Subject: RE: need info about 'Wrenning'
From:
Jim Dixon
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 05:05 PM
This story puts the practice of wrenning in a fictional, but interesting, context:
From a story "The Half Sir" in Tales of the Munster Festivals, Volume 1, by Gerald Griffin (London: Saunders and Otley, 1827), page 217ff:
In a few minutes they [the wren-boys] had marshalled themselves before the house (a ruined building, the greater number of the windows of which were broken, stuffed with newspapers, pieces of blackened board, and old clothes), and set up a new stave of their traditional anthem."Last Christmass-day I turn'd the spit,
I burn'd my finger—(I feel it yet)—
A cock-sparrow flew over the table,
The dish began to fight with the ladle—
The spit got up like a naked man,
And swore he'd fight with the dripping-pan;
The pan got up and cock'd his tail,
And swore he'd send them all to jail!" The merry-makers, however, did not receive so ready a welcome at Castle-Hamond as they had done at most other houses. The chorus died away in perfect silence, and the expectant eyes of the singers glanced from casement to casement for several minutes, but no one appeared. Again they raised their voices, and were commencing—"The Wran!—the——" —when a bundle of newspapers was withdrawn from a broken pane, and in their place a head and arm made their appearance. It was a hatchet-face, with a pair of peeping pig's-eyes set close (like a fish's) on either side—the mouth half open, an expression of mingled wonder and curiosity depicted on the features—and a brown strait-haired wig, which time had reduced to a baldness almost as great as that of the head which it covered, shooting down on each side, like a bunch of rushes, toward the shoulders.
"Good morrow, Mr. Remmy," said the young man who had advocated the title of the proprietor of Castle Hamond to the homage of the Wren—"we're come to pay our compliments to the master."
"Whisht! whisht! dear boys!" exclaimed the head, while the arm and hand were -waved toward them in a cautionary manner.
"Poh, what whisht? Let him give us something like a gentleman, and we'll whisht as much as he pleases."
"Are ye tired o' ye'r lives? He's like a madman all night. There's nothen for ye."
"D'ye hear what he says, as if it was to a beggarman he'd be talken? Go along in—take your head out o' that, Remmy, if you love it. Nothen for us!—Take your head out o' that, again! if you haven't a mind to lave it after you—and no great prize 'twould be to the man that would get it in lose after you, either."
"It may be a very bad one," said Remmy O'Lone, "and an ill-looking one enough may be, but I'd look a dale droller widout it for all that."
"Well, an' are we to get nothen for the Wran? Is that the way of it? Come, boys, one groan for the old miser—"
"Whisht! agin! O boys, for shame! Well, aisy a while and I'll see what's to be done. But don't make a noise for your lives, for he didn't lave his room yet."
Remmy withdrew his head from the window, replaced the newspapers, and walked in a meditative way along a dark flagged hall leading to many of the principal sleeping chambers of the old mansion. He paused near one of the doors, and after many gestures of agitation and distress, he tapped softly with the knuckle of his forefinger upon the centre pannel, bending his ear toward the key-hole to ascertain as much as possible of the effect which his intrusion produced.
"Who's there?" was asked in a tone of some vexation.
"Are you awake, sir?" said Remmy, in a soft and conciliating accent, such as a man might use in making acquaintance with a fierce mastiff.
"If I were asleep, do you think I'd ask the question, Remmy?"
"Wisha then, no, surely, sir," said the man, "I dun know what come over me to ask my question."
"Well, what's the matter now?"
"Come to see you they are, sir."
"Who, man?" was asked in some little alarm.
"The Wren-boys, sir."
"The Wren-boys!"
"Yes, sir, in regard o' Saint Stephen."
"The Wren-boys come to see me in regard of Saint Stephen!" was repeated in a slow and bewildered tone.
At the same time the party without, a little impatient at Remmy's delay, recommenced their noisy harmony—"The Wran—the Wran, the king of all birds
Saint Stephen's day was caught in the furze—
Although he's little——" The strange disturbance seemed to aggravate the wrath of the secluded tenant of the chamber——"What's all this din, you ruffian?" he said to Remmy in a furious tone.
"Themselves that's singen it, sir,"
"What? who are they, sir?"
"The Wran-boys."
"The Wren-boys again! Who are the Wrenboys? what the plague do they come clattering their old pans and kettles here for? What do they want, Remmy?"
"Money I believe, sir, and liquor."
"Money and liquor! From whom, pray?"
"E'then from your honour—sure 'tisn't from the likes o' me they'd be expecten it?"
"Why, are they creditors of ours, Remmy?"
"O not they, sir, one of 'em—sure yourself knows we owe no money. But they want a little by way of a compliment in regard o' Saint Stephen."
"Saint Stephen! Why, what the mischief, I ask you again, have I to do with Saint Stephen?"
