The Leipreachán and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study

The Leipreachn and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study Author(s): Diarmuid Giollin Source:
: Baloideas, Iml. 52 (1984), pp. 75-150 Published by: An Cumann Le Baloideas ireann/The Folklore of Ireland Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20522237 . Accessed: 12/02/2014 15:53
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THE LEIPREACHAN AND FAIRIES, DWARFS AND THE HOUSEHOLD FAMILIAR: A COMPARATIVE STUDY INTRODUCTION The leipreachan is a diminutive supernatural being of Irish folklore who is a shoemaker and possessor of great riches, for which he is often pursued, and who through his characteristic cleverness and trickery usually gets the better of interfering mortals. The local names by which he is known include geancanach (South Ulster and Leinster north of the Boyne), clutharacan (East Kerry-West Cork and Waterford-South Tipperary), gre'asaa' leipreacha'n (Galway and contiguous parts of Mayo and Clare), leipreachdn (known throughout the land but possibly belonging originally to Leinster and Con naught), 'lim(e)racawn' (= loimreachadn?,recorded inRathvilly, Co. Carlow and in South Co. Dublin), lochramadn (Ulster and adjacent parts of neighbouring counties, and North-West Mayo), loiridz'n (recorded in Ballindine, Co. Mayo), lorgaddn (Central Munster from North Kerry to Callan, which is be luacan yond the provincial boundary, in Co. Kilkenny), (recorded in Doolin, Co. Clare), luzirici'n(NorthWexford, and recorded in Edenderry, Co. Offaly), lzurachan (Kilkenny and South Wexford), lutharaca'n (Iveragh peninsula, Co. Kerry), lutharaddn (recorded in Doolin, Co. Clare) and lutharagan (Dingle peninsula, Co. Kerry).1 Though he is popularly associated with the fairies, the leipreachan seems to resemble the supernatural artisan dwarfs and household familiar of the folklore of various European countries much more closely. The principal aim of this paper, then, is to establish such a connexion, but since there has been no systematic study of the leipreacha'n based on the most important source-material - the archives of the Department of Irish Folklore - it has been decided to pub
1 See my
two medial while words marks on the
'An Leipreach?n
vowels in the word stress page. indicating following
sanAinmniocht'
in phonetic on the first
in B?aloideas
script
(1982). The
syllable
in p. 134 are neutral, are omitted in both
75
76
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
lish the archive material (in conjunction with a brief survey of the printed sources), and to describe supernatural beings analogous to the leipreachacn.The salient features of the folk traditions have been discussed in depth, but the intent here, as with the discussion of the various theories of the origin of these supernatural beings, is to note asmany plausible explana tions and points of view as possible - though many contradict each other - rather than to establish a fool-proof explanation. The comparative material is mostly from countries of Western Europe of Germanic or Romance tongue since no other material was readily accessible to the writer. I studied the archive material four or five years ago in order to write a thesis on the lezpreachan but only the main catalogue was used; however, supplementary to this, all the Schools' Manu scripts from Kerry (thanks to Seamas Mac Philib) and Galway were searched and some of those from Donegal and Mayo, and in addition, numerous references from other parts of the country were given to the writer by those who happened on them. Accounts from at least thirty of the thirty-two counties have been studied so that it can be claimed that this is a fairly representative sample, totalling more than three hundred manuscript references from the Folklore Archives or round about four hundred and fifty separate accounts - in all at a rough estimate, between a third and a half of the archive material on the leipreachan.
THE LEIPREACHAN IN LITERATURE
The word leipreachan derives from Old Irish luchorpadn, variously glossed as 'nanus', 'pigmeus' and so forth.2 In its earliest incidence, in the Saga of Fergus Mac Leti (derived from a poem dated to themiddle of the 8th century; the story itself is in the mid-i Ith century Senchus Mor), the word seems to mean water-sprite, though Binchy doubts that this was its original meaning.3 Lebor na hUidre, the Book of the
2 M?ir?n O Daly
a Dictionary of
and P. ? Fiannachta,
Language, Dublin
fascicule L, Contributions
1966, s.v.'luchorpdn'.
to
the Irish
3 D.A. Binchy,
'The Saga of Fergus Mac L?ti' in ?riu XVI, 33-34.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
77
Dun Cow, written about 1100,4 makes the luchrupadin some of the ungainly descendants of Ham, who was cursed for mocking the nakedness of his father, Noah.5 This episode has its origin in Genesis 9:22-25. Other early literary refer ences, noted in the Royal Irish Academy's dictionary, des cribe a line of luchorpain as descendants of the daughter of Cham (i.e. Ham), who conceived of a fish, and forming 'tu'atha atad a n-deiscert na hIndz'a .i. na lupracain 7 is i'ad is lugha do sa'l Adaim' [they are in the South of India and are the smallest of Adam's seed].6 In the 13th or 14th century account of the death of Fergus the lupracain have a kingdom of their own and except for their diminutive size seem little different from the people of Ulster with whom they come in to conflict. The lupracain of 'Aidedh Ferghusa' have a king dom of their own, great warriors, beautiful women, they pursue courtly pastimes and possess cattle and horses: their
way of life, indeed, seems to be very much the same as that
of Fergus' Ulster. Their small stature, rather than the super natural knowledge of Eisirt and Iubhdain, the latter's magical possessions or their mischief-making in order to force their king's release, causes most astonishment to the Ultonians.7 Excluding the narrowly lexicographical references that only supply an English equivalent to a leipreachadn word the first literary reference to the folk tradition is, to my knowl edge, in O'Reilly's Dictionary (1817), which has the follow ing entry:
Leithbhra'gan . . .a pigmy sprite, supposed to be
always employed at making or mending a single shoe, from leith, one, or half a pair; brog, a shoe, an, artifex: he was an emblem of industry.8 Crofton Croker (1824) describes the 'Cluricaune or Lepre
4 J.E. Caerwyn Williams and M?ir?n Ni Mhuir?osa, Traidisi?n Liteartha na nGael, Baile ?tha Cliath 1979, 98. 5 Whitley Stokes, 'M?langes' in Revue Celtique I (1870-72), 257.
6 O Daly 269-85. and ? Fiannachta, op. cit., s.v. Huchorp?n'.
7 Standish H. O'Grady,
Silva Gadelica,
London
1892,
Irish text 1817.
8 Edward O'Reilly, An Irish-English Dictionary,
Dublin
78
DIARMUID
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haun' as 'a compound of ... the Scottish Brownie and the English Robin Good fellow', in other words, a kind of house hold familiar. He is 'a small and withered old man', a cobbler, the possessor of an inexhaustible purse, who is trapped by an unbroken stare and escapes by trickery.9 His book of the fol lowing year has two stories of the 'Cluricaune'. In the first, Naggeneen the Cluricaune - whose appearance ismuch as we would expect - haunts the wine cellar of Justin Mac Carthy of Ballinacarthy. When the two eventually meet the Cluricaune recalls Mac Carthy's earlier threat to leave: 'Sure, and master, a'n't we going to move to-morrow? and sure you would not leave your own little Cluricaune Naggeneen behind you?', which suggest the migratory legend 7020 (vain attempt to escape from the Nisse) of which Crofton Croker's second story is clearly a version; this deals with the Cluricaune, Wildbeam, who attaches himself to a Quaker family. 10 Thomas Keightley (1828) describes the 'Leprechaun' (with variants Logheryman, Cluricaun, Luricaun, Lurigadaun) much as Crofton Croker does but attributes to him treasure rather than a purse.11 Crofton Croker (1829) has another tale of a Cluricaune encountered sitting under a rock 'at the dead hour of the night' hammering on the heel of an old shoe; his assistance is requested and given.12 Samuel Lover (1834) gives a piece of doggerel, 'The Leprechaun and the Genius', which shows some familiarity with the folk tradition: a small, aged man is described, two feet tall, wearing a red, three-cocked hat with matching coat and a flapped vest, stitching a shoe and drinking poteen; he escapes through trickery.13 Amhlaoibh O Su'illeabhaiin's
9 T. Crofton Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland, London
1824,84. 10 T. Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, London 1825, 79-81. 11 Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, 371-83 in London,
the 1860 12 T. II, 112-8. 13 251-7. Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland, London 1834, edition. Note his reference to the 'Lubrican' 'in London the time of Elizabeth and James'. Crofton Croker,
Legends
of
Lakes,
1829,
Vol.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
79
diary refers to lurgadain in the entry for June 23rd, 1835. Though it seems to confuse them with the fairies insofar as it attributes a fairy ring to them, its descriptions of their appearance, their possession of a purse of gold and their ability to escape through a ruse (namely ventriloquism: 'is goile-labharthoir gach lurgadan') are faithful to folk tradi tion.14 Philip Dixon Hardy (1837) describes the tiny 'Leprawhauns' as the artisans ('the tailors, brogue-makers, smiths, and coach-builders etc.') of the fairies; they are usually seen in the evening in lonely spots during fineweather, 'are acquainted with all the hidden treasures of the earth' and escape their captors by distracting their gaze. He re counts a version of Type 503 'TheGifts of the Little People' inwhich the Leprawhaun is the agent.15 Mr and Mrs Hall (1843) quote Crofton Croker on the Cluricaune but also give some of their own observations: that he is 'one of themost archly mischievous and amusing of the fairy tribe', is a cobbler, 'seats himself astride a butt of the best wine in the cellar of a friend's house, and taps the juice of the grape for his own advantage', and has treasures con cealed in caves. The first of their stories has the Cluricaune who 'if he has a respect for anything in the world, it is for an ancient family - as long as it keeps a good cellar' thwarting Oliver Cromwell in the house of his dispossessed master by turning wine into salt water. Another story tells of Knock the Cluricaune making the house of his former master uninhabitable through mischief and malice and thus expelling its new English occupant; the parson's assistance to the owner is in vain: he no sooner opens his book than Knock delivers the retort, 'Maybe I'm as well read in that as yer
14 Tom?s de Bhaldraithe, Cin Lae Amhlaoibh, Baile ?tha Cliath 1970,117. 15 Philip Dix on Hardy, Legends, Tales and Stories of Ireland, Dublin 1837, 219-32. Numbers preceded by 'Type' or 'AT' are from A. Aarne and S. Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, Helsinki 1961 (FFC 184); those by 'motif are from Stith Thompson, Mo?f-Index of
Folk-Literature, Copenhagen those by 'migratory legend' and and Bloomington, 'ML' from R. Indiana Th. 1955-8 and The Christiansen,
Migratory
Legends, Helsinki
1958
(FFC 175).
80
DIARMUID
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self; I'm neither Turk, Jew, nor haythin.' A version of the legend based on motif K415, 'Marked culprit marks everyone else and escapes detection' (in which the leipreacha'n multi plies the marker indicating the spot under which the crock of gold is buried), is also recorded here,Jack Cassidy's disappoint ment being mollified by the Cluricaune's acute observation: 'if you kept your thoughts as steadily fixed on your work as you have kept your eyes on me, you'd have money enough without hunting for Cluricaunes . . . a roving blade gathers no more goold than a rolling stone does moss,' which recalls a didactic legend in the folk tradition (infra).16 The following reference belongs to a letter written by Daiibhf Do Barra to a William Hackett of Midleton in 1844: It is feigned by the Irish that there are two dwarfs of the clutharacan tribe in Ireland called Toll Farcz'n and Bod a Ghiorta that blight the corn and prevent its
gowth ... 16 a
Could these be ficts? No further evidence of them has been evinced and the second name is given by Dinneen as 'blast of wind' (though an Ulsterism; giorta itself, however, also means 'smut in grain') while the first may be related to Dinneen's toll ar aithrz'n, confusion (faircz'n is given as 'a small mallet, a mallet used for closing holes in the ridges in which potatoes have been sown by "sticking".'). Sir William Wilde (1852) gives a description of the 'lepre chaun' and mentions his being a cobbler, his 'adhaster buidhe (golden bridle, which whenever shaken, was found with the yellow steed attached to it)', his 'sporran-na-skillinge' and his elusiveness.17 Mrs Alfred Gatty (1862) tells of a boy's en counter with the little man, dressed in what we might now call typical fashion but holding a gold-headed cane in each
16 Mr
and
Mrs
S.C.
Hall,
Ireland:
its
Scenery,
Character,
&
c,
London 1843; 32-7. 16a Brian ? Cu?v, 'Traidisi?n i dtaobh c?irteanna na mb?rd?nach' in Eigse XI, pt. II, 100. I am grateful to Dr Sean ? Coile?in for this
reference.
17 SirWilliam Wilde, Irish Popular Superstitions,
Dublin
185 2,13-14.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
81
hand; he disappears in a twinkling.'8 Lageniensis (1870) seems to take his information on the Cluricaune from Crofton Croker; that on the Leprechawn, whom he distinguishes from the Cluricaune, is faithful to the folk tradition and includes reference to the magical purse and knowledge of hidden treasure.19 Patterson's collection of words from Antrim and Down (1880) contains the following reference: Loughry men, a race of small hairy people living in the woods. It is said that "they would get your gold." They are very strong.20 'Loughry man' is an anglicization of lochramacn. D.R. McAnally's description (1888) of the Leprechawn seems reliable; he also emphasizes the role of household familiar a la Crofton Croker with the Leprechawn haunting the wine cellars of the 'rale owld shtock' and doing mischief such as riding the animals to the point of fatigue and throwing things around the house. 'Bybirth the Leprechaun is of low descent,' he writes, 'his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy.' 'The Logheryman,' he says, 'wears the uni form of some British infantry regiments ... and after doing some trick more than usually mischievous, his favourite posi tion is to poise himself on the extreme point of his hat,
standing at the top of a wall or on a house, feet in the air,
then laugh heartily and disappear.'21 Lady Wilde (1888) has two stories about the Leprehaun; one tells of the good for tune of a boy who captured him, the other of the evil con sequences of the Leprehaun's capture and ill-treatment.22 Patrick Kennedy (1891) has a story of a Lurikeen, who was observed sewing a shoe.
18 Mrs Alfred Gatty,
369.
'Tales of the Fairies' in B?aloideas Irish Folklore,
III, (1932), 1870,
19 Lageniensis
237-41.
(John O'Hanlon),
London
20 William Hugh Patterson, MRIA, A Glossary

the Counties of Antrim and Down, London 1880,
of Words
s.v. 'Loughry
in Use in
men'.
21 D.R. McAnally Jr., Irish Wonders, London 1888, 139-50. 22 Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends of Ireland, London 1888, 56-9. 23 Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, London 1891,117.
82
DIARMUID
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Noteworthy references to the leipreacha'n in the early part of this century include those inDouglas Hyde's An Sgeuluidhe Gaedhealach (Rennes 19 0 1),24 inW.G. Wood-Martin's Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland (London 1902),25 inW.Y. Evans-Wentz's The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (Rennes 1909),26 in Albie Dease's Mother Erin (London 1910),27 B. Hunt's Folk Tales of Breffny (London 1912),28 in E. Ussher's 'Waterford Folk-Tales I' in Folk-Lore Vol. XXV (1914)29 and in Lady Gregory's Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920).30 Poems about the leipreachain, in clude Norah Chesson's 'An Irish Lullaby'3' and William Allingham's 'The Lepracaun or Fairy Shoemaker.'32 James Stephens' famous book, The Crock of Gold (Lon don 1912) probably went farthest in establishing the 'Lepre caun's name outside of Ireland. His Leprecauns are shoe makers and owners of crocks of gold, dressed in green and wearing tall hats. That Stephens was familiar with Aidedh Ferghusa is evident in the last chapter where he makes refer Mac ence to 'the people of the Lupra', to their king 'Udain Audain' (Iubdan Mac Abdacin of Aidedh Ferghusa) and to his tanist 'Beg Mac Beg' (Bec mac Bic) and to other notables such as 'Glomhar O'Glomrach' (Glomhar mac Glaiss mic Glomraide), 'ConainMac Rihid' (Conain mac Ruichid) and Mac Gairid' (Gerrchu mac Gairid).33 'Gaerkui Before concluding this probably incomplete survey of literary references to the leipreacha'n it iswell to recall that such references have not been lacking in newspapers, popular
24 Pp. 139,268. 25 P. 22.

