Leprechawns and Leprechauns
Mar 15th, 2019 by bachmann
Folklorist D.R. McAnally Jr. researched and compiled an entire volume of Irish legends and tales, Irish Wonders, in 1888. While little is known about McAnally, his publication was especially significant for the literary giant, William Butler Yeats, who consulted this work as he incorporated Irish folktales into his own writings. McAnally’s compilation became the defacto source of Irish tales for subsequent publications and literary collections. His description and story of the leprechawn, or leprechaun, is notable. He depicts the creature as neither good nor bad, but very mischievous.
He writes:
Midway, however, between the good and evil beings of mythologies there is often one whose qualities are mixed ; not wholly good nor entirely evil, but balanced between the two, sometimes doing a generous action, then descending to a petty meanness, but never rising to nobility of character nor sinking to the depths of depravity ; good from whim, and mischievous from caprice. Such a being is the Leprechawn of Ireland…
He is of diminutive size, about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over a little, old, withered face. Round his neck is an Elizabethan ruff, and frills of lace are at his wrists. On the wild west coast, where the Atlantic winds bring almost constant rains, he dispenses with ruff and frills and wears a frieze overcoat over his pretty red suit, so that, unless on the lookout for the cocked hat, “ye might pass a Leprechawn on the road and never know it’s himself that’s in it at all.”
McAnally initial description of the Leprechaun may not entirely jive with our modern rendition of the little fellow. Interestingly, McAnally claims there are different leprechauns one could find across Ireland:
- The Northern Irish Leprechaun, who wore a “red military coat and white breeches, with a broad-trimmed, high-pointed hat, on which he would sometimes stand upside down.”
- The Lurigadawne of Tipperary, with his “antique slashed jacket of red,” who was “also sporting a sword, which he used as a magic wand.”
- The Luricawne of Kerry, “a fat, pursey little fellow whose jolly round face rivals in redness the cut-away jacket he wears, that always has seven rows of buttons in each row.”
- The Cluricawne of Monaghan, classily-dressed in a “swallow-tailed evening coat of red with green vest, shiny shoes, and a long cone hat without a brim.”
McAnally’s tale of the Leprechawn is also considered to be the first written reference to a “pot of gold”, which has since become an accepted attribute for all leprechaun stories.
There was Tim O’Donovan, of Kerry, who captured a Leprechawn and forced him to disclose the spot where the ” pot o’ goold ” was concealed. Tim was going to make the little rogue dig up the money for him, but, on the Leprechawn advancing the plea that he had no spade, released him, marking the spot by driving a stick into the ground and placing his hat on it. Returning the next morning with a spade, the spot pointed out by the ” little ottomy av a desaver ” being in the centre of a large bog, he found, to his unutterable disgust, that the Leprechawn was too smart for him, for in every direction innumerable sticks rose out of the bog, each bearing aloft an old ” caubeen ” so closely resembling his own that poor Tim, after long search, was forced to admit himself baffled and give up the gold…
- Description:
- McAnally, D. R. Irish wonders :the ghosts, giants, pookas, demons, leprechawns, banshees, fairies, witches, widows, old maids, and other marvels of the Emerald Isle : popular tales as told by the people. Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1888.
- Persistent Link:
- http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:1273441
- Repository:
- Widener Library
- Institution:
- Harvard University