School: Dunshaughlin
- Location:
- Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath
- Teacher: Eibhlis Cogan
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0687, Page 278
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: Dunshaughlin
- XML Page 278
- XML “Festivals”
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
- Festivals(1) St Stephen's Day.
On St Stephen's day groups of boys gather together and go in procession from house to house all dressed up in fancy dress singing and dancing. They sing:
The wren, the wren, the King of all birds,
On St. Stephen's day he was caught in the furze.
Although he was little, his family is great.
Rise up good people and give us a treat (pronounced trate)
Up with the kettle and down with the pan
Give us some money to bury the wren (pronounced wran)
Put your hand in your pocket and take out your purse.
If you don't give us money you will have the wren's curse.Everybody gives them some money. At the end of the day, they either divide it or save it for a dance. They carry around a dead wren in a box II
Shrove Tuesday
On Shrove Tuesday everybody makes pancakes.
It is called Shrove Tuesday because long ago(continues on next page)
- Informant
- Annie Mangan
- Relation
- Parent
- Gender
- Female