26 27 29 P. Pp. 39. 74-5. 111-5.
28 Pp. 189-92.
Pp.
30 P. 229. 31 In Denvir's Monthly Irish Library, No. 26 (1904), 27. 32 Golden Treasury Series, Poems by William Allingham,
1912,47-50.
London
33 James
p. 169
Stephens,
op.
The Crock of Gold, Pan London

cit., Irish Text, 238, Translation,
1973 edition
270.
and O'Grady,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
83
magazines (e.g. Ireland's Own), journals and - most likely chap-books. That many of our primary sources (e.g. the IFC manuscripts) have been influenced by these - and other publications stands to reason and indeed it has been pos sible to identify some of these offending accounts. Literary influence on folk tradition should not be underestimated: it is calculated that in the decade from 1781 to 1790 fifty-two per cent of the population of Ireland could read English and this proportion remained more or less unchanged until the second half of the following century.34 'Awork published in 1818 estimates the number of books sold annually in Ireland at 300,000,' mostly chap-books,35 which means that on average one book was bought for every eleven literates.
THE LEIPREACHAN
IN FOLK NARRATIVE
The manuscript references, from the Department of Irish Folklore's collection, are uneven in quality: one should con sider, for example, that details of some accounts in the Schools' Manuscripts may have been deliberately exaggerated by their narrators for the pleasure of the children who wrote them down; that some children, ifnot deliberate plagiarists,36 may have been influenced by some of the books of their school syllabus; that some adults may have invented stories for their youthful transcribers or simply re-told stories that they had read. In equal measure similar qualifications apply to a small part of theMain Manuscripts' Collection.
34 Caoimh?n ? Danachair,
Irish 35 University Loc. cit. for Review, vol.
'Oral Tradition
1, 36.
and the Printed Word'
in
9, No.
36 I(rish) F(olklore)
152-4, Fictions, source. example, the 117; setting
C(ollection)
S(chools manuscripts)
from
453,
pp.
is an obvious
plagiarism from is transferred as having Colum's
Kennedy's Legendary to Gneeveguilla, Edenderry
Co. Kerry;
The derives
IFC 321,
leipreachdn from
136-40,
from Co. Mayo,
derives
a cruiskeen
from the same

by his side Folk in
is described in P?draic
IFC S 622, 408-10,

detail
IFC S 915; 199-201,

a poem
and IFC S 1079:

A Treasury
213-5; this
of Irish
lore, 608 in the New York
1954 edition.
84
DIARMUID
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Another important reservation concerns the method of transcription of accounts. We cannot fault the text of a tape or ediphone recording, nor the verbatim recording of a seanchaz"s words in a note-book: these are the work of the trained field-collector. But the school collectors and many others tended to be abstractors: a legend may be recorded in the generalized form that C.W. von Sydow termed a dite, for example; worse, a belief or tradition recounted by one per son may be attributed to a community - in good faith. The result of these qualifications is that our references would differ greatly in value as material for a study of the former extent of folk belief in the leipreachacn.37On the other hand accounts of the leipreachan - whether recorded by trained collectors or school-children, written in manuscripts or popular magazines - are remarkably homogeneous, lead ing one to the conclusion that though the form of the narra tion may be changed in transcription its substance shines faithfully through. A survey of the genres in the source accounts shows the type of generalized statement referred to earlier to be in the majority - particularly in the rather abstract accounts of the Schools' Manuscripts - but as has already been explained this form usually does not represent the words of any narrator, but rather their substance. A perusal of verbatim accounts indicates an unwillingness to generalize on the part of narrators so that a legend, or indeed a first-hand report, ismuch commoner than a dite. 38 The leipreacha'n appears regularly in at least twoMdrchen. They are Type 670, The Animal Languages; and Type 675, The Lazy Boy. At least four versions of 670 have the leipreacha'n, three from Galway (in which he is locked up in a box) and one from Kerry,39 'Amermaid ... takes the place of the leipreachan in most Irish examples of this tale. Else
37
Such
difficulties
are
discussed
by
Lauri
Honko
in
'Memorates
and the Study of Folk Beliefs' (1964), 5-19.

38 Cf. Honko, op. cit., 10.
in Journal
of the Folklore
Institute
39 Sean O'Sullivan, Folktales of Ireland, Chicago IFC 451: 71-6;IFC483:469-72;IFC1133: 374-7.
1966,
179-81;
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
85
where the leipreachan may be replaced by animals.'40 He appears in at least nine versions of 675, all from West Cork or Kerry 41 elsewhere his place is commonly taken by a salmon. There are at least threemore or less stereotyped legends of the leipreachan. The commonest, of which at least twenty two versions are known, has taken form over much of Ireland and is recorded in the four provinces.42 Its basis is themotif K415 (marked culprit marks everyone else and escapes detection): This man caught the leipreachacn one morning near Clais a'Naylor and made close prisoner of him. There was no chance that he would get off until he told the man where the gold was. 'If you bring me out to the fort field I'll show you where the gold is.' The man brought him out and the fairy showed him a big buachaldn [ragwort]. 'Dig under this weed tomorrow morning and you'll get a crock of gold.' 'Wait,' says he, 'andwe'll mark it.'
'Take off my right garter and tie it around the bua
chaldn and you'll know where to dig in themorning.' The man did as he was told and let the little man go.
40
O'Sullivan,
op.
ai.,
273.
41 Conchubhar an ? Muimhneach?in, B?aloideas Bh?al ?tha Ghaorthaidh, Baile ?tha Cliath 1956, 81-5; Kenneth Jackson, Sc?alta ?n mBlascaod, Baile ?tha Cliath 1968, 74-7; IFC 203: 110-13; IFC 268: 78-9; IFC 306: 487-91; IFC 962: 86-103; IFC 965: 76-85; IFC S 419: 537-42. 984:178-96;IFC 42 The following is the list of printed versions known to me: M?irt?n O Cadhain, 'Sg?alaigheacht Chois-Fhairrge' in B?aloideas IV (1933), 78 (in this and in one of the MS. versions the leipreach?n is not mentioned by name); P?draig ? Mill?adha, 'Seanchus Sliabh gCua' in B?aloideas VI (1936), 235; Keightley, op. cit., 373-5 in the 1860
edition; Mr and Mrs Hall, op. cit., and 35-7; McAnally, New op. York cit., 139-50, 1949, s.v.
which may
tionary leprechaun'. of
be the origin of that in Funk and Wagnall's

Folklore Mythology Legend,
Standard Dic
86
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
When he came out in the morning there was a red garter on every buachaldn in the field, thousands of them, all the same size and the same pattern.43 Records from East Galway suggest a strong tradition of the leipreachan being captured and imprisoned in a box or chest. It has only been recorded once outside of Galway and of the Galway instances only once outside of the East of the county. 'It is said if you caught him and kept him in a tightly closed box for a year and a day, he would tell you where to find a pot of gold.'44 This seems to be the reason for his imprison ment, itself referred to in more than a dozen accounts. He uses his habitual repertory of tricks to escape. Four of these accounts deserve to be treated on their own as versions of a legend, of which the following is an example:
to the bog About forty years ago a man was going a bag of turf (. . .) As he came near the bog ... he saw a little man ... fixing a boot that would fit a baby for
about amonth old (... .) When John saw the leipreacha'n he commenced to think what he would do. Next, how ever, he caught hold of the wee cobbler and took him home to his mother. They locked him up in a wooden box and piled stones on the lid. The leipreachan was
crying inside of the box, "Can I go? Can I go? Can I go?"
This cry, and roar, kept on for nine months. John's mother could listen to it no longer. One day, she said, "Go at once and let me hear this no more!" So the leipreacha'n went away as quickly as his legs could carry him.45 Usually the leipreachacn pesters his captors by calling 'Imeoidh me! Imeoidh me!' [I will go] and in one version the woman who has to bear the brunt of his psychological warfare finally explodes in exasperation, 'Imigh agus an diabhal leat!' [Go! And may the devil go with you!].46 This
43 44 45 Wentz, 46 IFC 407: 233. IFC S 54: 190. IFC S 29: 517-23. A version has been published in W.Y. Evans The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, Rennes 1909, 39. IFC S 21: 87-8.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
87
suggests that the kernel of the legend is the leipreachan obtaining his release by so exasperating his captor that she impulsively tells him to leave. The loss of this feature might be attributed to the fact that school-children wrote the stories down.47 The third of these legends is didactic and is known from eight versions, scattered across the centre of Ireland with the exception of one from Kerry. Its curiousness, and the fact that six of its versions were written down by children while a seventh is in a similarly childish style, raises suspicions: perhaps it is a story from a school syllabus. The following is one of the versions: Once a man caught a leipreachan and asked him for his gold. After deceiving him for a time with vain excuses he told him it was beneath a certain oak tree.Without losing any time the man dug beneath the tree until he came upon a small grey box. He opened it and found a piece of paper within on which was written, 'work for money and you shall have plenty.'48 Traditions about the leipreachan are not really central to these legends; their narrative strength gives them a life of their own. Numerically most important are those less polished legends anchored firmly in the local folk-belief. More than one hundred and thirty of these have been encountered and they are the basis for many of the observations in the next section of this paper. Despite many variations, by and large these legends can be seen to issue from the one mould:
47 This legend also the are bears little at man some resemblance three of his to Type mysterious 670, sometimes
known
ment later
as the Three Laughs

