School: Streamstown (roll number 15291)
- Location:
- Streamstown, Co. Westmeath
- Teacher: S. Garland
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0734, Page 156
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- XML “Local Festival Customs”
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- We have a number of feasts each year and each year is celebrated in a different manner. The greatest feast of all is St Stephen's Day. On that day the boys and young men of the district dress up in all kinds of grotesque clothes and put masks on their faces. They then go around from place to place and from house to house to collecting money. They bring with them all kinds of musical instruments ranging from a trump to a melodeon. They dance outside the door for a while and sometimes they even take possession of the kitchen floor. They have a rhyme relating to the wren which runs:
The wren, the wren the king of all birds
St. Stephen's day he was caught in the furze
Up with the kettle and down with the pan
Give us a penny and let us be gone.The younger folk dress up and get a branch off a bush and put a lot of feathers on it and pretend it is a wren They usually get a penny or two pence from the woman of the house. When(continues on next page)
- Collector
- Mona Montgomery
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Streamstown, Co. Westmeath
- Informant
- Patrick Scott
- Gender
- Male
- Age
- 78
- Address
- Streamstown, Co. Westmeath
