School: Farmers' Bridge, Tráighlí
- Location:
- Farmers Bridge, Co. Kerry
- Teacher: Eileen Blennerhassett
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0442, Page 015
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- St. Stephen's Day is a great festival in this district it falls on the 26th of December. On St. Stephens day boys and grown up people go around from house to house gathering money for to bury the wren and they take holly in their hands with a wren up on it and some coloured paper.
Most of them take melodeons and mouthorgans and other instruments and others sing songs such as the "wren song". The wren song is, -
"The wren the wren, the king of all birds,
On St. Stephen's day he was caught in the furze.
We chased him up and we chased him down,
We hit him a stroke and knocked him down.
Up with the kettle and down with the pan.
Give us a penny to bury the wren.
If there is three or four people going around together, they divide the money out, and then they buy whatever they like after that. Some men and boys take bicycles if they were going to travel a long journey, and they put false faces on them for that day, and old clothes, and Some of them blacken all their faces so that the people would not know who they were.
St. Stephen's Day falls on a different day every year it fell on a Sunday this year. There are supposed to be two days for the wren.