in a box, transpires the
of the Leipreachdn:
gives expense
during his imprison

it which laughs, as the whose acts, to his own be dis Coffin' in Caoimhin
leipreachdn's advantage. ? Danachair, demons transactions, household 48 words IFC
captor will reveals, knowledge supernatural in the 'The Ghost See Walter Havernick, Farm, Dublin
and ed., Folk in little boxes which and familiar S 13: the
guarantee connexion between moral Hall,
of 90-6 for an account 1976, success their owners in financial this is suggested op. cit., tradition and that of
spirits. Asimilar 112-13. in Mr
in the Quricaune's 35-7.
to Jack
Cassidy
and Mrs
88
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
(a) encounter with lezpreachan; (b) 'stand and deliver' - cap ture and demand of riches; (c) gaze of captor averted by trickery; (d) escape of leipreachadn. So the breaking of this interdiction on looking away puts the captor back in the same situation of lack where we first encounter him. The follow ing is a Cavan version: Years ago one of the old Xs [family name], of Dromore, saw a ganconna [geancadnach] making a pair of boots on the side of a hill. X stole up behind him and picked up one of the boots that the little fellow was after making. 'That's the nicest boot ever I looked at,' says X. 'There's a nicer one on the other side of you,' says the wee lad. X looked but he couldn't see the second boot, and when he turned round to speak to the gan conna, there was nobody there - the wee fellow was gone. But he left his little cloak behind him and X brought it home and it was in the house for a long time.49 This, in translation, is aWest Cork version: The clocharachacn makes shoes inside in a little rock cavern and he has sparan na scillinge: every time you'd look in the purse there would be a shilling there. You'd seldom see the clocharachacn and it is very dif ficult to catch him. A man heard that he was in some rock cavern or other. He came upon him one evening and gripped him firmly. 'Giveme your purse!' said the man. 'Let me go,' said the clocharacha'n, 'and I'll give you the purse.' If you took your eye off him he'd get away from you. 'Get a red-hot spit,' said the clocharacha'n, 'and stick it in his backside!' The man looked all around him and the clocharachadn dep,arted and took his purse away with him!50
49 IFC 1041: 174-5. 50 IFC 96: 90.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
89
A very small number of legends recounts the apparent success of a person in getting the leipreachan's treasure but it later turns to something worthless, sometimes as a result of breaking a prohibition (motif F348.0.1. Fairy gift disappears or is turned to something worthless when tabu is broken). An equally small number of accounts tells of success in this endeavour. In Co. Cavan, 'the old people, in conversation, when they were after hearing of some man giving a big price for a farm or anything else, would say "Hemust have caught a gankunna." ,51 Vivid accounts that owe asmuch to personal experience as to collective tradition are von Sydow's memorates, which he describes as 'Erzdhlungen der Leute iiber ezgene, rein per sonliche Erlebnisse', narratives of the people about their per sonal experiences.52 There are memorates in which there are ample indivi dual, unique features and, in certain respects, "unneces
sary" details . . . There are also those which, along with
authentic experiences, contain motifs learned, for example, from legends. From the point of view of the analysis of supernatural experiences, the first group is
most valuable. But from the point of view of folk belief,
those which valuable.53
contain
secondary
alterations
are also
For convenience, we can place in the first group the eleven first-hand accounts, strikingly vivid in their narrative, rambling perhaps, but containing no details at variance with collective tradition. Two of the narrators are responsible for four of the accounts and at least four of the encounters took place when the narrators were children. These narratives are little more than sightings and consequently give scope for few traditions other than appearance and size of the leipreachdn and his mysterious disappearance; for example, only one nar rator described seeing - when he was a child - a lezpreachdn shoemaking.
51 IFC 832: 475.
53 52 Honko, op. di., Loc. cit. 11.
90
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
Two of the memorates do not indicate the time of day the encounter occurred. Of those that do only one described broad daylight; another describes the lutharacacnbeing seen the moment the sun first appeared on a Spring morning; the sun shone on him. It is of interest that in half a dozen of these memorates the leipreachan has a shine on his clothes, which indicates, perhaps, that a glint of light on a dark night was the triggering device for many of these experiences (cf. F236.1.5. Fairies in gleaming clothes). The following account is one of these memorates, trans lated from the Irish: I saw him myself, Tadhg.54 It is a good many years ago now, I and one of the Xs [family name]. .. left one fine morning in Spring and we brought two grey hounds with us and headed west towards Rinnin to see if we could find any hare - it wasn't day at all but it wasn't far from it. We searched there and didn't find any hare. We went east then and we were coming up to the little bridge on the Bailin . . .- there is a big gully below the bridge there, between it and the sea and the sun was just appearing. By gor, whatever look I gave I saw this thing rising up out of the gully and springing up on top of the rail of the bridge - yerrah! he was a paltry little thing, he wasn't a foot tall - and the sun was shining on him. I was as near to him as I am to the lower part of the house now, and if you saw how he looked around him, man! 'Th'anam 'on diabhal! Look at the lutharacan!' said
I to X - X saw him too and away with the two of
us as fast as we could, and one of us came on either side of the bridge in case there would be any chance that he'd get away from us. He jumped down from the rail of the bridge when I shouted and we searched every inch of the gully, up and down, and devil the bit of
54 i.e. Tadhg 0 Murchadha
the collector.
THE LEIPREACHAN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
91
him we found! Wherever in the world he went, he left as if the ground had swallowed him.55 There is no difficulty in distinguishing this type of story from the more stereotyped legends already mentioned. the two genres, though, are many transitional Between forms.
THE LEiPREA CHAN IN FOLK BELIEF
The leipreachan is always described as small, if not tiny, and this is often emphasized by vivid comparisons: 'only as big as your fist',56 hardly the height of the chair',57 'not much bigger than a traithnz'n',58 little more than the size of a year-old child59 and so forth. Many accounts give par ticular measurements; of these somewhat less than half des cribe him as being two feet or more in height and of the remainder half specify a height of from one to two feet and half specify less than a foot. He seems to observers to be old and wizened: 'it is said that he appears ... as a little old man with a wrinkled coun tenance;'60 'a little, oldish man'61 with a very wrinkled face'62 and a long grey beard63 (a characteristic). Though he may have been 'very small but appeared to be fully dev eloped,'64 several accounts give him an ungainly, grotesque, aspect: he is a very small person with a big head and big
55 IFC 928: 370-4. The following are the references to the other
memorates: IFC 107: 411-2, IFC 145: 73-4, IFC 317: 169-71, IFC 595: 187-9 (the same account as in IFC 145 but recorded five years later), IFC 776: 412, IFC 928: 351-7, IFC 965: 74-5, IFC 1259: 152-9, IFC 1312: 377-81 (two accounts) and IFC 1682: 10-15. 56 IFC S 833: 235. 57 IFC 642: 340. 58 IFC 444: 52-4. 59 IFC 1259: 152-9. 60 IFC S 956: 275-6. 61 IFC 1041: 183-5. 62 IFC S 622: 408-10. 63 IFC S 56: 114-5. 64 IFC 776: 412.
92
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
feet,65 he is bandy-legged (this is a feature noted more than once) with big black eyes and long ears,66 'he has a very long nose, nearly as long as himself'.67 Other traits are men tioned: 'he was a very thin little man and he was very'pale faced',68 his hair was the colour of skin,69 his teeth were as bright as a shilling. 70 Red is by far the leipreachan's favourite colour, being men tioned in nearly three times as many accounts as its closest rival, green, which in turn is almost five times as common as black. White, blue, yellow, grey and brown are next in order, though rarelymentioned. Red and green aremost frequent in combinations, head-dress usually being red, red jacket and green trousers being commoner than green jacket and red trousers. He may wear a suit, coat or jacket and accounts vary greatly as to their type; for example, 'a neat red coat with gold buttons up the middle;'71 'he is dressed in a quaint swallow-tail coat [to which there are a few references] just like a gentleman's dress-coat;'72 a blue, shiny suit ('agus i ag shineail leis an ngrein');73 'an antiquated dress, his red green [sic] coat is adorned with large buttons.'74 Less varied are descriptions of his nether garments: 'a long black trousers;'75 'a very tight-fitting trousers '76 and knee breeches,77 commonest of the foregoing. Footwear includes 'long boots with curled-up toes'78 _ and pointed or turned up toes are a consistent feature along with buckled shoes:
65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC E.g. IFC S 430: 17-8. S 7: 198. S 434: 46. S 1106:, 186-8. 965: 74-5. 928: 351-7. S 455: 71-3. S 235: 72-7. 595: 187-9. S 956: 275-6. S 21: 263. S 234: 52. IFC 577: 234. S 922: 191.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
93
'he seems to take a particular delight in large metal shoe buckles'79 - and in relation to the knee-breeches mentioned above 'a very long-shanked pair of shoes'80 or leggings of some sort.81 An accessory mentioned on a couple of occa sions is a walking-stick.82 It is of interest that a half-dozen accounts, allmemorates, describe a shine on the leipreachan's clothing.83 There is some variation in the type of head-gear preferred: 'a conical shaped hat,'84 'a cocked hat,'85 'a caroline hat'86 and so on, but most accounts which describe his head-dress refer to some kind of pointed hat, the above-mentioned conical one or a kind of night-cap: 'caipin beag dearg air agus eireaball as a bharra'87 [a tail coming from the top of it], 'caipin an lutharacaiin- caipin beag roun'ailta in airde ar mhullach a chinn agus adharc amuigh air, gleasailta'88 [a shiny cap with a horn coming from it] .Red is the favoured colour, followed by green. The origin of the lezpreachan is very rarely told. One strange account has a clutharacan telling his captors that his people came to Ireland a hundred years before the druids. They were - women and men - between six and eight feet tall and never did harm to anyone. The druids became jealous and by magic prevented the women from giving birth save once every thirty years and prevented both sexes from being
more than two feet tall. It was the druids who gave them
spara'n na scillinge and spara'n an ghinz' oir (the golden guinea purse).89 Another uncorroborated account tells that there were
79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89
spirits called Cloorahauns -
some people
IFC S 956: 276. IFC S 234: 52. E.g. IFC 515: 87-8. E.g. IFC 151: 356-7. E.g. IFC 1312: 377-81. IFC S 88: 43-4. IFC S 956: 275-6. IFC 515: 87-8. IFC 151: 243-5. IFC 1312: 377-81. IFC 45: 208-9.
94
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
called them Ganconnas and Wee Folk, and they were thought to be the souls of human beings that were dead for years and that were spending their purgatory on Earth.90 The account seems confused: the Wee Folk, or fairies, are different from the leipreachan and it seems unusual that the Cavan informant should give both his local word for leipreachan and that which properly is found straddling the county boundaries of Cork and Kerry and of Waterford and Tipperary. The Irish fairies were supposed to be the Fallen Angels in the popular belief;91 the leipreachan is traditionally identified with the fairies: 'the leipreachain is a little fairy man,'92 'the gancunnas were a class of fairies in themselves'93 and so forth; also worthy of note is the appellation 'fairy shoe maker', the significant accounts in which the leipreachan is referred to solely or synonymously as a fairy and his con
sistent association with ring-forts and fairy trees.
A characteristic feature of the leipreacha'n is his solitariness. Though several accounts exist of more than one encountered at a time it can safely be said that these are uncharacteristic; indeed, frequently in these cases it is obvious that leipreachadin and fairies have been confused. 'N'fheaca einne riamh dha' leipreachan in eineacht,' it is stated unequivocally, 'pe ait go mbionn se bionn se ma aonar i gconal'94 [two are never seen together]. This contrasts sharply with the fairies who 'led a community life, having their own local rulers'95 and some of the collective names used to refer to them bear this out. The leipreachadn's most common place of residence is in or about ring-forts, colour being added to the accounts by details such as 'he lives under awhitethorn bush in a lisz'n,'96
90 IFC 1039: 201-6. 91 Sean ? S?illeabh?in,
88-9.
Irish Folk Custom
and Beliefs,
Cork 1977,
92 93 94 95 96
IFC S 11: 436. IFC 922: 324-31. IFC 1259: 152-9. ? S?illeabh?in, op. cit., 89. IFC S 17: 480.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
95
'in a fort under a stone or under a bush'97 or 'under brushes near forts'.98 Next in order are the related categories of trees, woods and bushes. He usually lives under the trees rather than in them, they being located in such places as a field,99 a glen'00 and on a hillside.101 'A fairy tree'102 ismentioned as well as 'a lone bush'103 and 'alone whitethorn',104 all referring to the same idea. Other places mentioned include hills ? and mountains,106 rocksl 7 and caves,108 under a mush raths or old buildings)"0 and so on, a fields (near room,109 lonely, solitary place often being specified."' Valleys and glens are also mentioned.112 Often the place in which the leipreachan is encountered, seen or heard is one of these places but the order of frequency is not the same. If one examines these accounts according to where he works the order is as follows: trees, bushes or woods, mushrooms, rocks, crevices or caves, fields and gardens - sheltered places being commonest. Little importance is attached to the time of day or year when the leipreachan is seen. One account states emphatically that he is never seen during the day;113 according to another 'by chance you may see him before sunrise in themorning'.114 Overall, he ismost commonly encountered at night, morning
97 IFC S 18: 197-204. 98 IFC S 88: 43-4. 99 IFC S 833: 237. 100 Ibid., 236. 101 IFC S 452: 251. 102 IFC S 833: 236. 103 IFC 1041: 202-4. 104 IFC S 235: 72-7. 105 E.g. IFC S 724: 344-5. 106 E.g. IFC S 447: 288. 107 E.g. IFC S 430: 14-15. 108 E.g. IFC 928: 447-8. 109 E.g. IFC S 17: 305. 110 E.g. IFC S 31: 137-8. 111 E.g. IFC S 11: 436. 112 E.g. IFC S 13: 112-3. 113 IFC S 36: 188-9. 114 IFC S 434: 46.
96
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
and evening following in that order. Regarding the time of year neither is there consensus, only four accounts specify ing a particular time: the luthraddn enters every house in the country15 or comes down the chimney on Hallowe'en night16 according to twoWest Clare reports, and two Galway accounts specify May Day as the day on which he ismost commonly seen.'17 The leipreacha'n is probably best known through his associ ation with the famous crock of gold which is, nevertheless, but one aspect of what one might term the monetary tradi tion. References to this crock or pot of gold are very numerous: 'if you got a hold of one of them [a 'gancunna']and held him tight, and if you threatened that you were going to kill him, he'd tell you where there was a "kishka" [ciste] - a crock of gold;'118 in addition are mentioned a pot of silver, a pot of money, a jug of gold and a barrel of gold."19 The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow does not usually seem to be associ ated with the leipreachan.120 More interesting, as regards distribution at any rate, is the leipreacha'n's purse: Deireann na seandaoine go bhfuil sparan ag an leip reachain agus e lain d'airgead i gconai. Da n-eirfodh le duine an sparain seo d'fha'il bheadh scilling ann gach uair a d'osclodh se e agus bheadh an duine sin saibhir go deo.121 [There is a shilling in itwhenever it is opened and whoever could find it would be rich forever] This is the famous spara'n
115 IFC S 617: 114-5. 116 Delargy MS. 6: 135 (= S?amus ? Duilearga, U?Ealaoire, Baile ?tha Cliath 1981, 262). 117 IFC S 11: 436 and IFC 1134: 38. 118 IFC 923: 278.
119 more Between than one them hundred these for account the pot or for seven of crock gold.
Leabhar
Stiofdin
references
compared
to
120 Only one account to IFC S 430: According

