from Ireland in the 1600s, but anthropologists believe its roots are far more ancient and emulate – you’ve guessed it – neolithic hunting and sacrifice.
In Derbyshire and Yorkshire, Old Tup ceremonies take place between Christmas and New Year. A sheep’s head is placed on a pole and paraded round, to ensure good luck in the coming year. Do you see any parallels to wren hunting there? I’m now wondering if burning poor old Guy Fawkes on the 5th of November might also have underlying neolithic echoes.
I started to write this post with my usual aim, to share just how intriguing it is to look a little deeper below the surface and see the skull beneath the skin, (a nice line by T.S. Eliot). What’s a bit different about this post is how to look: no bones, no digging, no dusty documents – just looking at people and what they do.
