Five years ago, I wrote a post about the odd Celtic custom of Hunting the Wren on December 26th, St Stephen's Day. Of course, the wren (Troglodytes troglodytes) is the king of all birds because it was able to fly higher than the eagle by hiding on its back. The wren is hunted and paraded around by the mighty hunters, who ask for 'payment' until the wren is buried and the hunters' rewards are combined and cooked into a pudding.
I decided to post about this topic again because I heard a great version of John McCutcheon's ballad Christmas in the Trenches on a local college radio by my great and good friend Mary Courtney, the Star of the County Bronx. While looking for a video of a performance of the song, I found a nice video of Irish Christmas music and stories which starts off with Mary singing the Wren Song:
Christmas in the Trenches, references the improbable, impromptu Christmas Truce, a miraculous cessation of fighting on the part of soldiers on the front lines during World War One. Tragically, the truce didn't last long, because a new rotation of troops, ones who hadn't celebrated with their foes, came to the front lines. Mary is a humanitarian as well as a balladeer and folk historian... this is exactly the sort of song which she handles so beautifully.
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3 comments:
Wow! This is something I'd never heard of, myself -- I guess that much Ireland didn't make it down into the Allegheny Valley, from whence arises all my Northern European DNA -- although, embarrassingly, I think I remember the custom being mentioned in The Dark Is Rising. Probably I could do with a little actual mythological history in addition to the fantasy novels.
Mary Courtney's singing is amazing! Listened to the whole thing & then started it over again.
Hope you & yours had a nice holiday.
I'd bet that there have been hundreds, even thousands of small events like that in the midst of war. The troops don't necessarily hate each other (in fact, the more alike they believe they are, the less they hate - as white christians, germans were seen as fellow soldiers poorly served by their leadership while japanese were seen as less than human) and they are all hungry and scared a long way from home. It is easy to imagine small units in close proximity deciding to use some kind of holiday for a brief cessation of hostilities, share some food and a smoke, maybe play a game of soccer or something, then back to the killing the next day. It is as perfectly human a response as one can imagine....
Wow! This is something I'd never heard of, myself -- I guess that much Ireland didn't make it down into the Allegheny Valley, from whence arises all my Northern European DNA -- although, embarrassingly, I think I remember the custom being mentioned in The Dark Is Rising. Probably I could do with a little actual mythological history in addition to the fantasy novels.
I think much of it was killed off by trying to assimilate, also a lot of Ireland in the area seems to be by way of Ulster and Scotland, and a rejection of Irish Ways and Irish Laws in favor of the dominant English power structure.
I'd bet that there have been hundreds, even thousands of small events like that in the midst of war. The troops don't necessarily hate each other (in fact, the more alike they believe they are, the less they hate - as white christians, germans were seen as fellow soldiers poorly served by their leadership while japanese were seen as less than human) and they are all hungry and scared a long way from home.
It is amazing, but the guys in the trenches have more in common with each other than with the policymakers who throw them into the meat-grinder. The real puzzler about WW1 is the fact that Europe's crowned heads of state all were related to each other to some degree... it was the worst extended family squabble in history.
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