I’m going to be honest with you — before writing HEART OF THE WREN, I hadn’t heard of Wren Day. Despite growing up in a rural part of County Dublin (at least it was in the late 70s and 80s,) Wren Day wasn’t something I’d ever encountered. It had somehow flown entirely beneath my radar. Still, when I started gathering ideas for this book, Wrenboys were suddenly everywhere. They popped up on TV, they were mentioned in books, there were photos of them on social media… And, never one to ignore synchronicity, I leaned into it and started to do some research.
What’s HEART OF THE WREN about?
HEART OF THE WREN is a gay paranormal romance novel about a lonely gay farmer named Lorcan who digs up an ancient Celtic brooch and accidentally unleashes a sinister supernatural force. Help arrives in the form of a burly male witch named Dara. Set in 1980s Ireland, the two men must figure out a way to stop the strange and unsettling phenomena before Lorcan meets his final, horrible fate on Wren Day.
What is Wren Day?
Better known as St. Stephen’s Day, Wren Day is the 26th of December, the day after Christmas. In certain parts of Ireland (mainly the west, I believe, Kerry, Limerick, Galway, but also in Dingle), it’s a time when young people (not just boys, these days) dress up in straw costumes and go door to door, singing songs, playing instruments, and “demanding” money to “bury the wren.”
“Hunting the wren” is an old midwinter tradition whose origins are lost to the mists of time. Men and boys would scour the hedgerows for a wren, the “king of all birds”, which they would kill. Whoever took the poor bird’s life would have good luck for the next year. The wren was placed inside a “wren bush” (a ball of holly, ivy, and ribbons) and tied to the top of a pole. The pole was decorated with ivy and ribbons and then carried from door to door. The Wrenboys, as they’re called, dressed in elaborate costumes made of straw (or sometimes just painted their faces), played music, sang, and demanded money to “bury the wren” (pronounced wran). This, like so many midwinter traditions, ensured prosperity for the coming year. The day’s celebrations ended with the wren being buried, sometimes in a little coffin, and sometimes even keened (keening is the vocal lament for the dead in Irish tradition).
In modern times, the wren hunt no longer takes place, but the Wren Day tradition lives on (or has been revived) with a fake wren in place of a dead one. Any money collected goes towards charitable causes or to a celebration for the town.
The Wrenboys sing a song at each house, and the lyrics vary from county to county, and sometimes from town to town. However, the first line is always the same:
The wren the wren the king of all birds
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0797, Page 44
St Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze*
Her clothes were all torn- her shoes were all worn
Up with the kettle and down with the pan
Give us a penny to bury the “wran”
If you haven’t a penny, a halfpenny will do
If you haven’t a halfpenny, God bless you!
*Furze is a bush also known as gorse and is very common in Ireland.
Now, for my story, HEART OF THE WREN, I combined several different versions of the song to come up with my own unique take on it. I also had to change the rhyming a little because the way we pronounce “wren” as “wran” made things a little complicated. Hopefully I can be forgiven for this!
The Wren Day song is similar to the one sung at Hallowe’en, though I’m uncertain how, exactly, they’re connected. Something to research at another time, perhaps.
Why is the wren called “the king of all birds?”
There’s a lovely bit of folklore about this, which I get into in the book.
The inspiration for HEART OF THE WREN
Last year, a group of gay authors decided to all release a series of standalone, own-voice, gay paranormal romance novels under the umbrella of HAUNTED HEARTS. My contribution was called Curse of the Stag’s Eye. The project was such a success that we decided to do it again this year, with even more authors involved. Last year, the theme was ghosts; this year it’s witches. And thus HAUNTED HEARTS: SEASON OF THE WITCH was born.
When I sat down to work on this year’s book, I didn’t know what the story was going to be. At all. I toyed with some ideas that had been rattling around in the back of my head for a while. I wrote them all down (I keep copious notes), but none of them really grabbed me until I started to notice a pattern. The one thing that kept popping up was the notion of setting this story in Ireland. Despite being Irish (born and raised in County Dublin), I hadn’t ever set a story here. So, with that as a starting point, I fumbled around for more details. The idea of setting it in the era of my childhood, the 1980s, appealed to me, so that became another element. Knowing the theme for this year’s Haunted Hearts was “witches”, it made sense to look into Irish mythology and folklore, something I’m interested in and have many books about.
At the time, I’d just re-read The Snow Spider, one of my favourite stories and the setting of a remote farm sounded right to me. So, a farmer on a remote farm encounters the supernatural and needs help from a witch. All of a sudden, I had the seed of a story. I worked out some ideas and came up with enough of a plot to get me started. Despite the amount of notes I take, I can’t remember exactly when the idea of tying this story to the Wren Day tradition came about. There’s something wonderfully pagan and mysterious about the appearance of the Wrenboys. After some more research, it became clear that my story needed to incorporate elements of Wren Day. Once I’d decided that, I was off to the races. I started properly writing this story in February 2024, and it was done by June 2024.
I was able to tie in other elements of Irish folklore in a way that makes sense for the story and shows the beauty of Irish mythology. I truly hope you enjoy reading about Lorcan and Dara, and though this is a standalone story, I wonder if you can spot the connections to last year’s Haunted Hearts book, Curse of the Stag’s Eye?
HEART OF THE WREN is available in ebook, paperback, and Kindle Unlimited from 3rd October 2025.
You can find the entire HAUNTED HEARTS: SEASON OF THE WITCH collection of standalone gay paranormal romance novels here:
