IN the window display of an antiquarian bookshop there was a
framed set of verses, with a snatch of staff notation, set under
a Jack Yeats woodcut of a snow street scene of four youths
singing with a heading, The Wren Boys and, at the bottom, Ballad
Sheet No 4. This got more than cursory glance from me and I went
into the shop and bought it immediately. I can't remember the
cost. These particular wren boys look idealised in a way.
Perhaps when Yeats sketched them their poor social image which
was evident in the 19th Century had improved and wren boys had
become more or less acceptable. This had not always been their
lot. They were once deemed as "below buttermilk", a low-life
crowd who went around town pubs with blackened faces and
clothing disguise, singing ballads accompanied by harmonica or
button-key accordion and then, most importantly, collecting
money "to bury the wran". The activities of wren boys usually
began on St Stephen's Day. The 19th Century Wexford writer
Patrick Kennedy considered them riff-r