the end of the rainbow.
(in IFC S 31: 137-8) makes this association. 14-5, the leipreachdn has his gold hidden at
121 IFC S 11:436.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
97
na scillinge, the shilling purse, noted in twenty-eight manu script accounts, all but one from Munster. A handful of accounts describe a penny purse - sparan na pingine - or a purse in which a half-crown is always to be found, all from Kerry. The leipreachan [according to a Kerry account] has two purses, one full of gold, and another full of penny leaves. He will offer you the one full of penny-leaves first, and if you say he has another one, he will give you the right one.'122 There is a couple of dozen accounts of purses of gold, or of money, and of bags of gold. Besides pot and purse are numerous references to the leipreachan's possession of gold in particular and also of money or silver (airgead). Sometimes 'he possesses a knowledge of hidden treasures but does not disclose their whereabouts till he is pressed to the utmost'.123 'It is said that he has the knowledge of where the fairies' gold is hidden .. .'124 'It is supposed that he knew where all the gold and treasure of the country were hidden. He could bring you and point out where there was gold at any time.91N One account attributes the hiding of the treasure to the Vikings.'26 Several accounts state that the leipreachdn guards the treasure. Regional names, such asgreasaz leipreachan, and occasional names, such as 'fairy cobbler,' 'fairy shoemaker' and greasai' na siog, leave little doubt about the preferred occupation of the leipreachan: "Se a dheineann na broga go leir don crowd a bhionn ins na leasaibh agus duinta agus fortanna,"'27 [he makes shoes for the inhabitants of the forts] .He is identified as a shoemaker in a hundred or so accounts, of which some what less than a quarter specify his clientele to be the fairies,
122 123 124 125 126 127 IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC S 440: 509-11. S 956: 275-6. S 440: 507. 922: 428-9. 451: 71-8. 393: 181.
98
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
whose shoes he makes and repairs; the afore-mentioned names for the leipreachan and the unsatisfactoriness of any references which might suggest that he works for mortals ('it was told that the Leprehauns used to make the shoes better than any earthly cobbler and that they used only charge a very small price for doing so.')128 should leave no doubts, however, about this clientele. One account informs us: 'bhiodh cuid acu ina ngreasaithe'"29 (some were shoemakers) but does not state what their remainder did. Another says that besides cobbling and making music the lutharagan 'also makes pots of gold and hides them under flags in certain places.'130 The geancanach's 'usual occupation is shoemaking and minding a pot of gold'"3' according to another. There are two references to domestic sidelines: 'the leipreachans are supposed to be good knitters as well as shoemakers,'132 and 'it is said by the old people that their work ismending shoes and knitting stockings.' Shoemaking, however, is not the leipreachan's only re corded occupation, though references to all others number only six. In one of these he claims to be a goldsmith for the fairies though further on it is stated that he 'spendsmost of his time fixing shoes and making little boots.'134 Another leipreachan recounts that he was the only court musician to the king and queen of the fairies.135 A 'leppercon' tells an Antrim man that he was nearly five hunner' years roun' this place, that he had been always looking after the farmers' places for them when they were sleepin' at night, and that some o' them had been good to him, and would 'a' done wee kindnesses to him like giving him an oul' shirt or a pair of breeks or an oul' hat.'136
128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC 555: 181-96. S 1079: 209-10. S 88: 43-4. S 724: 343-4. S 440: 509-11. S 452: 251. S 455: 71-3. 253: 1009-18. 1102: 97-114.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
99
This is not the only resemblance to the household familiar tradition. In another tale a man walking in his fields where some men had been working was surprised to see 'two of these geanca'nachs very busy with a quern-mill busy grinding his oats. One was feeding the querns and the other busy twisting the stone. They were so engrossed that they never found him approach."137 The quern is seen as evidence of the clutharacan's existence in this account: Is docha go raibh se in aiit eigin, a ra'go raibh cuid dai oibreacha le fail. Do bhi an bhro in aiiteanna: an
bhro a bhiodh a mheilt an choirce.138
A similar account: It was always told us that they used work the quern for the people at night. If you left the corn to be ground near the grinding-stone it would be ground in themorning.'39 There is a final pertinent reference in which a leipreachacn in gratitude tells a woman where to find a bag of meal - 'the top grain of Ballylaven.'"40 According to various informants the leipreachadn's special powers include shape-shifting: 'he could change his form at will, and he could disappear in a twinkling,'"4' great strength: 'it is said that the lepragaun had the power of twenty men because he is enchanted,'142 and supernatural knowledge: 'firini beaga bideacha iad agus tai fios acu ar neamh is ar talamh',143 which sometimes takes the form of privity to the whereabouts of hidden treasure (supra). In one account he foretells death.144 His uncanny ability to escape from his captors is the most characteristic of these special powers and
137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC IFC S 1001: 377-8. 1682: 10-5. 483: 520-1. S 1106: 189-91. 922: 428-9. 744: 59. 714: 210-6. S 40: 328.
100
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
is the raison d'etre of most of the legends told about him: I hear my mother saying that a person would require to be very wise and cautious and careful if they were to succeed in catching a fairy145 and make him 'give up his treasure' or tell where he had 'the crock of gold' hidden. Once you saw him you had to keep your eyes on him and never take them off him for even the smallest frac tion of a second. Once you took your eyes off him he would disappear and you would never see him again. He would employ different kinds of subterfuges in order to get you to take your eyes off him for the fraction of a second. He would say 'mind yourself on that dog behind you! ' or 'look at the blood on your hand! ' or on your foot, or he would pretend that there was somebody near you and he would speak to them, and if you looked away at all he was gone. When you caught him you had to hold him in a firm grip and keep watching him all the time. And even while you were holding him he would endeavour to attract your attention to something else, and if you looked away from him he would disappear out of your hands. When all these devices failed he would start begging and craving of you to let him go. He would tell you that he had no money and that he had no crock of gold concealed.146 A pertinent question iswhether the leipreachdn is seen to be of a benign or of a malevolent nature. A dozen accounts testify that he is a friendly being, with qualification in a quar ter of these: they are 'very friendly unless you touch them; then they will let out revenge on you.'147 This revenge motif occurs independently in nearly two dozen accounts as the consequence of people interfering in some way with the leipreachan. In addition is a couple of accounts in which a threat from the leipreachadn intimidates his adversary into desisting.
145 variants. This word is often used synonymously with leipreach?n and its
146 IFC 832: 475-9. 147 IFC S 88: 43^.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
101
Eleven accounts describe people's fear of him, which may or may not be connected with the following belief, recorded only once: 'tai se raiite einne a cheonn e na'maireann se aon fhaid' (anyone who sees him does not live long) to which the narrator adds, 'agus 'on diabhal nuair a chonac fein e... cheapas go raibh mo bhalcaisi buailte!' (when I saw him my self I thought my time was up!)148 Several accounts tell of petty misdemeanours of the leipreachan such as stealing or annoying people for no good reason. A South Kerry account depicts a lutharcan as a voyeur, sitting under the table to watch a woman undressing beside the hearth; she dies of fear and shame on noticing him.149 A few accounts state un equivocally that he isunfriendly, a few more that he does not help people; on the other hand more than a dozen state that he helps people with gifts of some kind, out of the goodness of his heart, sometimes with the common motif of the pre condition that no-one be told (F348.7). He brings good luck according to a couple of accounts. According to various accounts the leipreachan is partial to tobacco,150 to whistling,151 singing152 and playing amusical instrument153 (usually the fiddle).154
EUROPEAN BEINGS ANALOGOUS To THE LEIPREACHAN
The bearers of German folk-tradition usually described their supernatural dwarfs as small or minuscule, often graphic ally depicting their size by comparison: thumb-sized, as tall as the leg of a chair, as big as a child of six weeks, or by giv ing rough measurements: a half or full yard long, one, two, three or four spans long, and so on.155 The Kobold - a house
148 149 150 151 152 153 154
155 buch
IFC 928: 351-7. Ibid.,370A. E.g. IFC 494: 380-6. E.g. IFC 1039: 234-5. E.g. IFC S 21: 263. IFC S 18: 200-2. E.g. IFC 253: 1008-18.
E. Hoffmann Krayer and Hanns to Bach told and my St?ubli, Leipzig gratitude Handw?rter s.v. 1927-37, to Professor deutschen 1024-5. Aberglaubens, I would like Berlin express
des
'Zwerge',
S?amus Caomh?nach who
smoothed my difficulties with
this work.
102
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
hold familiar - is the size of a one-, one and a half-, three- or four-year old child.156 The Border brownies of Britain analogous to the Kobold - 'are generally described as small men, about three feet in height."157 The fairies may also be small - note names such as 'wee folk', daoine beaga, an bunadh beag158 in Irish tradition and the diminutive fairies of the English romantics and also of the folk-tradition.159 It isworthy of mention that Elizabeth Andrews discusses a dwarf race of the North East of Ireland which seems to play the role of household familiar, a being invariably small who is often known as grogach or gruagach there and may have been introduced with the Plantation of Ulster.160 Evans Wentz writes that 'TheBuachailleen [or 'Little Herd Boy'] ismost likely one of the many forms assumed by the ; [he] is shape-shifting Fer Fi, the Lough Gur Dwarf... believed by the oldest of the Lough Gur peasantry to be the owner of the lake. Fer Fi is the son of Eogabal of Sidh Eogabail, and hence brother to Aine. He is also foster-son of
Manannan Mac Lir, and aDruid of the Tuatha de Danann.'16 Oa
The German dwarfs tend to be misshapen and ugly with immoderately large heads and unnaturally pale wrinkled faces. Their big, sunken, glowing eyes are often red and cannot tolerate the daylight. Their noses and ears are ill-shaped and inordinately large, their mouths broad and thick. They have grey or white beards, often long and flowing. Their hair is strong and unruly. Their thin hands are cold and soft, often black in colour and their feet are flat, bent and stunted, caus ing the dwarfs' ungainly carriage; sometimes they have only one leg.'6'
156 47. Ibid., s.v. 'Kobold', 36.
157 Katherine 158 Sean ?

1970,450-1. 159 Briggs, See tioned 160 160a also the in the Elizabeth
Briggs, A Dictionary S?illeabh?in,

s.v.
of Fairies, Penguin Books of Irish Folklore,

fairies' exotic and 'Size of the beings 17. See
1976,
Handbook
Detroit
fairies'. men
op. cit., illustrations. title of this
'Diminutive For more
see Evans paper Ulster Andrews, Folklore, op. cit., 81-2. s.v. 'Zwerge',
to parallels 226-32. Wentz, London
the
1913,
also
16,31,42,
50 and 57.
1025-6.
Evans Wentz, 161 Handw?rterbuch,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
103
The Kobold may be hideous in appearance: a big head with strong, projecting nose, long, thin arms and bandy legs that seem too weak to support his corpulent frame, and rough, sometimes red, hair that almost obscures his small grey eyes. He looks like a wrinkled old man.162 The brownies are described as 'small men. . .with brown faces and shaggy heads';163 the Spriggans of Cornwall, who resemble dwarfs, are 'usually very small and grotesquely ugly'. 164The Galician trasno is described as a long-bearded, good-natured dwarf of human form.165 The trasgu of Santander and Asturias is a little black man with green or brilliant eyes who is lame in the right leg. He is very jovial.'66 The duende of the Centre and South of Spain often has the face of an old man167 and has been depicted - in literature, at any rate - with one hand made of wool, the other of iron.168 Many of these traits are constants for dwarfs and for the household familiar 'of general European folklore' of whom Funk and Wagnall write, 'he is about the size of a year-old child but often has the face of an old man with a long beard. 169 Andrews describes the grogach 'with his large head and soft body, who appears to have no bones as he comes tumbling down the hills.'170 At Ballycastle she was told 'the Grogach was a hairy man about four feet in height, who could bear heat or cold without clothing.'"7' She describes another dwarf race, the Pechts as having long black hair, which grew in tufts; they
162 163 Ibid., Briggs, s.v. op. 'Kobold9, cit., 45. 36-7.
164 Ibid., 380-1. 165 Ram?n Otero Pedrayo (ed.), Historia de Galiza, Madrid 1979, Vol. I, 299. It is thanks to Messrs Ram?n Romani Barrientos and Jos?
Manuel Gonzalez Reboredo of Santiago that I have this reference.
166 Julio Caro 169. 167 Ibid., 170. 168 Ibid.

169 Funk 170 Andrews, op.
Baroja, Algunos
mitos
espa?oles,
Madrid
1974,
and Wagnall, cit.,
op. 47.
cit.,
s.v.
'household
familiar*.
171 Ibid., 89.
104
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
were small people, about four feet six inches in height, thick set, nearly as broad as they were long, strong in arms and shoulders, and with very large feet. When a shower of rain came on, they would stand on their heads and shelter themselves under their feet.172 The German dwarfs are sometimes naked or in rags, which might be attributed to the influence of the household familiar tradition since their nakedness or raggedness sets the scene for the migratory legend known as 'The New Suit' (ML 7015).173 Generally they are properly dressed, prefer ably in grey, green and red.174 Other colours worn include brown, black, 'erdfarben', blue, yellow and white. The Bergmdnnchen, mining dwarfs, dress like miners. Other dwarfs may dress in antiquated peasant costume, in gaily coloured dress, and so forth. The red or grey coat covers the dwarfs' deformed feet from the sight of men. If shoes are mentioned they may be of silver, glass or fur, and clogs and slippers are also described. Many dwarfs carry a staff, whip or switch.175 The Kobold's colours are black or grey. He may wear Old Frankish peasant dress, or red stockings and a long grey, green or red jacket, or a green suit, white stockings and buckled shoes and so forth. He also appears dressed as a friar (as does the duende - see below).176 The brownies are 'very raggedly dressed in brown clothes.'177 The trasgu wears a blood-red suit and carries a thin staff.178 The mazzarol of the valleys of the Trentino-Alto Adige is 'tutto rosso e velocissimo.'179 The dwarfs most commonly wear a red
172 Ibid.,
172a Op.
16.
cit., 81-2. s.v. 'Zwerge', Wentz, 1097. 343-4 on
173 Handw?rterbuch,
174 Ibid.,
175 Gods, 176 177 178 Ibid., Fairies, Ibid.,
1028.
1028-9. Cf. Evans 36-7. 169. 'The Magic Wand of and Druids'. s.v. 'Kobold',
op. cit., 45. Briggs, Caro Baroja, op. cit.,
179 Carlo Tullio Altan, La sagra degli ossessi, Firenze am indebted to Mr Giancarlo Rizzardi for this book.
1972, 380. I
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
105
pointed cap which is very tall and shines like glass. Other forms of headgear occur, such as variegated caps with tassels, pointed bonnets in black and blue, cocked-hats and tricorns. The dwarfs' caps have the power of conferring invisibility on their wearers, who cannot return to their own domain with out them.180 Each Kobold has a bonnet or hat which renders him invisible: awhite nightcap, a small felt hat, a red pointed bonnet.181 Red caps 'were very common for all kinds of the homelier fairies' in Britain and sometimes bestowed magical powers.182 The trasno183 and trasgu184 (regional versions of the one being) both wear a red cap. In the South of Spain the duende appears dressed as a friar, as he does in the literature of the last couple of hundred years of which Calderon's La Dama Duende provides amost entertaining example; Cosme is asked to describe the duende he claims to have seen: Era un fraile/Tamafiito, y tenia puesto/un cucurucho tamafo ;/Que p or e stas sefias creo/Que era duende
capuchino.185
[The Capuchins are the friarswith the longest hoods.] The household familiar usually wears 'a jaunty little cap' accord ing to Funk andWagnall.186 The belief that the dwarfs were the Fallen Angels was al ready known in Germany in the Middle Ages. According to other traditions they originated in the water, they were created before men and will regain possession of the Earth on the Last Day, they existed before the Deluge and rep resent the stones that Noah and his wife threw backwards, they are the children Eve hid from God (AT 758 The Various Children of Eve), they represent the weakest seed of Adam, they are beings between men and spirits, they are the children of unions between the devil and witches,
180 Handw?rterbuch, s.v. 181 Ibid., 'Kobold', 182 183 184 Briggs, Otero Caro Funk op. cit., op. op. cit., s.v. 37. 'Zwerge', 1030-2.
109. cit., 299. 169. s.v. *household
Pedrayo, Baroja,
185 Ibid,,
186
156 and 169-70.

