rds the master and mistress
go to the servants' quarters to divide the wafer there.{44}

|292|

RELICS OF SACRIFICE.

We have noted a connection, partial at least, between Christmas good
cheer and sacrifice; let us now glance at a few customs of a different
character but seemingly of sacrificial origin.

Traces of sacrifices of cats and dogs are to be found in Germany and
Bohemia. In Lauenburg and Mecklenburg on Christmas morning, before the
cattle are watered, a dog is thrown into their drinking water, in order
that they may not suffer from the mange. In the Uckermark a cat may be
substituted for the dog. In Bohemia a black cat is caught, boiled, and
buried by night under a tree, to keep evil spirits from injuring the
fields.{45}

A strange Christmas custom is the "hunting of the wren," once widespread
in England and France and still practised in Ireland. In the Isle of Man
very early on Christmas morning, when the church bells had rung out
midnight, servants went out to hunt the wren. They killed the bird,
fastened it to the top of a long pole, and carried it in procession to
every house, chanting these words:--

"We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can,
We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin,
We hunted the wren for every one."

At each house they sought to collect money. At last, when all had been
visited, they laid the wren on a bier, carried it to the churchyard, and
buried it with the utmost solemnity, singing Manx dirges. Another
account, from the mid-nineteenth century, describes how on St. Stephen's
Day Manx boys went from door to door with a wren suspended by the legs in
the centre of two hoops crossing one another at right angles and
decorated with evergreens and ribbons. In exchange for a small coin they
would give a feather of the wren, which was carefully kept as a
preservative against shipwreck during the year.[110]{46} |293| There
are also traces of a Manx custom of boiling and eating the bird.{48}

The wren is popularly called "the king of birds," and it is supposed to
be highly unlucky to kill one at ordinary times. Probably it was once
regarded as sacred, and the Christmas "hunting" is the survival of an
annual custom of slaying the divine animal, such as is found among
primitive peoples.{49} The carrying of its body from door to door is
apparently intended to convey to each house a portion of its virtues,
while the actual eating