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The wren hunt5/8/2023 ![]() ![]() The good people of Kilshamble liked nothing more than blood and gore. They said bad things lurked in the forest, hidden behind the dank, fallen boughs. In Watson’s novel, which is set in modern-day Ireland and gloriously infused with the folklore and fables of the land, it is her protagonist Wren who is hunted by the boys in the woods around their village, Kilshamble: “In the village, they said that the woods weren’t friendly after sundown. ![]() Today, live birds or model wrens still form part of the observance. Other tales record an occasion when the presence of Irish soldiers was revealed to the Vikings by a wren on Saint Stephen’s Day, and until about a century ago, boys traditionally hunted wrens on that day, displaying the dead birds and collecting money for celebrations of the occasion. It takes place on 26 December and commemorates the Christian martyr who according to some legends was betrayed to his enemies by a wren. The novel opens on Saint Stephen’s Day, or the Day of the Wren, as the public holiday is also known in Ireland. “Not for the first time, I cursed my name… It was the only thing my mother had given me before she ran off with a man from God knows where when I was a few days old”, the narrator of Mary Watson’s The Wren Hunt tells us in the first pages of this beautifully crafted novel. ![]()
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