and Wagnall, op. cit., familiar'.
106
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
they are immigrants from other lands, they are properly exiled or accursed men, the souls of the moon-dwellers, dead-especially those of unbaptized children.187 Their disappearance was explained by such events as the build ing of a church, church-singing and so on (motifs F382,
etc. )'88
An account has the Kobold saying of himself 'ich bin ein Christ wie andere Menschen und hoffe selig zu werden.' But he is often equated with the devil. He is explained as being a Fallen Angel as well, or as a sinful soul who atones for his fault on this earth. He can be evoked by the three holy names and is described as being unable to pray or pronounce the Holy Name of Jesus.189 In the South of Spain the duende is confused with ghosts and with the souls of the dead - sometimes those in Purgatory.'90 The trasno flees from the sign of the Cross and from holy water.'19 The Sluagh or fairy Hosts are the evil dead, accord
the Small People . . In Cornwall belief. ing to Highland . . .not good enough are the souls of the heathen dead
for Heaven nor bad enough for Hell . .. In Cornwall and Devon too the souls of unchristened babies were called Piskies . . .The Knockers in the tin mines were souls of the dead too, but of the Jews who had been transported there for their part in the Crucifixion. In Wales ... the fairies... were often described as a race of 'beings half-way between something material and spiritual, who were rarely seen.'192 As for the brownie, 'However benevolent he might be, he was afraid of Christian symbols' (motifs F382.1 et seq.).193 Religious objects were used as protection from the Irish fairies. 194
187 Handw?rterbuch, s.v. 'Zwerge', 1036-7.
188 Ibid.,
189 190 191 192 193 Ibid., Caro Otero Briggs, Ibid.,
1099.
s.v. Baroja, Pedrayo, op. 47. cit., 'Kobold', op. cit., op. 318. 45-6. 176. cit., 299.
194 ? S?illeabh?in, Handbook,
462.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
107
The German dwarfs live in groups, often in a kingdom under their own king. They form families and have chil dren.195 The Breton korrigans also seem to live in groups.196 Most of the other supernatural beings to whom reference has been made are not gregarious and this is undoubtedly because of their role as household familiars, where solitariness ismuch more appropriate; they are almost invariably male. The Kobold is often represented as male or sexless though some times in Northern Germany it is female under circumstances which indicate an original forest or water spirit.197 The dwarfs live preferentially in mountain caves. Their underground passages often cover long distances, go under rivers such as the Rhine, and emerge in a farmhouse kitchen or in a monastery or whatever. Where mining is or was car ried on they may live in the hollows of the pits or in the abandoned mine.198 Knockers are dwarf-like spirits who live in the Cornish mines and also in rocks, caves and wells.'99 The spriggans 'are only to be seen about old ruins, barrows, giants' quoits and castles, and other places where treasure is buried, of which they have the charge.'200 The korrigans live in rocks and caverns.201 In other parts of France there are similar traditions of cave-dwelling dwarfs, jetins, petits hommes, fadets, lutons, and so forth.202 The Kobold, brownie, boggart, trasno, trasgo, duende, mazzariol and a host of similar beings live in or around human dwellings as befits their household familiar role. The dwarfs dislike the daylight; help given to men does not outlast the night. They disappear by the first cock-crow or by the first stroke of the morning-bell: they fear the sun
195 Handw?rterbuch,
s.v.
'Zwerge',
1038.
196 Jean Markale, Traditions de Bretagne, Venders 1976, 141-2 and Paul S?billot, Le folk-lore de France, Paris 1905, Vol. I, 122-3.
197 Handw?rterbuch, s.v. 198 Ibid., 'Zwerge', 199 Briggs, S?billot, Ibid., Vol. op. cit. s.v. 'Kobold', 1040-3. 38.
254-6.
200 Ibid.,%81.
201 202 op. cit., Vol. I, 458-9. II, 122.
108
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
rise.203 Jetins204 and lutins205 are equally nocturnal, as is the household familiar generally. Much of the dwarfs' work has to do with precious stones and valuable metals; in consequence they are fabulouslV rich.206 The spriggans are in charge of buried treasure.207 Theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries in Spain - and contemporary men of letters - believed the duendes to be guardians of 'tesoros fingidos', false treasures, which turned to coals when theX came into the possession of men (cf. Caro Baroja mentions treasure-guarding motif F348.0.1).20 duendes who live in mysterious places.209 The korrigans possess all the hidden riches of the earth, in precious stones, gold and silver.210 The trade by which the dwarfs are best known ismetal work. According to old Germanic tradition they are skilled gold- and silversmiths. They are also proficient blacksmiths and make and repair tools for men. As potters, tailors and shoemakers they are equally dexterous: a worn shoe left outside the dwarfs' cave at night with appropriate payment is repaired by morning. Some dwarfs are miners. Dwarf women are adept at spinning.211 The Cornish knockers are miners.212 Des legendes, assez communes dans le Nord et dans l'Est [of France], repre'sentent les nains des grottes comme des personnages industrieux qui exercent un m'tier ou font une sorte de commerce d'echange;... La grotte de Michel a Frommelennes etait habite6e par des nains invisibles auxquels on portait le soir des outils ou des chaussures a raccomoder, qu'on allait reprendre
203 204 Handw?rterbuch, S?billot, op. cit., s.v. Vol. 'Zwerge', I, 458. 1032.
205 Pierre Charri?, Le folklore
du Haut-Vivarais,
1055-6. 159-61.
Paris 1968, 194.
206 Handw?rterbuch, s.v. 'Zwerge', 207 Briggs, op. cit., 381. 208 Caro Baroja, 147 and op. cit.,
209 Ibid., 165.

210 Markale, 141 op. cit., 211 Handw?rterbuch, s.v. 212 Briggs, op. cit., 254-6. and S?billot, 'Zwerge', See also op. 1057-8. cit., Vol. I, 122-3.
137-9.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
109
le lendemain matin, en ayant soin de toujours payer ce travail en nature.213 German folk tradition endows the dwarfs with many un common or supernatural powers. These include shape-shifting, prophecy, knowledge of hidden properties of plants and minerals, healing and causing illness (Zwergenschlag, Alpschoss -cf. 'fairy stroke,'poc si), invisibility and superhuman strength (the last two deriving from the dwarfs' Nebelkappe).214 The Kobold is also a shape-shifter, a giver of good counsel, a fore teller of death, a weather-prophet.215 Shape-shifting is also known to the spriggans.216 The trasno can present himself in the form of different animals,217 as can the trasgo.218 The mazzaro't di bosc, of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, is 'un omino vestito di rosso che si trasforma in gigante, gomitolo, ciuco'.2"9 The lutins of the Northern Ardeche often change into lambs.220 Although the dwarfs are known to steal food from men much of their relations with humans are of a more positive nature. Friendly relations often develop. They borrow and lend, give gifts, help the needy and bring good luck to some. The help they give includes spinning flax, washing up, sweep ing, threshing, grinding and so forth - work carried on in or about the house, which suggests an overlap with the tradi tion of the household familiar. They are also fond of making mischief, favourite tricks including plaiting the horses' manes, teasing the livestock and tormenting idle servants. A more inauspicious aspect of their relations with men is their revenge, which can take the form of landslides, avalanches, thunderstorms, general ill-luck and death.221
213 op. I, 459. S?billot, cit., Vol. on the same page. is given 'Nuton', s.v. 'Zwerge', 214 Handw?rterbuch, s.v. 'Kobold', 215 Ibid., 39-40. 216 217 218 219 Briggs, Otero Caro Altan, op. Baroja, op. cit., op. cit., cit., 360. op. cit., 417. cit., 299. 168 and 171. Pedrayo, A further example of a cobbling
1058-62.
220 Charri?, op. 221 Handw?rterbuch,
194. s.v. 'Zwerge': 'Speisediebe', 1064-67, 'Verkehr
110
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
The Kobold is irritable and untrustworthy, and fond of teasing. He seldom shows a fully benign nature. He has a par ticular affection for horses and plaits their manes. If neg lected he behaves like apoltergeist;his revenge can be fatal.222 Much of the same can be said about the brownie223 and the trasno, in the case of whose mischief-making all harm ismade
good by morning.224 With regard to the duendes, to whom
comparable traits are attributed, Caro Baroja notes 'el caracter bondadoso y casi sentimental que el pueblo les da en casos a estos "animales irracionales e invisibles."'225 Similar tradi trasgu,226 tions are associated with the afore-mentioned mazzariol227 and mazzarot di bosc. 228 In France I1 est rare que l'on attribue des actes me'chants aux nains des cavernes; ils commettent pourtant parfois des espiegleries assez de'sagre'ables pour les gens du vois inage.229 'Les Petits Hommes gascons e6taient plus bienveillant que malfaisants, et ils rendaient service au besoin.'230 Sebillot also refers to 'les actes de bienveillance des nains de divers autres groupes dont la residence e6tait souterraine.'231 Plusieurs recits de l'est de la France rapportent que les nains se plurent a rendre service aux hommes jusqu'au jour oiu ils e6prouverent leur ingratitude; comme les Korrigans de Bretagne, ils n'ont cesse leur relations avec eux, et n'ont abandonne' le pays qu'a la suite d'actes irre'verenciaux ou me'chants commis 'aleur e'gard.232
mit den Menschen', und 'Neckerei 1072-5, im Haus', 1079-81, 'Geschenke', 1083-5, 'Hilfe u. Bergwerk', Wald und Strafe', 'Rache 1086-7, s.v. 222 Ibid., 39-40. 'Kobold', 223 224 225 227 229 230 232 Briggs, Otero Caro op. cit., op. cit., 29 op. and 45-9. Pedrayo, Baroja, op. cit., 299. 170. cit., Gutm?tigkeit', in Feld, 'Hilfe 1088-9. 1077-9, Weide,
226 Ibid., 169.

Altan, 315. Vol. I, 458.
228 Ibid., 417.

S?billot, Loc. cit. Loc. cit. op. cit.,
231 Ibid., 459.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
111
Of Brittany's dwarfs 'IIfaut remarquer. . . que ces korrigans n'ont rien de diabolique ... ils ne sont ni bons ni mauvais, ce sont les circonstances qui en decident.'233 'Les lutins ne sont pas mechants, ils se contentent de faire des farces.'234 The dwarfs are fond of music and dance235 as are the korrigans,236 and these traits are widely associated with the fairies (motifs F262 and F26 1); both are, of course, very social pastimes. DISCUSSION 1 "The belief in 'small beings ... who play all manner of pranks 'is widespread through northern Europe, and theWolof of Africa believe in beings peculiarly similar to the lepre chaun.'237 The leipreachan, household familiar and dwarf are all diminutive beings and there is also a tradition of the fairies being small. Alfred Nutt considered that 'the diminutive size of the fairy race belongs more especially to Teutonic tradi tion as developed within the last 2,000 years'238 but the existence of tiny beings in the folk tradition of many and varied peoples seems to belie that. The Passamaquoddy, who live close to the Canadian border, believe in two kinds of grotesque little people, for whom a European origin has been posited.239 'The idea of a dwarf who grants power or serves as guardian spirit is extremely widespread west of the Rocky . .'239aEvansWentz (pp. 237-238) givesnumerous Mountains.
233 234 Markale, Charri?, op. op. cit., cit., 140. 194. s.v. 'Zwerge', 1045.
235 Handw?rterbuch,
236 Markale,
124.
op. cit.,
141-2
(Type 503); S?billot,
op. cit., Vol.
II,
'The Elusive Elf: Some Thoughts on the 237 John J. Winberry, Nature and Origin of the Irish Leprechaun' in Folklore, Vol. 87 (1976), 63. See also Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, Chicago 1978, 105.
238 239 239a Richard M. Dorson, cit., Peasant Customs and Savage Myths, London
1968, Vol.
I, 352.
268-70. Bollingen-Princeton 1974,102-3. Shamanism,
op. Briggs, M. Eliade,
112
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
examples of supematural dwarfs in North America, Asia and Oceania. Possibly the supposed abode of these beings does at times strengthen the tradition of their diminutive size. Of the Vikings in Irish folklore Christiansen notes that they 'have somehow been assimilated to the fairies, and depicted as small of stature, invariably old'! "'The Danes were surely small, how else could they live in these little rooms and passages in the raths?"'240 Of 'earth-houses and other structures' in Scotland Lewis Spence notes that 'The subterranean charac ter of these structures demanded a restricted height, and this may have helped to form the legend of a dwarfish race of Picts.'241 He writes that primitive man believed the soul to be of diminutive size, because the body could not otherwise contain it,242 and that references to the dead as diminutive are fairly numerous in folklore and 'old' literature.243 Irish tradi tion describes the soul leaving the body in the form of a diminutive creature - a dove, a butterfly, amouse - and the external soul of a giant may reside in an egg in some stories. 244 'On some Greek vases the soul is seen issuing from the body as a pygmy. In Egypt, the ka, or double of the dead man, is frequently represented, sometimes on bas-reliefs, as a
dwarf.245
The leipreachadn also shares his appearance with the dwarf and household familiar. The wrinkled, bearded face of an old man might be attributed to an obvious reason, old age; these
240 Reidar Th. Christiansen, 'The People of the North' in Lochlann,
Vol.
II (1962), 139. 241 Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins, Wellingborough, tonshire 1981 (original edition 1946), 126.
185. Also Evans between Wentz, pp. extensively 69. 239; op. cit., and 244. 232
Northamp
fairies
242 Ibid., are discussed 243 Ibid.,
diminutive
244 6 S?illeabh?in, Handbook,

