tomorrow (26 December) is Wren Day!

What is Wren Day?

Wren day (Lá an Dreoilín) is a celebration of the year turning – the days begin to get longer and we think of  what the new year may bring and what the old one has lost.

An ancient festival,  it’s origins  are unclear… but  it consists of “hunting” a fake wren.   Crowds of mummers or strawboys dress up in masks, straw suits and motley clothes.  With traditional céilí music  they parade through the streets. These crowds are often called wrenboys.

“Young boys have been hunting the wren for some days now it is a difficult and agile prey that easily flies through dense thickets”.

A bit  like Hallowe’en, its an excuse to call on neighbours  for a party and  engage the community. Wren day marks  a change in the year and lets  people  play and reflect.

What happens on the Wren Hunt?

Once  common  throughout Ireland,   the wren is only hunted in a handful of towns and villages on St. Stephen’s Day, the day after Christmas Day.

This year we  bring it  back to Dublin. A small Wren Day parade, led by our very own Wren,  around Wolfe Tone park, ends with the ceremonial burial of the Wren in the  National Leprechaun Museum, followed by free hot chocolate and merriment!

People dress up in old clothes ,  paint their faces, wear straw hats and march  in procession with song dance and  music.

No birds are killed ( they would have been in the past).  The wren hunt is a symbol of celebration and community.

Should I dress up?

If you want to, YES!  (It makes it a bit more fun!)

Come in your own costume (whatever you had for Hallowe’en will do!) or a least some colourful clothes   – we’ll have streamers and masks on the day too.

If you’ve got a tin whistle or any instrument… bring it!

Bring anything that’ll make some noise, pots to bang,  shakers to shake, hands to clap, whistles or horns to blow… even a vuvuzela if you have one!

The parade starts at the National Leprechaun Museum at 1pm, followed by free hot chocolate for participants and their ardent supporters!

BACKGROUND.

The Artist – Roger Cummiskey.

A little circle of kindred minds:
Joyce in Paris.

This book was written by my old school mate Conor. I read it and I can recommend it as a quick read for anybody interested in what Joyce was up to in Paris.

Amazon.

Published June 2011.

Here is another book that I have always liked.

Lamorna Birch and his circle by Andrew Wormleighton.

Inside Shakespeare & Company, Paris.

A patron of the arts as well as a visionary bookseller, George Whitman, the owner of Shakespeare & Company, the legendary English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris, died this week (December 2011) at age 98. Writers flocked to his shop to browse, mingle, and even spend the night. To honor Whitman’s legacy, we decided to take a look at Shakespeare & Company, as well as several other storied haunts of artists, writers, poets and other intellectuals, from cafés to bookstores to hotels. Click through to check out our list, and let us know which currently happening spot you think will become the next artist hangout of legend in the comments.

Though Whitman ran Shakespeare & Company for almost 60 years, he was not in fact the first owner — he took up the mantle from Sylvia Beach, the founder of the original Shakespeare & Company, which stood not far away from the current incarnation and was a favorite browsing spot for James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Whitman’s Shakespeare & Company also proved a haven for writers and poets, many of whom actually slept among the shelves on makeshift beds that Whitman lent out to them for as much as months at a time. Whitman also made friends with many established writers who would stop in frequently for readings or just to visit — people like Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Samuel Beckett and William S. Burroughs — though we can’t say if any of these were part of the 40,000-odd people he lodged there over the years.

From an article written in Flavorwire.

Imaging Ulysses catalogue - Richard Hamilton

Autograph Richard Hamilton 2002, IMMA, Dublin.

I had the pleasure of meeting Richard Hamilton in Dublin at the opening of his exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and asked him to sign the catalogue which he did for me. He was 80 at the time. I am reading this again during Christmas 2011. Fascinating artwork studies related to Ulysses. A must for Joyce and painter fans!

Richard Hamilton died in September 2011 aged 89 was a British painter and collage artist.

He was popularly known as one of the fathers of Pop Art back in the 1960´s when he numbered among his friends Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and other luminaries in London at the time.

One of those areas for which he was not too well known was his lifelong interest in James Joyce´s Ulysses that he first read while in the trenches during the second World War.

From Wilkipedia see below.

Since the late 1940s Richard Hamilton has been engaged with a project to produce a suite of illustrations for James Joyce’s Ulysses. In 2002, the British Museum staged an exhibition of Hamilton’s illustrations of James Joyce‘s Ulysses, entitled Imaging Ulysses. A book of Hamilton’s illustrations was published simultaneously, with text by Stephen Coppel. In the book, Hamilton explained that the idea of illustrating this complex, experimental novel occurred to him when he was doing his National Service in 1947. His first preliminary sketches were made while at the Slade School of Art, and he continued to refine and re-work the images over the next 50 years. Hamilton felt his re-working of the illustrations in many different media had produced a visual effect analogous to Joyce’s verbal techniques. The Ulysses illustrations were subsequently exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (in Dublin) and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (in Rotterdam). The British Museum exhibition coincided with both the 80th anniversary of the publication of Joyce’s novel, and Richard Hamilton’s 80th birthday. Hamilton died on 13 September 2011. Just the week prior to his death the artist, 89, was working to prepare a major museum retrospective of his oeuvre that had already been scheduled to travel to four cities in Europe and the U.S. in 2013-14.

Richard Hamilton

Watch worn by ‘Ulysses’ character clocks up €60,000 at auction

Ulysses Watch.

MICHAEL PARSONS – Irish Times.

A GOLD pocket watch worn by a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses sold at an Adam’s auction in Dublin last night for €60,000 – five times its highest estimate of €12,000.

The bidding opened at €5,000 but rose quickly. There was applause in the St Stephen’s Green saleroom when the hammer came down. The buyer was a private collector in Co Kildare who told The Irish Times afterwards he had bought it for his son who was “born on Bloomsday” (June 16th). The man said his son “won’t be getting it as a gift but he will inherit it – which I hope won’t be for a long time”.

James O’Halloran, managing director of Adam’s, said the watch was one of those very unique items that are “very difficult to value”. He was “surprised and delighted by the price achieved and very pleased for the vendor”.

Adam’s auctioneers said the watch had been consigned for sale by a descendant of John O’Connell, a Dubliner who featured in the novel and was described wearing the watch. He was the caretaker of Glasnevin Cemetery and appears in chapter six under his own name.

Joyce described him as “a portly man” and “a real good sort” and wrote: “The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watch chain and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles” during the funeral of Paddy Dignam.

In “real life” John O’Connell lived with his wife Mary Ann and their 17 children at the entrance to Glasnevin Cemetery. He died in 1925 and his watch became a family heirloom. Made of 18ct gold, it hangs on a 12-inch chain decorated with an amber stone to the T-bar and was known as “the Ulysses watch” by the family.

Mr. Bloom - Roger Cummiskey

It had a pre-sale estimate of €8,000-€12,000. Large crowds attended the auction. During the evening a Jack B Yeats painting sold for €480,000. Jazz Babies, painted in 1929, had an estimate of €500,000-€800,000. It was last sold at auction by Sotheby’s 30 years ago for £14,000.