Dennis wrote:

> One of the early words for "wren" is "dreän".  One of the
> "etymologies" of "dreän" offered in Sanas Cormaic, s.v. 
> "dris" #475, is intriguing:
> 
> "dreaan... no drui-en .i. en doni faitsine"
> 
> = wren... or druid-bird, i.e. a bird that makes prophecy
> 
> LEIA deems this to be a popular etymology, but one which was
> widely accepted.  "Dreän", whose second syllable is the mark
> of the diminutive, is clearly a cognate of Welsh "dryw", a
> word which can also mean "seer".  

Caroline aan de Wiel gave a paper at the Celtic Congress in Cork 99 where she argued convincingly that the wren 
actually IS the druid-bird, and that the two words in various Celtic languages are identical.

By coincidence we were reading a passage of the Mabinogi "Math uab Mathonwy" in a Middle Welsh class the other 
day where it was related that Aranrhod's nameless son skillfully hit a dryw = wren with a stone between the sinew of its 
leg and the bone (58, 22 ff. in Mühlhausens edition of the Mabinogion). This incident led Aranrhod to call her son Lleu 
Llaw Gyffes (= Lugus of the Skilled Hand) against her will.

David