245 Spence, op. cit., 70. Also,
177.
Evans Wentz, op. cit. 239-40.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
113
supernatural beings, like the fairies, do not seem to be immortal but they do have extremely long life spans, often indicated in the migratory legend of the changeling, 5085. But the fairies often have the youth and beauty of ordinary mortals whereas the others often have the unnatural pallor of death. Spence argues that 'the goblin face and form is a replica of the manner in which generations of artists have sought to depict either the dead soul, or the dead body returned from the grave'. 'It represents humanity sick unto death, on the verge of mortality'.246 In this regard the motifs of 'Fairy otherworld confused with land of the dead' (F160.0.2) and 'Fairies as souls of the departed' (F25 1.2) are of interest. Fairy beauty and opulence are often only illusion, the ointment in the tale of Midwife to the Fairies (ML 5070) giving the power to see through it. But this glamour is not used by either leipreacha'n or dwarf who appear to the world in all their ugliness unless, in the case of the latter, invisibility is used. Perhaps the large nose, ears and feet and the awkward, un gainly carriage of the leipreachan and similar beings are related to the motif of the fairies having physical disabilities (F254.1): Scandinavian ellewomen with beautiful, but hol low, faces; the beautiful Highland Glaistigs concealing their goats' hooves with long green dresses; the Shetland Henkies so-called because they limped while dancing; the fairies of Mull with only one nostril; 'The Bean Sith was detected by her extraordinary voracity..., a frightful front tooth, the entire want of a nostril, a web foot, preternaturally long breasts, etc.'; 'the Aberdeenshire Brownies had a thumb with the rest of the fingers joined together,'247 and so forth. 'It seems likely,' in Katharine Briggs' opinion, 'that these characteristics were given to the fairies by people who believed them to be fallen angels, or yet more closely related to the Devil.'248 The origins most usually assigned by the folk to dwarfs
246 Ibid., 82.
247 248 op. Briggs, Loe. cit. cit., 92-3.
114
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
and fairies are ultimately Christian; could church sculpture, then, have influenced people's ideas of their appearance? 'The function of gargoyles is to guard the church from the Devil by staring out in all directions';249 gargoyles have been sug gested as the origin of the Passamaquoddy's little people.250 The household familiar should be most susceptible to influ ence in this respect: he too guards a building and, in Arnold van Gennep's words, derives from the 'besoin generalement humain d'une protection directe et a demi humaine et concrete.'251 On the other hand the grotesque and the ugly are very commonly used to ward off evil -instance the hideous Sheelah-na-gigs in church sculpture flagrantly dis playing their genitals, 'nor does it seem a mere coincidence that guards, scaredevils and gargoyles in very different cul tures are shown in phallic display'252 - so that in this regard the household familiar as guardian of a homestead and the leipreachan and dwarf as treasure-guardians might well be ugly as added protection of their charges. But to attribute these features to church sculpture alone is certainly too facile an explanation, as points yet to be made should show, and even were that not so the derivation of the gargoyle's features should surely lead back to popular culture. The development of Hephaistos (or Hephaestus), the divine smith of the Greeks, in the popular sphere is of great significance. Motz shows that Herodotus equated Hephaistos with Ptah, the Egyptian god of jewellers, a misshapen dwarf with large head and crooked legs; but thiswas not the idealized Hephaistos of high mythology, 'but rather those grotesque of the which representations god, artisans, especially smiths, were in the habit of hanging up near their forge to dispel the evil spirits . .. The resemblance to Germanic legend is striking;
249 Ibid., 269-70.
250 251 Loe. Arnold cit. van Gennep, 43. Textes in?dits and A. Note sur le folklore fran?ais con
Paris 1975, temporain, I. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 252 in expressive movements', munication, teufel' Cambridge in the Cathedral
'Similarities in Robert 1972, of Lorch, 307.
differences the
between
cultures Com 'G?hn
Hinde
(ed.), Non-Verbal illustration of the
Germany.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
115
are here present: the lameness for both manifestations attached to the figure of V9lundr [the master smith] and the development into a pygmy; there exists no beautified smith figure, but neither was there a tradition of sculptural or pictorial idealization.'253 Mircea Eliade writes that 'manifestations of the unaccus tomed and the extraordinary generally provoke fear and with drawal (. . .). This setting apart sometimes has positive effects; it does not merely isolate, it elevates. Thus ugliness and deformities, while marking out those who possess them, at the same time make them sacred.,253a The legs and feet of the leipreachan and analogous beings are of peculiar interest, and in this respect let the lameness of Hephaistos and V9lundr be borne inmind.254 The leipreachan is bandy-legged, the dwarf's legs - if he has two - are bent and stunted; the Kobold, too, is bandy-legged while the trasgu is lame in the right leg. Such disabilities, of course, are commonly associated with dwarfism in humans so that the explanation may be, so to speak, near at hand. Another possible explanation is themotif of fairy defects, which serves to emphasize a supernatural nature. But having one leg or being lame in the right leg seems to have another meaning: of a figure of Dionysus in a fresco in ist, Pompeii L. Curtius writes: 'Weil er ein Unterweltsgott erscheint er einschuhig',255 while Amelung claims 'das die Entbl6ssung des eines Fusses cultische Bedeutung hatte, und gelegentlich im Dienst der chthonischen Gottheiten vor genommen wurde'. . .256 This motif of monosandalism, the
253 Lotte Motz, 'Of Elves and Dwarfs' in Arv 29-30 (1973-74), 112. I am indebted to Dr Patricia Lysaght for sending me a copy of this
article.
253a In Patterns
254 Cf. above,
in Comparative
112.
Religion,
London
1983,
18.
255 L. Curtius, Die Wandmalerei Pompejis, quoted in J.F. Kileen, 'Fear an ?nais' in C?ltica, Vol. IX (1971), 203. I am grateful to Mr to motif of monosandalism Gear?id ? Crualaoich for first bringing this^ my attention, and to him and to Dr Sean ? Coile?in for this and sub
sequent valuable 256 587 references suggestions. Die Amelung, in Killeen, Skulpturen loc. cit. des vatikanischen Museums, Vol. II, to it, for reading drafts of this paper and for many
quoted
116
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
right foot usually being bare, has sinister and magical associ in literature and may 'represent a ations, is well-attested development of the primitive mutilation relatively civilized (loss of a foot) involved in the production of a sorcerer'. 256a is widely associated with the sacral.257 Proinsias Mutilation MacCana notes: it seems at least to be generally agreed that the wear ing of one sandal has to do with situations inwhich the two worlds converge and mortals encounter divine, sometimes chthonic beings.258 of the lameness of the development Bearing in mind Hephaistos and V9lundr one may well ask if the trasgu's lameness or the single leg of some dwarfs might not be related to this motif of monosandalism, and if so, might not this in turn lead to the idea of a general deformity of the legs in these beings, who are usually artisans? Chthonic beings have already been mentioned and let it be noted that there is much in the traditions of the beings under discussion to indicate an association with the earth. Levi-Strauss writes that it is a universal characteristic of men In mythology born from the earth that at the moment they emerge from the depth they either cannot walk or they walk clumsily. This is the case of the chthonian beings in of the Pueblo: Muyingwu, who leads the mythology the emergence, and the chthonian Shumaikoli are lame ('bleeding-foot,' 'sore-foot'). The same happens of the Kwakiutl after they have been to the Koskimo swallowed by the chthonian monster, Tsiakish: when they returned to the surface of the earth "they limped forward or tripped side-ways."259
256a Killeen, op. cit., 204 257 Killeen, loe. cit. Cf. Arnold Van Gennep,
London 1977, 72 on mutilation 'Shamans Cana, 'The as and Topos a rite Smiths'. of the Single Sandal in Irish of pp. Shamanism, 258 Proinsias 470-74, Mac
The Rites
separation.
of Passage,
Cf. Eliade
Tradition'
Crucible, 259
in C?ltica, Vol. X (1973),

105. L?vi-Strauss, 'The
165. See Eliade, The Forge and the

Study of Myth' in Struc
Claude
Structural
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE 3
STUDY
117
In very many accounts the leipreachan's attire is basically that of the Irish countryman of the last century.260 Certainly it is in that century that the leipreachan was first popularized in print and contemporary pictorial representation may well have established the archetype for subsequent generations. The great majority of accounts was recorded in the first half of this century from people who were in their prime in the second half of the 19th century and consequently contextual details mirror aspects of the contemporary social life. Etymo logizing attempts to explain lorgaddn as a derivative of lorga, shin, with reference to the knee-breeches, would not have been appropriate in the 19th century when thismode of dress was the male norm. Fairies in Irish and British tradition often dressed much like the mortals for whom they were a reality; the German dwarfs sometimes wore antiquated peasant dress (see above). 'Frequently the fairies seem to adopt the style of dancing engaged in by the natives of the country they in habit, precisely as they sometimes adopt its costume.'261 Concerning the tradition of the hairy household familiar Spence asks Were the early Roman dead wrapped in dog-skins as some other Mediterranean corpses were in goat-skins, and did this practice give rise, partly or wholly, to a belief in hirsute ghosts or spirits? 262 The Roman household spirit was the lar. 'He is usually represented as clad in the skins of dogs, the animal associ ated with the dead.'263
tural Anthropology, Penguin Books 1979, 215-6. I am indebted to Mr Gear?id ? Crualaoich for bringing this reference to my notice. For
further Fontana references 1970, see Chapter Mircea VII Eliade, Myths, and Earth 'Mother Dreams the Cosmic and Mysteries, Hierogamies'.
260 See, for example, photograph 56 in Timothy Tradition in Rural Ireland, London 1977.
261 263 Spence, Ibid., 4. op. cit., 179.
O'Neill, Life and
262 Ibid., 5.
118
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
Leipreachain and dwarfs are represented as wearing a variety of different hats and caps but themost characteristic is a tall conical hat, often appearing in a soft version with the top hanging down in such away that it resembles a night-cap. This is probably the origin of the monastic dress often worn by duende and Kobold. These caps, as has been mentioned above, may bestow magic powers. Penzer notes magical hats in Grimm ('a wishing hat, and whoever puts it on can wish himself where he will, and immediately he is there'), in Busk's Folk-Lore ofRome (ahat of invisibility), in theNibelungenlied ('Tarnhut, or hat of darkness') and in the Nifflunga Saga, and the 'Nebelkappe, or cloud-cap, of King Alberich, a dwarf of old German romance', and in tales from Brittany, Portugal, Japan and Arabia.264 Perhaps the leapreachan's power to mysteriously disappear ultimately derives from this conical hat which alone of all his recorded headgear is not - or was not - also worn by his human contemporaries. Note that the often pointed or horned hat of the shamans can be the most important part of their dress and the repository of theirmagical powers.264a The so-called Tollund man, an Iron Age corpse found in a Danish bog, wore a pointed leather cap, similar to those of miners of the Hallstatt culture found in the copper- and salt mines of the Tyrol.265 Witches and wizards today are often depicted as wearing tall conical hats. The members of the cofradi'as that take part in the Spanish Holy Week proces sions wear cardboard capirotes inside their hoods, which worn without the capirotes resemble night-caps (bearing in mind that excepting two holes for the eyes they completely cover the head). The Phrygian cap or bonnet, which is identified with the cap of liberty, given to the Roman slave upon emancipation and in more modern times become the symbol of Republican France, is similar. Late-mediaeval peasants' headgear resembled the night-cap.
264 264a N.M. Penzer, The Ocean Eliade, Shamanism, of Story, 154-5. Vol. I, 25-8, London MCMXXIV.
265 Stuart Piggott, Ancient Europe, Edinburgh 1973, 197. See illus tration, Plate XXVII (a) facing p. 192. I am grateful to Mr Aidan
Macdonald and to Mr Michael Monk for this reference.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
119
In paintings the divine smith of the Greeks, Hephaistos, 'is surrounded by sexual symbols, riding an ithyphallic mule, escorted by Silenes and Satyrs, wearing the Pilos (a round felt hat); the cultic feast dedicated to him is a fertility festival. No overtly phallic significance is attached to the Germanic smith figure.'266 This pilos, or pileus as the Romans called it, whatever about its phallic significance, seems to resemble the cap of the dwarfs and leipreachan, and in both Athens and Rome it, like theirs, seems to have been primarily associ ated with skilled workers.267 By and large the colour of the leipreachan's clothing is more significant than the style. Red is by far the most com mon and crops up too in relation to the analogous supernatural beings, where it is the colour of the characteristic head-dress as well as other items of clothing (note motifs such as F233.3 Red fairy, F236.1.1 Fairies in red clothes, F236.3.2 Fairies with red caps). Red appears to be the colour par excellence of the clothing of the Irish fairies. 'It would not be an exaggeration to say that the general auspiciousness of reds and yellows is a direct outcome of sun-worship in one form or another,' writes Penzer.268 Hoffmann Krayer and Bichtold Staubli suggest sun and fire symbolism for the preferred red of the dwarfs and the red of theKobold they see as symbolizing the fire in the hearth.269 Victor Turner, in 'Colour Classification inNdembu Ritual', discusses the colour triad, black, white and red:270 'These are the only colours for which Ndembu possess primary terms.'271 He shows the primacy of these three colours in other cultures with comparative data from Africa, Malaya, Australia, North America, the Ancient World and archaeological literature. 'Among the earliest symbols produced by man are the three
266 267 Motz, op. cit., 115. Brittanica, Vol. s.v. VIII, 18. 1028. 'Micropaedia', 943, s.v. *pileus'
Encyclopaedia
(1974).
268 op. cit., Penzer, 269 Handw?rterbuch, 'Zwerge',
270 In Michael Banton (ed.), Anthropological Study of Religion, London 1978, 47-84.
271 Ibid.,47-S.
Approaches
to the
120
DIARMUID
6 GIOLLAIN
colours representing products of the human body..
'272
Thus red is universally a symbol of blood, white is frequently a symbol of breast-milk and semen (and sometimes of pus), while ... the Chhandogya Upanishad relates the black colour with faeces and urine (though other cultures connect urine with semen and both with whiteness).273 Since the experiences which the three colours rep resent are common to all mankind we do not have to invoke diffusion to explain their wide distribution. We do have to invoke diffusion to explain why other colours . . . are ritually important in certain cultures.274 Turner shows this colour triad to be prominent in the burial practices and cave art of the European Palaeolithic.275 It is tempting to speculate on a continued pre-eminence of these three colours up to and beyond the dawn of the Christian era: white has come to mean 'good' and black 'evil' in Chris tian symbolism (as found in documents such as the Apo calypse,276 and in the idea of 'white' and 'black' magic); since fairies and dwarfs were fitted into the Christian scheme of things (see the traditional accounts of their origin), between the 'white' and the 'black' - they were seen as being neither good nor evil - perhaps it seemed appropriate to associate them with the remaining colour of the triad to indicate their neutral position between the angels and the devils. This notwithstanding, red has a more obvious association formost people: we make a number of oppositions
272 Ibid., 80.
273 Loe. cit.
... in which
red
274 Ibid., 82. 275 Ibid., 78.

276 Motz, it on symbolism of a tract purity, Patrick, 122 op. cit., is of interest eight burial Eucharistie (i.e. death), note 39. While the colours brown, London on existence of which the 1887. the to note subject in the of Christian Brecc to mean blood of Lebar the
white same, red,
seems
green, Part
Christ, and black,
the devil. See Whitley
Stokes, The Tripartite Life of
I, CLXXVII-CXCI,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
121
is contrasted not only with green but also with other 'colours', notably white, black, blue and yellow. When we make paired oppositions of this kind, red is con sistently given the same value, it is treated as a danger sign: hot taps, live electric wires, debit entries in account books, stop signs on roads and railways. This is a pattern which turns up in many other cultures besides our own and in these cases there is often a quite explicit recog nition that the 'danger' of red derives from its 'natural' association with blood.277 Could red as the favoured colour of these supernatural beings then be seen as a warning sign? They are not seen as being intrinsically evil - unlike, for example, vampires and were-wolves, who need no warning signs - but rather like the afore-mentioned electric wires: dangerous if interfered with. It does not seem possible to explain the pre-eminence of red in relation to its popularity as a dye in historic or pre historic times; it does not appear to be a colour that was more easily acquired than others nor does it at any stage seem to have had an importance that distinguished it from other dyes. Could the colour red be due to the perceptual conditions under which it was seen? For example a supernatural being 'seen' against the rising or setting sun (as in the case of at least one previously mentioned memorate) would momentarily cause the observer to be blinded, leaving an after-image in the eyes; the momentary closing of the eyes would cause the light of the sun to appear red through the closed eye-lids, thus possibly affecting the description of the being then, or at a later stage, identified;278 'Our eyes assemble a visual image on the retina in perhaps one-tenth of a second. But it is only in the subsequent two seconds of processing that we decide what we "see".'279 Green is the second most impor tant colour in the attire of fairies and leipreachan and in com
277 grateful 279 Edmund to Mr L?vi-Strauss, Leach^ Gear?id ? Crualaoich beasts Fontana/Collins, for this reference. abound ? 1979, 22. I am
278 This type of problem

Roy Perrott, 'Strange
is fully discussed 1980, 14.
in Honko,
but
op. cit.
believing?'
is seeing
in The Sunday Times, 2 November
122
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
binations it usually appears with red: could this association be linked with the phenomenon of after-images? Red and green are so-called complementary colours: to fix one's eye on a red object for a while and then to look at a white sur face will cause a green, somewhat amorphous, version of the object to appear to the eye.280 To continue the hypothetical situation of the supernatural being seen against a red setting sun the red would give a green after-image and thus possibly lead to the two colours being subsequently associated with the supernatural creature. Also worthy of mention is that red and green, along with violet, constitute the so-called primary colours (although for paints and so forth these are red, blue and yellow); the first two, though, are much more common in nature, which may explain why violet never became so symbolically important. 'Green is generally acknowledged to be the fairy colour, particularly in Celtic countries, and for this reason is so un lucky that many Scotswomen refuse to wear green at all,' writes Briggs.281 In British folksong, the colour is associated with death - possibly indicating another connexion between the dead and the fairies.282 As Professor Krappe remarks: The souls of the dead may go into trees, becoming indistinguishable from genuine vegetation spirits. They naturally assume green, the colour of the fruit-bearing earth, which for that very reason becomes also the colour of death and of the nether powers.283 Dath na h-uaine is entered in Dineen's dictionary as 'the colour of green, death-colour'.284 Of the preferred grey and
280 281 282 283 (1930), s.v. berg L. Mary Briggs, Spence, op. op. Barker and 108. 68 Christopher Cook (ed.), op. 'Introduction 312-4. Folk-Lore to
Psychology'
in Pears Cyclopaedia
cit., cit., See
1977-78,
also Evans from
Pelham Books, Q8-Q9.

