Analysis: Frenchwoman Marie-Louise Sjoestedt spent Christmas 1929 in west Kerry and observed many of the local customs associated with the season
Celebrations on St. Stephen's Day in Ireland date back centuries. The day is named for one of the earliest Christian martyrs who was stoned to death in Jerusalem in around 36 AD. Also known as Wren Day or Wren’s Day (Lá an Dreoilín), the celebrations that take place on the day after Christmas Day have their origin in pre-Christian pagan times.
In the past, groups of boys known as 'wren boys’, would hunt for the wren and when they found the bird, would place it on a bush, decorated pole or in a box. They would then dress up in disguise, play music and parade though the locality, going from door to door asking for donations to ‘bury the wren’ as they went. Their refrain went as follows ‘The wren, the wren, the king of all birds, Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze, So up with the kettle and down with the pan, and give us a penny to bury the wren’.
Several visitors to Ireland who witnessed the annual celebrations have written about them down through the years. One was the French Celtic scholar and linguist, Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, was in Ireland during Christmas 1929. She lived among the people of Kerry, where she was improving her spoken Irish language skills. She was also researching the local dialect for a study she was carrying out on linguistics.
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From RTÉ News, how St Stephen's Day was celebrated in Dingle in 2023
Sjoestedt recorded her Christmas observations in a French magazine article published in Paris in May 1930. It was the biggest celebration of the year for the people that she lived among on the Dingle Peninsula, the one time when the ordinary person spared no expense, according to Sjoestedt. This extended to using their savings and cashing in money orders from loved ones in America. Locals told her that they would have no Christmas but for the money from America.
They would buy fresh meat, apples, and raisins to put in the bread. Spirits would be bought to be drunk on Christmas Eve. The wealthier citizens would buy flower-patterned plates for the dresser in their home. They would decorate their kitchens with paper garlands and the woman of the house would purchase a new shawl to be worn to mass. One common action that united all inhabitants of the locality, both the poor and the well-off, was that they would light a candle and place it in a window on Christmas Eve. It would remain lighted for all of Christmas Eve.
Christmas in Ireland is ‘more than one celebration’, observed Sjoestedt and was instead ‘a series of festivities’. She told her readers that Christmas Eve was usually spent fasting to mark the vigil but also quaffing whiskey in celebration. On Christmas Day, the priest would come from the neighbouring parish to say the mass. In the evening, the locals would enjoy a sumptuous dinner.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Countrywide, folklorist Shane Lehane on Irish Christmas traditions
Other celebrations in the series of festivities include St. Stephen’s Day, New Year’s Eve (when the candles could be lit again), the Feast of Epiphany on January 6th or 'Little Christmas', as Sjoestedt remarks that it is called in Ireland. As the provisions in the cupboards of each house become scarcer as the series of festivities unfolded, Little Christmas would be celebrated with some bread and raisins along with a humble pot of tea.
Sjoestedt was sitting beside a turf fire with her hosts on St. Stephen’s Day when she heard a commotion outside the whitewashed thatched cottage where she was staying. The music of an accordion and a tin whistle were soon all around her as the kitchen was invaded by a burlesque troop of local lads. They were unrecognisable due to their new-found appearance. Their faces were covered in soot, their jackets were turned inside out and they wore the rags of women’s clothes, paper hats and multi-coloured ribbons.
The locals surrounded a figure that was made to represent a wren, together with its tail and wings. One of the boys danced a gig with great aplomb, his torso straight, his arms by his side, his eyes fixed on the horizon and his heels clicking on the stone floor, recounted the French visitor. After receiving a few pence from the home’s inhabitants, the troop left and repeated the action on the neighbouring farm.
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From RTÉ, The Wran, The Wran, The King of All Birds looks at the wren traditions of North Munster with documentary maker Pat Feeley in Mountcollins. Co Limerick on St Stephen's Day 1975
While the Wren’s Day was a great day for the boys, Sjoestedt explains that St. Bridgid's Day was a time for the girls to enjoy. On that day, girls would go around from house to house in groups. Dressed in dark-coloured shawls, they would carry a doll covered in white that was referred to as a ‘Bridgid’. Every householder would give them a penny as they went on their way.
Sjoestedt was not the only French visitor to write about Irish traditions and customs. In his book about his travels around Ireland in 1864, missionary priest Emmanuel Domenech wrote about the traditions associated with ‘Le jour de Saint-Etienne’ (St. Stephen’s Day). He explained that a wren would be attached to a holly bush and brought from house to house by a group of children. Songs would be sung and donations given. In the evening the wren would be stoned, echoing what happened to St. Stephen, after whom the day is named.
The wren was chosen, according to Domenech, as it was a wren that alerted Vikings to an attack by Irishmen. As the Irish were about to attack a Viking camp, a wren fell on the drum of a Viking and the sound woke a sleeping sentry who alerted the rest of his group to the imminent attack. Thereafter, the wren was declared a traitor to the country and that is the reason for the massacre of the bird at that time every year.
Today, St. Stephen’s Day is celebrated but on a much smaller scale than in the past. In the Cork town of Carrigaline, funds are raised for local charities as people dress up as ‘straw boys’ and dance to traditional music on the town’s Main Street. One of the country's most popular celebrations takes place in Dingle Co. Kerry, where different groups of wren boys, each wearing different colours to distinguish them from one another, make their way through the town and are watched by spectators from near and far.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