"Nothen, sure, sir, only this being his day, whin all the boys o' the place go about that way, with the wran, the king of all birds, sir, as they say, (bekays wanst when all the birds wanted to choose a king, and they said they'd have the bird that would fly highest, the aigle flew higher than any of 'em, till at last whin he couldn't fly an inch higher, a little rogue of a wran that was a-hide under his wing, took a fly above him a piece and was crowned king of the aigle an' all, sir), tied in the middle o' the holly that way, you see, sir, by the leg, that is. An old custom, sir. They hunted it this mornen, and stoned it with black-thorn sticks in regard o' Saint Stephen. That's because he was stoned be the Turks himself, sir, there's a great while there sence. With streamers and ribbins flyen about it. Be the leg they tie it in the middle o' the bush within. An' they sing that song that way for the gentlemen to give them a trate, as it were, 'Get up, ould 'oman, an' give uz a trate,' —or, 'get up—fair ladies—' —or— 'we hope your honour,' as the case may be, all in regard o' Saint Stephen. And they dressed out in ribbins, with music, an' things. Stoned be the Turks, he was, Saint Stephen, long ago. Bad manners to 'em (an' sure where's the good o' wishen 'em what they have before?) wherever they are, for so doen. 'Iss indeed, sir."
"So I am to understand from you that a number of young men come to demand money from me, because they got up this morning and hunted a little wren, tied it in the middle of a holly-bush, and stuck a parcel of ribands on the boughs. Is that the utmost extent of their claim on me?"
"O then, Lord help uz!" said Remmy, greatly perplexed—"if one was to go to the rights o' the matter, that way, sarrow a call more have they to you, I b'lieve, sir."
"Well, then, let those gentlemen take their departure as soon as they please. They shall seek their reward elsewhere, for it is an exploit which I am incapable of appreciating."
"O sir, sure you wouldn't send them away without any thing, to disgrace us?"
"Go along, sir, and do as you are directed."
"Well, well, to be sure, see what this is," Remmy O'Lone muttered in great distress, as he paced reluctantly along the hall, revolving in his mind the manner in which he should most palatably announce this disagreeable intelligence to the crowd without. They were preparing to renew the chorus when he opened the massive hall-door, and proceeded to address them. As his master had not permitted him to gratify his auditors in the substantial way, Remmy thought the least he might do, was to take what liberties he pleased with the form and language of the refusal.
"Boys," said he, "Mr. Hamond is in bed, sick, an' he desired me to tell ye that he was very, very sorry intirely that he had nothen to give ye. He desired his compliments, an' he's very sorry intirely."
"I knew he was a main wretch!" exclaimed the wren-boy—"He a Cromwaylian*—he Bag-an'-Bun!** Bag an' baggage! O, 'pon my word, he's a great neger."
"Houl your tongue, I tell you, Terry Lenigan," said Remmy. "Don't anger me, I'd advise you."
"Remmy, would you answer one question," said Terry, "an' we'll be off. Who is it milks Mr. Hamond's cows?"
To understand the point of this query, it is necessary the reader should be informed that, in consequence of Mr. Hamond's allowing no dairy woman a place in his establishment, which was solely composed of Remmy and his old mother, a false and invidious report had been circulated that the office alluded to in the last speech (which in Ireland is looked upon as exclusively womanish and unworthy of the dignity of man), was fulfilled by no less a personage than the redoubtable Remmy O'Lone himself. This disgraceful charge, though frequently and indignantly rebutted, was the more maliciously persevered in, as it was found to answer its chief object not the less effectively—that of irritating the temper of its subject, and furnishing the spectators with what Hobbes would call a spectacle exceedingly gratifying to their vanity—a man in a state of comically passionate excitation. It lost nothing of its usual force by its total unexpectedness at the present moment.
Remmy plunged forward toward the speaker, then remained fixed for a few moments in an attitude minative of offence—the consummation of his desires being checked by a rapid and almost involuntary reflection on the little glory he would be likely to reap from an engagement in which the odds would be so awfully against him. Then suddenly recollecting himself, he stood erect, putting his little finger knuckle between his lips, and blew a whistle so shrill and so loud, that the echoes of the broken hills which surrounded the castle,—and in the fine phrase of the Spanish poet, stood aloft in their giant stature, ruffling their foreheads against the morning sun,*** returned the unwonted sounds in an hundred varied tones. This was not the response, however, which Remmy ambitioned, so much as the yelling of a leash of beagles, who presently made their appearance, though not in time to do any considerable damage amongst the aggressors, who retreated in double quick time, making such a din as no power of language that the writer possesses could possibly convey to the reader.
* A descendant of those who came over with Cromwell.
** The descendants of those who landed at Bag-and-Bun with Richard Fitzstephens, the first British invader of Ireland.—Thus the adage—"At the creek of Bagganbun,
Ireland was ylost and wonne." ***——Este Monte eminente
Que arruga al Sol en seno de su frente.
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