Wentz, L.C. cit., Wimberley, Science
quoting
in the English and Scottish Ballads

99 quoting from A.H. Ibid., 90. See also Eliade, Patterns,
(1928),
Krappe, 352-4. Der For
165.
The of Folk-Lore
284 Patrick
'uaine'. 1952, See
S. Dinneen,
also Hans 'Tod
An Irish-English Dictionary,
Hartmann, und Gr?n'. Totenkult a general
Dublin
1927,
Heidel of the
118-30,
in Irland, discussion
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
123
green of the dwarfs, 'diese schlagt die brilcke zu den Wald

geistemr.
The appearance of other colours in the dress of super natural beings, if not reflecting the imagination of narrators, may be related to the after-image phenomenon. If having been dazzled by the sun one closes the eyes for a fewmoments the important point at this stage is the changes in colour you will see taking place, which are generally believed to occur because the bright light has slightly overbleached the retinal pigments and they are taking longer than usual to recover. ( ...) The colour changes themselves are probably due to the fact that some pig ments regenerate a bit more quickly than others and thus a sequence of colours is perceived.286 The colour or colours eventually identified may depend on a number of factors including the mental and visual re covery time of the observer. Unlikely or not this explanation cannot account for the occasional presence of brown or black in the apparel of the leipreachan and other beings (including the brownie). Accord ing to one of the Upanishads red is the colour of the original fire, white of the original water and black of the original earth.287 Brown, black and 'erdfarben' arementioned among the colours of the dwarfs' clothing (see above), the last two particularly interesting in relation to a chthonic origin for these beings. This discussion of colour touches on the question of 'La lumiere mystique' as examined by Mircea Eliade. He deals
significance
of the Green'
of this colour
in Studia
in Ireland see Brian O Cu?v, 'The Wearing

nos. 'Zwerge', be as 17-18, 1028. to see the red tempting in some way related 107-9.
285 Handw?rterbuch, 286 Barker and Cook, 287 Turner, op. cit., hat or of to ? the beings moines such we
Hibernica, s.v.
op. cit., Q8. 75. It would discussing
conical to the
are
being
flame
flames
represented
'Les but
as issuing from the top of the Buddha's head '

"flamboyants" a connection (pp. is difficult
Mircea Eliade, M?phistoph?l?s
et l'androgyne, Gallimard
? as stylized perhaps 84-6) to support. to (References
(p. 45),
1981.)
124
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
with light in religious experiences, spontaneous or induced, and notes that 'quelles que soient la nature et l'intensit' de l'experience de la Lumiere, elle evolue toujours en experience religieuse '*287a
4 There are several accounts of the leipreachan's abode being near human habitations. In one account (supra) an Antrim 'leppercon' certainly plays the household familiar's role (pos sibly influenced by the gruagach, who was probably intro duced by immigrants). The leipreachan's association with ring-forts may also point to influences from the household familiar tradition as the forts were formerly human dwellings - indeed there is evidence of post-mediaeval habitation in some cases.288 A few of Crofton Croker's stories also deal with the household familiar tradition, but in a sophisticated milieu; perhaps these stories are of British origin since the class among which they were collected was, by and large, if not of British origin then fairly anglicized, and one could as well surmise that a native tradition of spirits who haunt houses might not thrive in an environment where the humble people live to a considerable extent in one-roomed cabins.289 Perhaps the native gentry possessed a household spirit tradi tion (cf. Crofton Croker's Mac Carthy) and passed it on, with its mansions (plus servants and nannies? ), to the new aristocracy, which possessed a similar tradition - and like other aspects of upper class culture it filtered down to the peasantry in the years succeeding the upheavals of the 17th century, but in a corrupted form, or filtered down tomerge with peasant traditions then extant (and in this respect we
287a In M?phistoph?l?s 21-110 [p. 109J and Occultism, Witch craft and Cultural Fashions, Chicago 1976, 100, 144, 118-9. 288 Sean P. ? R?ord?in, Antiquities of the Irish Countryside, Lon
don 3-4. 1974, 289 According houses inhabited to were the census of mud 1841 more than a third of all
one-roomed
cabins.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
125
might note a hint of aristocratic bias in the doings of another supernatural being, the bean si).290 It must be said, however, that household familiar influ ence in the association with ring-forts is unlikely: note that the fairies, too, are connected with ring-forts. According to Westropp stone monuments all over Ireland are connected with the pu'ca.291 Ring-forts are often attributed to the 'Danes', a historic people distorted by folk tradition, as are theMoors: Con el nombre de moros y sus equivalentes se desig nan en muchas regiones espafioles y de otros lugares de Europa (por ejemplo, en Sicilia o en Provenza), a los autores de todo monumento antiguo cuyo origen se desconoce.292 Of such 'mythical races' Vicente Risco writes that the belief inmythical semi-human or almost human populations, inhabitants of prehistoric monuments, ruins, great rocks, springs, etc., is found everywhere, often in relation with hid den treasures: 'En Europa existe unha verdadeira mitoloxia da prehistoria. . .' Referring to Reinach's work in this field he notes that dolmens are rarely sepulchres in popular tradi tion; in France they are known as Four des Geants, Maison des Fees, Maison du Diable, in Switzerland Pierre du Sauvage, in Scandinavia Elfstenar or Hexensteiner, Heidensteiner, Elfsquarnar, in Germany Tedtensteine (recte Todtensteine?) (Note the forms leaba Dhiarmada agus Grainne and 'giant's grave' in Ireland); elves always live in caves or souterrains, gnomes and 'Koboldos' (presumably Kobalt rather than Kobold) go under the earth and are linked with mines and treasures, the korrigans are found at springs, particularly
290 Patricia 42-44(1974-76),
291 Lore
Lysaght, 111-3.
'Irish Banshee
Traditions'
in B?aloideas
'A Folk a general the fairy Madrid
183 from op. Spence, cit., quoting TJ. Westropp, of County in Folk-Lore Clare' XXI 183. For Survey of the association discussion monuments of megalithic with see Evans Wentz, belief VIII. op. cit., Chap. 292 Carlo Alonso del Real, Superstici?n y supersticiones,
1971,137.
126
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
near dolmens, and the dwarfs guard treasures and live in ancient stone monuments.293 Spence notes 'the theory that the spirits or ghosts of the dead take up their dwelling in standing stones which mark their place of sepulture' and considers that if we can sub stantiate the residence of fairies in standing stones we shall have established their connexion with the dead. He observes that they appear to be associated with the sepultures of almost every period -the New Stone Age, the Iron Age, even churchyards.294 the leipreachan's preferential abode is far Generally from man's. Trees, bushes and woods may be his choice because of that, or perhaps his association with the lone fairy tree or bush, or with the trees that grow in ring-forts, by extension becomes an association with trees in general. A connexion between German dwarfs and forest spirits owing to the green the former often wear has been suggested above, as has Krappe's assertion that green becomes the colour of death because the dead enter trees and assume their colour. Irish tradition often tells of souls spending their purgatory in trees.295 In Egypt 'tradition has it that when the Egyptian gods were displaced, first by Christian and then by Moslem saints, the trees were allotted to them.'296 is the fairy tree above all others and in The whitethom relation to this Estyn Evans has written: In Ireland the trees which the elder faiths had en dowed with magic qualities were all small trees and shrubs - especially the rowan, holly, elderberry and whitethom - and the evidence of archaeology and palaeobotany is that these plants first became common in the prehistoric landscape as weeds of cultivation fol lowing forest clearance by early cultivators. Thus they
293 294 and In Otero I, 309-10. op. cit., Vol. Pedrayo, For the connection 181. cit., op. Spence, see Eliade, the dead 232. 217, 219, Patterns,
between
megaliths
295 ?
from
S?illeabh?in, Handbook,
97-9.
177 and Sean O'Sullivan,
Legends
London 1977, Ireland, 296 186. op. cit., Spence,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
127
would have become symbols of the farming year, their white blossoms a sign of spring and the end of killing frosts, their red berries a token of the fulfilment of harvest and the promises of renewed life. 297 It is likely that the leipreacha'n's connexion with fairy trees derives from his association with the fairies. Hills, mountains, rocks, crevices and caves may also be favoured because they are far from human habitation, but they too are part of awider tradition, being similarly popular with continental supernatural beings. Note that these beings appear to live in, rather than on, the hills and mountains and thus the emphasis is on the subterranean aspect of this habitat, as is also the case of the ring-forts. 'Mountains are the nearest thing to the sky, and are thence endowed with a twofold holiness', writes Eliade: 'on one hand they share in the spatial symbolism of transcendence - they are "high", "vertical", on the other, they are the "supreme", and so on -and especial domain of all hierophanies of atmosphere, and there fore, the dwelling of the gods.'297a Of the aes si'de, fairies, of Old Irish tradition Gerard Murphy writes From ancient times they have been looked upon as dwelling either in certain hills called sidi (. . .), or in faraway islands, or beneath the waters of the sea or of lakes. To the learned in Gaelic Ireland the adessi'de were known as Tuatha De' Donann (later Danann), which originally meant the Peoples of the Goddess Donu.298 The Tuatha De Danann were supposedly dispossessed by the invading Gaels.
297 E. Estyn
A.T. Dec. Eliade, 297a 20. For Lucas, 1963. 'The
Evans, Irish Folk Ways, London

Sacred Trees of Ireland' the sacred in Journal
1976, 297. See also

of the Cork Archae in
ological
and Historical
For Patterns. On the 99.
Society, Vol. LXVIII, Nos.

of of cult
207 and 208, Jan.
a discussion
see Chap. VII of trees symbolism see Evans Wentz, trees 434-5.
In Patterns, the word sid,
298 Gerard Murphy, in ?igse XVII (1977-79),
Saga and Myth

see Tom?s ?
in Ancient
'The
Ireland, Cork 1971,

Semantics of Sid',
Cathasaigh,
137-55.
128
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
It was then decided that the country should be divided into two parts, the lower half going to the Tuatha De and the upper half to the Gaels. Thus the Tuatha De' retired underground and the Daghdha assigned to each of their chiefs a sz'dh or 'fairymound', and throughout the countryside such mounds are still regarded - or were until very recently - as the special dwelling places of the fairy people.299 Andrew Lang considered the fairies to be "a lingering memory of the Chthonian beings 'the Ancestors'.",300 Such beings, according to Spence, were regarded inGreek myth as subter ranean dwellers who primarily presided over crops.301 In the case of the dwarfs living underground is additionally approp riate as they are skilled workers inmetal, which they mine themselves. Of caves Mircea Eliade writes la grotte represente l'autre monde, mais egalement l'Univers tout entier. Ce n'est plus la valorisation immediate, "naturelle", de la grotte en tant que lieu tene'breux, et donc souterrain, qui nous permet de saisir son symbolisme et sa fonction religieuse, - mais l'experience suscitee par la pe'netration dans un espace sacre et, en fin de compte, "total", c'est a dire con stituant un monde-en-soi. (...) Habiter une caveme n'implique pas necessairement descendre parmi les vivre dans un autre monde, plus vaste ombres,-mais et plus complexe, parce que incorporant de multiples modes d'existance (dieux, demons, ames des morts, etc.), et partant, rempli de "richesses" et d'innombrables virtualites (cf. les mythes desacralisees des grottes aux tresors, etc.). 301a
Also:
if the galleries of mines and the mouths

299 300 301 301a Proinsias Spence, Loe. cit. In De Cf. Mac op. Cana, cit., Celtic 109. Mythology, Hamlyn
of rivers were
1970, 65.
Zalmoxis
? Gengis-Khan,
Paris
1970,
38.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
129
likened to the vagina of the Earth-Mother, the same symbolism applied a fortiori to grottos and caverns. And we know that caverns had a religious significance in the palaeolithic period. In prehistoric times the cavern, often resembling, or ritually transformed into, a labyrinth, was at once a theatre of initiation and a place where the dead were buried.30lb The leipreachan tends to be encountered, rather than does he live, under a mushroom, fds na haon oz'che, whose sudden appearance, perhaps, leaves ground for popular associ ation, as does its resemblance to a stool (cf. 'toadstool'). Note the word pu'ca in Irish names for fungi. (Could this be a derivative or cognate of the English 'punk' - itself possibly a cognate of Greek sphongos and Latinfungus302 - assimilated to the name of the legendary supernatural being?). The lezpreachan is most commonly encountered at night. This is to be expected: night is when supernatural beings are most active and mortals at their most vulnerable. This ties in with general European tradition - the sensitive eyes of the dwarfs cannot stand the sunlight and the dwarfs themselves disappear with the first cock-crow, and so forth. The natural and supernatural worlds tend to parallel each other to an extent and yet in certain crucial respects the one seems to be the antithesis of the other: the upper half goes to the Gael and the lower half to the Tuatha De in the physical division of the land, day goes to man and night to the spirit in the temporal division of the world: One of the characteristics of the otherworld with which the Irish and Welsh imagination makes constant play is the relativity of time and space: perspectives are reversed and brevity becomes length and length brevity as one crosses the tenuous border between the natural and the supernatural.303
301b In Myths,
Evans Wentz, op. cit.,
Dreams
448-52.
and Mysteries,
Collins
1970,
172. Also
302 Claude Anthropology

