Even Sparrows... Bird watchers
Home
 

A PRAYING WREN

Posted: 02.02.22 in Articles category

February is a month for wrens. I recall reading many years ago that a male wren would build several nests in time for Valentine’s Day when his mate would choose one to be their home and raise their young. Now I have learnt that association stems from a 14C poem by Chaucer, ‘The Parliament of Fowls’, in which 14 February was identified as a day for all kind of birds to start breeding, but I still think of wrens.

On a sunny February day the wren’s trilling melody can blast across the garden – a loud song for a very small bird. Small… and bizarrely persecuted across Britain and Ireland until quite recently. ‘Wrenning’ was a rural Christmastide custom when children would go out in fancy dress on Boxing Day to hunt a wren, kill it and nail it to a pole before parading it around the neighbourhood. The ‘wren boys’ would sing and ask for gifts of food and drink in exchange for ‘lucky’ feathers from the hapless bird. The precise origins and meaning of this strange ritual are lost in history, but one interpretation relates it to a legend that a wren betrayed the whereabouts of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, to his persecuters who stoned him. Hence the revenge killing of wrens became a Christmastide custom, taking place on the feast day of St Stephen.

By way of contrast, Mary Oliver on hearing a wren thought not about betrayal, but of the bird praying and wrote this wonderful poem. An altogether lovelier connection to make to a singing bird.

 

I HAPPENED TO BE STANDING by Mary Oliver

I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do.

Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun?

Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street?

The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year?

I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance.

A condition I can’t really call being alive.

Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter?

The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way.

Maybe the cats are sound asleep.

Maybe not.


While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning.

Then a wren in the privet began to sing. He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. And yet, why not.

I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. That’s your business.

But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer?

So I just listened, my pen in the air.

 
....home | who we are | news | events | contact us
Home Who We Are News & Events Contact Us Events
Array
(
    [type] => 8192
    [message] => Function ereg_replace() is deprecated
    [file] => /home/l4wzgrajwtrm/public_html/includes/functions/_showpage.php
    [line] => 69
)