The Cutty Wren

     Certainly in general literary analysis must rest primarily upon the words of the text under discussion, but all readers welcome footnotes at times, and, for some poems, the greater part of understanding must arise from sources outside the text. A poem may in some cases rely upon its original audience’s familiarity with data that, for later readers, can only be supplied by historians or anthropologists. This is especially true of work with mythological elements. Mythic stories also exist in multiple texts. Myth might be considered as the narrative of a culture, rather than the invention of an individual. Poems retell or refer to the myth, but the myth itself is not limited to any single telling.
     The interpreter of the old British folk song “The Cutty Wren” [1] must first recognize that the title refers to dozens of different variants and related verses, no one of which is definitive. The casual hearer of most of these versions would be likely to draw the conclusion from its repetitions and silly names that it is a nonsense poem, appealing mainly to children, while in fact the poem is associated with some of the most profound and archaic beliefs of humankind.
     The historically sociological focus of many folklore enthusiasts has fueled speculative historical readings which lack supporting evidence. The most popular single recording of “The Cutty Wren” in recent times by the British anarchist punk band Chumbawumba in 2003 included liner notes dating the song to the fourteenth century and associating it with the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381, implying that the bird to be eaten for the benefit of all was the ruling class. [2] Other historical explanations for the hostility to the wren include the bird’s betrayal by singing of either British defenders against the Vikings in the eighth century or seventeenth century soldiers, variously thought to be Irish, Manx, or British. [3]
     Rather than kings or soldiers, though, most commentary on “The Cutty Wren” has centered on use of the song in many variants in a wintertime ritual surviving into modern times, the hunting of the wren. In Ireland, England, and parts of Spain, Canada, and France around the time of Christmas, commonly the day after, young men hunt and kill a wren, fasten its body to the end of a pole and parade through town, stopping in front of homes to ask for handouts. This is precisely the pattern central to Frazer’s The Golden Bough and, in fact, Frazer includes a detailed description of such wren hunts. [4] The song seems to have originated in association with wren-hunting, and investigations of that activity by folklorists and anthropologists provide further important clues to its significance (as well as a number of red herrings).
     Frazer describes the ritual as a “form of communion in which the sacred animal is taken from house to house, all that may enjoy a share of its divine influence,” thus ensuring life and the potential for prosperity in the year to come. [5] The wren-sacrifice illustrates his general thesis, that religion arose largely from fertility cults that sought to regenerate the earth and assure human well-being through the worship and periodic sacrifice of a divine king who might be a person or an animal. For time to move forward properly, that “king” must, like the crops of the field and the generations of livestock and game, die, though, in a miracle constantly recurring, the divine energy returns again to life. Frazer’s discussion of the wren follows his description of similar customs among the “Snake tribe” of the “Punjaub” where villagers take round a snake made of dough, promising prosperity to all who “obey the snake” and give them gifts. After dealing with wren-hunting, Frazer goes on to treatment of the Hogmanay custom in Scotland in which a man wrapped in a cow-hide goes house to house to perform circumambulations about each the aim of which is to assure the community have “plenty of meat” in the coming year. Frazer’s data make it quite clear than such practices are found around the world focusing on a wide variety of animal, human, and symbolic figures.
     Though little is known about the pre-Christian beliefs of oral European cultures the significance of the wren is widespread enough to imply Indo-European roots. Aesop told how the trickster bird defeated the eagle become king, and the bird’s status is signaled by its name in many European languages, such as roitelet in French, winterkoninkje in Dutch, and Zaunkönig in German. In Celtic languages the bird is identified with the pre-Christian scholar/rulers: dryw means both wren and druid in Welsh, and close parallels exist in Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. [6] While once a year the bird is hunted and killed in ceremonial fashion, the remainder of the year its kingship among the animals, its divinity in fact, is indicated by widespread protective taboos.
     Why do people perform such rituals? Of course, one motive is the vulgar instrumental magic that considers such activities essential for the progression of time and the seasons, and, in particular, for the renewal of fertility which must occur with every generation to ensure the survival of all living things. The wren-boys hope to bring prosperity to all. The utter ineffectiveness of such attempts to seize control of fate is a poignant expression of human desire, gesturing toward wants that never can be satisfied.
     There is, after all, a more profound symbolic meaning of all the dying and reborn gods, whose drama appears in countless myths, including the Christian one. [7] The killing of the wren is also of a piece with the portrayal of tragic heroes in ancient Greek drama, the enactment of gladiatorial contests in Roman times, and countless other dramatic presentations, including the much-deplored violence of today’s films and video games.
     All these cultural artifacts serve fundamentally the same role as an ancient Near Eastern sculpture representing a lion taking down its prey. The viewer may pause and contemplate the artist’s representation of the animal’s power over his victim’s life and death. [8] Surely such a theme, whatever else it may be, is a momento mori, reminding the viewer not merely of the inevitability of death, but its dialectical relationship to life. One cannot exist without the other, and their duality is, in the end, deceptive. Death is the conclusion of every life and life lives on life: one can live only by destroying other life, by consuming living things, be they plants or animals. What the hunting of the wren enacts is the inescapable fact that death is the necessary complement of life, the precondition, one might say, of sex and nourishment.
     People have often worried about mortality. Among the symbolic techniques for coping with this anxiety is indeed the wish fulfilment of such fantasies as the magical assurance of health and safety or the promise of life after death. Yet the hunting of the wren, like the skull depicted on St. Jerome’s desk, is also a symbolic rehearsal for the moment of death everyone knows will come. Thus people reassure themselves with a comfortable lie while simultaneously preparing through visualization for the inevitable. In the same way the viewer of tragedy feels both pity for the unfortunate suffering on stage and with the satisfaction that, for the moment, the sacrificial victim is someone else and fear, since every member of the audience knows that each will inevitably confront the abyss.
     If this important mental programming may be accomplished together with the good fellowship of a party of one’s own kind, and accompanied with fun and food, the result may be not only catharsis but also a kind of exhilaration. Singing nonsense is entertaining, but it also reflects an engagement with a world that must often seem absurd, meaningless, and indifferent to the plaintive cries of human desire. The entire practice of the wren hunt – the date near the winter solstice, the songs accompanying it, the responses of the villagers – constitute a supra-individual work of art as profound and beautiful as a work of an individual genius.




