"
When they had gone from house to house and collected all the money
they could, they laid the wren on a bier and carried it in
procession to the parish churchyard, where they made a grave and
buried it "with the utmost solemnity, singing dirges over her in the
Manks language, which they call her knell; after which Christmas
begins." The burial over, the company outside the churchyard formed
a circle and danced to music.
A writer of the eighteenth century says that in Ireland the wren "is
still hunted and killed by the peasants on Christmas Day, and on the
following (St. Stephen's Day) he is carried about, hung by the leg,
in the centre of two hoops, crossing each other at right angles, and
a procession made in every village, of men, women, and children,
singing an Irish catch, importing him to be the king of all birds."
Down to the present time the "hunting of the wren" still takes place
in parts of Leinster and Connaught. On Christmas Day or St.
Stephen's Day the boys hunt and kill the wren, fasten it in the
middle of a mass of holly and ivy on the top of a broomstick, and on
St.
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