The Wren, the Wren

by Anne Enright

The wran, the wran the king of all birds, St Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze It was a song Phil liked, for the fact that it was a little vicious. He used to sing it every year on St Stephen’s Day, which was the slow day after Christmas. And Carmel was back further again, she was downstairs in their house in Dun Laoghaire watching her father stage his annual, kitchenshaking riot. Phil left the house by the front door and came in at the back, with coal dust on his face and their mother’s macramé shopping bag on his head; the wicker handles hooked over his ears. He banged pots, threw sheets of newspaper, climbed up on a chair and swung the sweeping brush around the ceiling light, which clanged and swung. Up with the kettle and down with the pan And give us a pinny to bury the wran. At the age of five or six, Carmel had cheered and shrieked as she was supposed to do. She did not know they had killed the little wren, in the song – or the dreoilín, as her father called the bird in Irish. Droolin, Droolin, where’s your nest? Tis in the bush that I love best.