1. I append first the version first published in David Herd's Scots Songs. Walter Scott used some of the material Herd had collected in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Following this are a number of other texts representing a small selection of the many “versions of “The Cutty Wren.” In the United States and Australia, variations called “Billy Barlow” proliferated. These and more are available online. What I have included is chosen nearly at random; their sources, indeed, any of their particular characteristics are insignificant for my purposes here.

2. This unsupported notion, of a song first recorded in the eighteenth century, may arise from a comment by the influential A. L. Lloyd in the 1940s. See A. L. Lloyd, The Singing Englishman, p. 7. Lloyd, a central figure in the British folk revival, while an important singer and collector (and a Communist), was no scholar. In fact, rather than suggesting the song was composed with a political import, he says “Pretty certainly this was originally a magical song, a totem song, which about this time took a strong revolutionary meaning.”  The slogan “eat the rich,” popular during anti-gentrification agitation in the Lower East Side during the 1980s, became the title of a British film and an Aerosmith tune, and more recently reached an epigone as the name of posh restaurants in Washington, D. C. and Munich.

3., “The Irish Wren Tales and Ritual. To Pay or Not to Pay the Debt of Nature,” Sylvie Muller, Béaloideas (journal of An Cumann Le Béaloideas Éireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society), 131-169 1996/1997.

4. Frazer, The Golden Bough (two volume edition), 620.  A vestige of the practice survived until late Victorian times in the form of Christmas and New Year cards featuring dead birds, a motif that people found unaccuntbe only a generation or two later.

5. For two reasons I continue to value Frazer and use him as a reference though I am, of course, aware of the strictures on his conclusions by Edmond Leach and others. First, I think that customs such as the carrying about of the wren and similar practices are the very closest to Frazer’s paradigm. Though he may have overgeneralized as Tylor did about sun myths, that does not prove him wrong in every instance. Second, I read and use Frazer as a literary critic, not as an anthropologist. The standards of aesthetic hermeneutics are not the same as those of science.

6. The proto-Celtic *druwits (literally “oak-knower”), from Proto-Indo-European *dóru (“tree”) and *weyd- (“to see”). The wren is, of course, at home in the oak.  Considering an archaic bird deity, one thinks inevitably of the many bird-headed goddesses that fill the works of Marija Gimbutas.

7. Christian objections to Frazer’s treatment of Christ’s story as a myth led him first to move its treatment to an appendix and, in the abridged edition which I used, to excise it altogether.

8. Many variations are possible. There are also many sculptures of lion hunts in which the majestic animal is bent, pierced with spears and arrow, as if to imply the king’s hegemony even over even such a fearsome beast. Yet other images include conflations of king and lion in divine part-human, part-animal beings. All are meant to offer the hapless humans some sense of power over their environment while also reinforcing the social order.



1776 version from David Herd's Scots Songs


Will ze go to the wood? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
Will ze go to the wood? quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE;
Will ze go to the wood? quo' FOSLIN' ene;
Will ze go to the wood? quo' brither and kin.
What to do there? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
What to do there? quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE;
What to do there? quo' FOSLIN' ene;
What to do there? quo' brither and kin.
To slay the WREN, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
To slay the WREN, quo' JOHNIE REDNOSIE:
To slay the WREN, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
To slay the WREN, quo' brither and kin.
What way will ze get her hame? quo' FOZIE MOSIE;
What way will ze get her hame? quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE;
What way will ze get her hame? quo' FOSLIN' ene;
What way will ze get her hame? quo' brither and kin.
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE:
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
We'll hyre carts and horse, quo' brither and kin.
What way will we get her in? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
What way will we get her in? quo' FOZIE MOZIE;
What way will we get her in? quo' FOOSLIN' ene;
What way will we get her in? quo' brither and kin.
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE:
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
We'll drive down the door-cheeks, quo' brither and kin.
I'll hae a wing, quo' FOZIE MOZIE:
I'll hae another, quo' JOHNIE REDNOZIE:
I'll hae a leg, quo' FOSLIN' ene:
An I'll hae anither, quo' brither and kin.



