At Entraigues, in Vaucluse, men and boys hunted the wren on Christmas Eve, and when they caught a bird alive they gave it to the priest, who set it free in church. At Mirabeau the hunted bird was blessed by the priest, and the curious detail is preserved that if the first bird was secured by a woman, this gave the sex the right to jeer at and insult the men, and to blacken their faces with mud and soot if they caught them. At Carcassonne, on the first Sunday of December, the young people who dwelt in the street of Saint-Jean went out of the town armed with sticks and stones to engage in the hunt. The first person who struck the bird was hailed king, and carried the bird home in procession. On the last of December he was solemnly introduced to his office as king; on Twelfth Day he attended mass in church, and then, crowned and girt about with a cloak, he visited the various dignitaries of the place, including the bishop and the mayor, in a procession of mock solemnity. This was done as late as 1819.[67] This identification of the bird and the men explains the hiring of a cart or waggon to convey "the bird" in our own custom-rhymes. [67] Rolland, loc. cit., II, 295 ff.; Frazer, loc. cit., II, 445 ff. The Breton chant on "plucking the wren," _Plumer le roitelet_ begins:-- Nin' ziblus bec al laouenanic Rac henès a zo bihanic | _bis._ (L., I, p. 72.) "We will pluck the beak of the wren, for he is very small," and continues, "We will pluck the left eye of the wren, for he is very small". and then enumerates right eye, left ear, right ear, head, neck, chest, back, belly, left wing, right wing, left buttock, right buttock, left thigh, right thigh, left leg, right leg, left foot, right foot, first claw of left foot and every claw in succession of this and of the other foot. The last sentence is "We will pluck the tail of the wren," and then sentence after sentence is repeated to the first, "We will pluck the beak of the wren because he is very small, we have plucked him altogether." Another poem preserved in Breton relates how the wren was caught and caged and fed till the butcher and his comrades came and slew it, when the revelry began (L., I, p. 7). I have often wondered at the cruel sport of confining singing birds in cages. Possibly this goes back to a custom of fattening a victim that was sacrificially slain. For the wren is tabu in Brittany as among ourselves, and in popular belief the nestlings of each brood assemble with the parent birds in the nest on Twelfth Night, and must on no account be disturbed. This reflects the belief that the creature that is slain during the winter solstice, at its close starts on a new lease of life. The wren is not the only bird that was sacrificially eaten in France, judging from the chants that are recorded. A chant on "plucking the lark," _Plumer l'alouette_, is current in the north of France which begins:--