Wren boys make merry

Good humour, colourful costumes and songs more than made up for any fall in numbers at the annual Wren Boys celebration at Sandymount Green, Dublin, yesterday. Shortly before midday there were but a few bystanders present to witness the doors of Ryans' Sandymount House burst open and a variety of characters resplendent in red curly noses, multi-coloured vests and trousers emerge.

As the Wren Boys made their way around the green playing banjos, a guitar and a bodhrán, the crowds began to gather, clapping and singing along. By the time the spectacle arrived at a stage on the corner of Claremont Road, there were up to a dozen wren boys and any number of hawkers, gawkers and collectors for good causes in their wake.

As MC Mick O'Brien warmed up the onlookers with a few verses of Monto, ever more colourful types arrived, including at least one pirate, a cavalry officer and a bodhrán-playing woman whose black shawl was bedecked with red roses.

To the sound of a hunting horn, the Dublin Hash House Harriers arrived fresh from their weekly run, not part of the wren boy celebrations but not out of place either. "We are drinkers with a running problem" explained one.

The origin of the tradition of wren boys hunting and killing the wren (pronounced wran) is uncertain. Tradition holds that that the bird - whose twitching in a holly bush is blamed for revealing the hiding place of St Stephen who was subsequently martyred - should be hunted and killed, tied to a holly bush and paraded through the streets amid much merry-making.