Chumbawunba version:


Oh where are you going? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
We're off to the wood! said John the Red Nose
We're off to the wood! said John the Red Nose
And what will you do there? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
We'll shoot the cutty wren! said John the Red Nose
We'll shoot the cutty wren! said John the Red Nose
Oh how will you cut him up? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
With knives and with forks! said John the Red Nose
With knives and with forks! said John the Red Nose
And who´ll get the spare ribs? said Milder to Moulder
Oh we may not tell you! said Festel to Fose
We'll give them all to the poor! said John the Red Nose
We'll give them all to the poor! said John the Red Nose



Les Barker’s version, described as “made popular by the late Percy 'Stupid' Sedgwick, last of the very thin Baroldswick wren hunters”


Where are you going said Millda to Molda,
Where are you going oh where do you go?
I'm off to the forest said Molda to Millda,
I'm off to the forest all in the deep south. (emended to snow)

Why are you going says Millda to Molda,
Why are you going with all of these men?
You nosy old bleeder said Molda to Millda,
You nosy old bleeder we're hunting the wren.

Two dozen hunters says Millda to Molda,
Yet you never catch one won't you tell me how?
Its a bloody small target said Molda to Millda,
Its a bloody small target you stupid old cow.

Then why do you do it says Millda to Molda,
Why do you do it says the wining old voice.
I know it sound silly said Molda to Millda,
Its an old a pagan custom and we got no choice.

Would you walk in the forest says Millda to Molda,
Would you walk in the forest like an old pagan man?
We'll go in my motor said Molda to Millda,
I've got a Toyota its a four wheel drive van.

Where have you been says Millda to Molda,
Where have you been won't you tell me?
Hunting the wren said Molda to Millda,
Hunting the wren has your memory gone?

Pray have you got one says Millda to Molda,
Pray have you got one please tell I'm all ears.
Yes we're enraptured said Molda to Millda,
Its the first one we've captured for two thousand years,

Where did you catch it says Millda to Molda,
Where did you catch it pray tell to me.
We got it at Safeway said Molda to Millda,
We got it at Safeway for 55 p.

Its not very big though says Millda to Molda,
We won't need much stuffing I don't see the sense.
Of course its not big though said Molda to Millda,
Its one of the salient features of wrens.

You should have got a chicken says Millda to Molda,
A chicken or a turkey or maybe a joint.
We should have got a chicken said Molda to Millda,
You silly old woman you're missing the point.

So why hunt the wren then says Millda to Molda,
Why hunt the wren then if its such a small thing?
Its and old pagan custom said Molda to Millda,
And hunting the sausage don't have the same ring .

Where are you going says Millda to Molda,
Where are you going says Millda again.
Off to the Arndale said Molda to Millda,
To open a shop called Kentucky fried wren.



From Sam Henry, Songs of the People, collected in Armagh, 1937


"Where are you goin'?" says Arty Art,
"Where are you goin'?" says Dandrum Dart
"Where are you goin'?" says Brothers-In-Three
"I'm goin' to the fair." says Crickety Wee.

"What will you do there?"
I'll buy a wee pony."

"But what will you do with it?"
"It's for my wife to ride on."

"When will ye get married?"
"The day before the morrow."

"Will there be any drink?"
"A glass and a half."

"It'll not be all drunk."
"I could drink it myself."

"What'll you have to eat?"
"A loaf and a half."

"It'll not get all ate."
"I'll put it under my hat."

"The mice will get at it."
"I'll keep a good cat."

Will ye have any children?"
"Two, and two cripples."

"I doubt they'll not work."
"They'll work for death."



from Gammer Gurton's Garland, and English book of rhymes (published at Stockport, approximately 1760)

We'll go a shooting, says Robin to Bobbin
We'll go a shooting, says Richard to Robin
We'll go a shooting, says John all alone
We'll go a shooting, says everyone
What shall we kill, says Robin to Bobbin
What shall we kill, says Richard to Robin
What shall we kill, says John all alone
What shall we kill, says everyone
We'll shoot at the wren, says Robin to Bobbin
We'll shoot at the wren, says Richard to Robin
We'll shoot at the wren, says John all alone
We'll shoot at the wren, says everyone
She's down, she's down, says Robin to Bobbin
She's down, she's down, says Richard to Robin
She's down, she's down, says John all alone
She's down, she's down, says everyone
How shall we get her home, says Robin to Bobbin
How shall we get her home, says Richard to Robin
How shall we get her home, says John all alone
How shall we get her home, says everyone
We'll hire a cart, says Robin to Bobbin
We'll hire a cart, says Richard to Robin
We'll hire a cart, says John all alone
We'll hire a cart, says everyone
The hoist boys hoist, says Robin to Bobbin
The hoist boys hoist, says Richard to Robin
The hoist boys hoist, says John all alone
The hoist boys hoist, says everyone
So the brought her away after each pluck'd a feather
And when they got home, shar'd the booty together