The wren and robin redbreast, which appear on so many Christmas cards, also reflect folk-memories. Since pre-Christian times, people have been superstitious about the wren, the tiny bird with a big voice. It was a sacred bird which flew higher than any other bird by sitting on the back of an eagle before taking off on its own, and which could be hunted only on one day, in midwinter. The ceremony of hunting the wren on 26 December lasted at least into the nineteenth century. In Wales, the dead wren was ceremonially carried in a decorated wren house.

Because of its tameness, the robin was regarded as a friend of man and it supposedly took part in church services and funerals. Stories about the robin and the wren appear to have come to Britain from the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age. They are linked together in the oldest of nursery rhymes, “The Marriage of Cock Robin and Jenny Wren”, and its better-known sequel, “Who Killed Cock Robin?” Both are adaptations of ancient traditions it is now impossible to reconstruct.