School: Baile na Cille (roll number 7454)
- Location:
- Ballynakilla, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Donncha Ó Loingaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0277, Page 023
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- XML School: Baile na Cille
- XML Page 023
- XML “How We Spend Christmas”
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- Christmas Day is always celebrated on the 25th of December. On the night of Christmas eve everybody lights a Christmas candle in the window of the kitchen and other common candles on the other windows. Everybody hangs strings of holly up on the wall and decoration papers on the loft.
Everybody of the family has to be at home before supper time and then the whole family eat supper together. All the children hang their stockings up, near the fire and then everybody goes to bed.
On St Stephen's Day all the boys from about eight years to eighteen go around the parish with a holly bush singing the wren. They have masks and all sorts of coloured papers on them. Every crowd tries to get the wren a couple of days before and hang him on the bush. This is the song they sing:-I
The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's Day he was caught in the furze
Although he is little,
His family is great,
So rise up our landlady,
And give our boys a treat.(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Finbarr Murphy
- Gender
- Male
- Address
- Derrycreeveen, Co. Cork