303 Mac
'Mushrooms L?vi-Strauss, 2, Penguin Books 1978, 231.

Mythology, 65.
in Culture'
in Structural
Cana,
130
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
The only two days specifically mentioned in association with the leipreachan are those strongly connected with the supernatural anyway, both in Ireland and Britain,304 namely May Day and Hallowe'en. These are the days, too, that the fairies change their abode, a tradition that seems to spning from the parallelism between the two worlds of man and spirit: people also changed their residence around these days, the terminal dates of transhumance. It may be remarked that the Celtic year was divided in two: a winter half beginning at Samhain, which may also have marked the commencement of the new year, and a summer half at Beltene or Cetshamhain, the first of May. Samhain looms largest in the mythological record ... In particular, it iswell known that numerous peoples throughout the world have attached a very special significance to the juncture or interstice between two distinct temporal periods, regarding it in some sense as time outside of time or as a temporary resump tion of mythic or primordial time. Similarly the Celts have treated the festival of Samhain . . . as a time apart which was charged with a peculiar preternatural energy, and within it they have concentrated many of their great mythic events. During this interval the normal order of the universe is suspended, the barriers between the natural and the supernatural are temporarily removed, the sz'dh lies open and all divine beings and the spirits of the dead move freely among men and interfere, sometimes violently, in their affairs.305 Parallels between the natural and supernatural world can also be seen in the attitudes to good and evil; both are seen to exist among mortals, but with a tendency towards the values of Christianity, and among the fairies, but with a bias against these values: fairies are supposed to work as usual on Sundays,306 brownies, trasnos and Kobolde fear Christian
304 and 452-5. 305 169-73. op. cit., Spence, Mac Cana, Mythology, For possible All Souls' Day. 126-7. Note concurrence see Evans of Wentz, Samhain op. cit.,
connections
355.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
131
symbols, the disappearance of dwarfs is related to Church building or the ringing of Church bells. Perhaps this anti pathy is related to the origins ascribed to these beings asGod's rejects: Fallen Angels, Eve's hidden children, and so on.
5 The leipreachan is usually depicted hammering nails into a shoe, although there is a picture of him sewing a shoe; the noise of the formermust have some bearing on its popularity: it means that the leipreachan can be detected before he is seen and consequently it is likely that strange noises of this kind have given rise to a large number of legends. Tacking and sewing are both parts of shoemaking but tacking is only applied when there is a separate sole, of which the earliest Irish evidence is from the 16th or 17th century.307 Nailed boots were not introduced until the 19th century, from 'In 1909 David Meade Randolph obtained a America:308 patent for fastening the soles and heels to the inner soles by means of little nails, brads, sprigs or tracks.'309 It is intriguing to think that new technology may have streng thened a folk tradition! The German dwarfs are also skilled craftsmen and are pro ficient at a wide variety of trades, including shoemaking, but particularly working in precious stones and metals. "The divine smith of the Greeks", writes Motz, "appears as a rather clear example of the 'mythical smith' as which we have also recognized the Germanic dwarf.",310 There is 'much similarity between the works of the Greek and the Germanic smith figure: all the objects produced by the dwarfs find a place within the categories of gifts given by Hephaistos.'3 1 We have already mentioned the lameness of the master smith and his development into a pygmy; the lameness the price to be paid
307 308 309 310 O'Nefll, op. Loe. cit. The Motz, cit., 47.
Encyclopaedia op. cit., 107.
Brittanica,
Cambridge
1911,
s.v.
'shoe'.
311 Ibid.,
109.
132
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
for the gift of magical smithcraft.312 Hephaistos and the dwarfs are associated with fire,313 and live in lonely dwellings far from human habitation and from the seat of the gods. V,lundr lives in similar fashion. Sometimes the dwarfs live in the earth.314 The significance of smithcraft was recognized in traditional Irish society; magical powers were attributed to the smith since early times and he was themost respected of craftsmen.315 The religious context of metallurgy is discussed by Eliade, according to whom a 'mythology of metals' succeeded the 'mythology of polished stone;' 'the richest and most charac teristic was developed around iron.'Meteoric iron was worked long before the ferrous ores of the earth and thus was scarce, precious 'and its use was principally ritual.' The development of metallurgy 'had important religious consequences. Besides the celestial sacredness of the sky, immanent inmeteorites, there is now the telluric sacredness of the earth, in which mines and ores share. Metals "grow" in the bosom of the earth. Caves and mines are assimilated to the womb of Mother Earth.'316 Hence there is 'a hidden symmetry between metallurgy and obstetrics'.316a He discusses the world-wide rites practised by miners. 'The metallurgist, like the black smith and, before him, the potter, is a "master of fire",' by which 'he accelerates the "growth" of ores, [and] he makes them "ripe" in a miraculously short time. Smelting proves to
be the means of "acting faster" but also of acting to make a
different thing from what already existed in nature. This is why in archaic societies, smelters and smiths are held to be masters of fire, along with shamans, medicine men, and
312 Ibid.,
monosandalism.
113. This has been dealt with previously 115.

117.
in the motif
of
313 Ibid.,
314 Ibid.,
316 Mac
Crucible, 315 Cf. The 316a
Cana, Mythology,
35.
See Eliade,
The Forge
I, London
and
the
52-3.
passim. In A History Forge Myths, and
Vol. of Religious Ideas, the Crucible, passim. Dreams and Mysteries, 171.
1979,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
133
magicians (... .): they are highly esteemed but are also feared, segregated, or even scorned (.. .). In many mythologies the divine smiths forge the weapons of the gods, thus insuring them victory over dragons or other monstrous beings . . . In addition, this god-smith has connections with music and song, just as in a number of societies the smiths and braziers are also musicians, poets, healers and magicians. It seems, then, that on different levels of culture (an indication of great antiquity) there is an intimate connection between the art of the smith, occult techniques (shamanism, magic, healing, etc.), and the arts of song, of the dance, and of poetry.'316c The leipreachan's craft is of a different nature, but he is an artisan dwarf and his association with treasure suggests that smithcraft may have had some bearing on the tradition. It has been suggested by Professor Tierney 'that these magic cobblers of Ireland are to be identified with the Lugoves to whom the cobblers of Osma in Spain set up an inscription in pagan days'317 as 'it has long ago been suggested that the name leipreachan itself, with its variants, contains that of Lugh, as Lugoves clearly does.'318 The inscription at Osma is 'Lugovibvs sacrum L.L. Vrcico Collegio Svtorvm D.D. 'Jan de Vries writes Les patrons chretiens des cordonniers, SS. Crepin et Cre'pinien, sont deux martyrs tues en 284 a Soissons; ces patrons gaulois ont probablement succede a deux paiens. C'est pourquoi Lugoves signifie probablement: deux dieux dont Lug est le plus important. Mercure etant 1' "omnium inventor artium," Lug a pu, dans ce cas, devenir plus specialement le dieu des fabricants de chaussures, mais d'autres artisans auraient pu l'adorer tout aussi bien.319
316c 317 53-5. review Cf. The Forge in B?aloideas and IX. the Crucible,
History, G. ? M.,
passim.
318 Michael Tierney, review in B?aloideas VIII, 117. See also M?ire Mac Neill, The Festival of Lughnasa, 7, 665, Oxford 1962, for which reference I am indebted to Dr Sean ? Coile?in.
319 Jan de Vries, La religion des Celtes, Paris 1977, 59-60 (trans
lation of Keltische
Religion).
134
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
Eoin Mac Neill explained luchorpa'n as a compound of Lugh and corpa'n, which might be acceptable if the original form were lucorpan, 'for the two gutturals coming together would, according to Old Irish phonetic laws, have coalesced into an unaspirated guttural.'320 But the evidence of the old literary sources and of the modem spoken language suggests that the original form had an aspirated c, and this tends to rule out any connexion with Lugh.
6 'D1451. Inexhaustible purse furnishes money' is a common international motif and one closely associated with the leipreachan. Maolmhuire an Sparain, ancestor of the Sweenys, was the owner of a purse bestowed on him by a fairy woman; every time it was opened a small penny and a shilling would be found inside, according to a 16th century manuscript.321 A poem pre-dating the 17th century manuscript in which it was found mentions the sparan na scillinge.322 The 18th cen tury poet Eoghan Rua 0 Suiilleabhaiin refers to an inexhaustible purse: Ba mhath an aiise e ag Fortunatus, Do chuireadh a lamh go daina ann sios Chun or bui is plata do bhronna ar bhabaibh, 'Sniorbh' fholamh go brach e ach lan go snulm.323
320 related G. to ? M. the Old op. names cit., of 133. some Even of from if the the connexion under with
dismissed, ultimately
'lutin' via
it is of interest that the names of divinities

beings
are etymologically
discussion: Petit 'fairy' Larousse
Lughcanbe
derives
from fata,
netun
the Fates
Neptunus
(Concise Oxford
(Nouveau
Dictionary);
French
Illustr?
Diana un demo
1952); as for the Galican

convirteuse Dianum, op. Pedrayo, in Romanian nunha de cuio sorte nome de
'diario'\ 'sabido ? que na Edade Media,

e a?nda se supuxo demo femenino, con o noso "dia?o" v?n, seguranza, name 'The very of the [same] goddess meaning "fairy" ', plural zine, '
(Otero became
cit., 298). zina (<
the fairies. (Eliade, Occultism, 80). 321 Sean ? hEochaidh, M?ire Ni N??l, S?amas ? Cath?in, S?sc?alta ? Thir Chonaill, Dublin 1977, 387.
322 Thomas F. O'Rahilly, Measgra Danta, Cork 1927, 33.
dziana),
323 Ibid., 76.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
135
One of the magic objects in AT 566, 'The Three Magic Objects and the Wonderful Fruits (Fortunatus)', is usually an inexhaustible purse, and another folktale, AT 580, goes by the name of The Inexhaustible Purse. N.M. Penzer claims a Hindu origin for this purse.324 Similarmagic objects are often given by supernatural beings; instance Sebillot's account of fions giving a woman a bowl of grain that will always be full unless she betrays the secret325 (F348.7). Gifts of the German 'D1602.11. Self-returning dwarfs are of a similar nature.36 magic coin' is a similar thing, amotif common in Ireland.32 The Daghdha, the 'GoodGod', king of the Tuatha De Danann has two special attributes, his club and his cauldron. The latter is the characteristic vessel of plenty of the Celtic otherworld 'from which no company ever went unsatisfied'. Its possession identifies him as lord of the otherworld and its eternal abundance, and it was no doubt in this capacity that he was reputed 'to control the weather and the crops.'328 Dwarfs are fabulously rich. 'It appears probable', writes Lewis Spence, 'that the idea of fairy treasure had its incep tion in stories of gold and silver articles buried with the dead in mounds and tumuli.'329 But the subterranean character of dwarfs and fairies is also relevant, leading to the idea that in some way all the valuables buried in the earth must belong to them; also the dwarfs being highly skilled artisans, very often working in precious stones and metals, must make for an easy association with buried treasure. But we can also identify buried treasure with prehistoric monuments, old stone arrow-heads and old clay pipes: they are all objects of uncertain origin and are thus attributed to various 'mythical
324 325 326
Penzer, S?billot,
op. op.
cit., cit.,
Vol. Vol. s.v. ?
I, 25 et seq. I, 458. 'Zwerge', hEochaidh 1079-81. et al, op. cit., 392 and O'Sul
Handw?rterbuch, for example, 327 See,
74-5. livan, Folktales, 328 Mac Cana, Mythology, 329 Spence, op. cit., 38.
66.
136
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
races' such as Danes, Moors, dwarfs and fairies. We have al ready spoken of prehistoric monuments; the arrow-heads are attributed to the fairies and are seen to be the agents of such maladies as 'fairy-stroke' or 'poc si"; the pipes are often known as 'leipreachan's pipes' or 'Danes' pipes'. In Ireland the fairies or various supernatural animals may be treasure guardians, and the treasure itself may have been hidden by 'Danes, Greeks, Spaniards, or other foreigners.'330 The 'Danes' in particular were reputed to have left much buried treasure after them when they had to flee Ireland.331 Buried treasure is often directly associated with the ring-forts.332 In Galicia, pre-Celtic, Celtic and Roman monuments are attributed to theMoors, whose influence there was negligible, and they are supposed to still live underground, guard treasures and mysteriously come and go.333 The often illusory nature of the buried treasuremay be an instance of the glamour which sometimes makes the fairies beautiful, or of the relativity of human values and the 'reversal of perspectives' of the supernatural world to which Proinsias Mac Cana refers. Wealth does not seem to be associated with the household familiar. Caro Baroja does mention the duende as a guardian of hidden treasure, but this may be a different tradition perhaps literary as he shows the literary duende to play this role.334 The familiar does bring luck to the household and the acquisition of wealth on its part might be a logical exten sion of that tradition.
CONCLUSION Lewis Spence examines 'the several classes of belief from which the fairy superstition as a whole has emerged'335
331 333 334 335 O'Sullivan, Alonso Caro Spence, del Baroja, op. Folktales, Real, op. cit., op. cit., 64. 277.
509. 468.
138.

cit*, passim.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
137
and the theories which seek to explain the belief under the following chapter headings: 'Fairies as Spirits of the Dead', 'The Ancestral Character of Fairy Spirits', 'Fairies as Ele mentary Spirits', 'Were Fairies a Reminiscence of Aboriginal Races?', 'Are Fairies Derived from Godlike Forms?', 'Fairies as Totemic Forms', 'Other Theories about Fairy Origins' and 'Vestiges of Cult in Fairy Tradition'.336 He opts himself for the notion of the human soul awaiting reincarnation as the original form of the fairy belief.337 With reference to Spence's first chapter heading Seain 0 Su'illeabhain notes the difficulty of drawing 'a clear line of demarcation between the kingdom of the dead and the fairy world in Irish popular belief. Stories of persons who reappear after death are inextricably confused with tales of the fairies'.338 Fairies are liable to be encountered where a coffin has touched the ground.339 People thought to be dead are often recognized among the fairy host and fairy abduction is camouflaged by the apparent death of the person concerned - but here the fairies give an explanation for untimely death
rather than present an instance of confusion with the dead.
To the fairy hill of Cnoc Ffrinne, Co. Limerick, the local people believed they would go when they died;340 this hill is inseparably linked with Donn (Fi'rinne), the ancient Irish god of the dead,341 become a local fairy king in the folk tradition. Wentz instances country people of his acquaintance who identified the fairies with the spirits of the dead.342 Spence sees the fairies' association with barrows, standing stones and other ancient places of sepulture as further evi dence of this confusion;3f3 but this is open to dispute: it
336 337 338 339 340 XVIII, 341
342 343
Ibid., ix. Ibid., 192 et seq. 450. ? S?illeabh?in, Handbook, Ibid., 455. 'A Study K?te M?ller-Lisowski, 157. ?l A. See Mac Cana, Mythology,
Evans Spence, Wentz, op. op. cit., cit., 65. 39, 53,
in Irish Folklore'
in B?aloideas
74-5,
95
and
109.
138
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
has been noted that dolmens are rarely sepulchres in popular tradition and are just as easily attributed to giants or to the devil, or are identified as the bed of Diarmuid and Grainne. It is the mysterious, inexplicable, rather than the sepulchral, nature of these monuments that has caused their association with the fairies. The same is true of hidden treasure and it is of interest that 'in Iceland buried hoards are thought of as belonging to and guarded by the dead.'344 'In the minds of our pagan ancestors', wrote Eleanor Hull, 'there was very little distinction between the dead and the fairies, who were, perhaps, only the spirits of an earlier race.. .'345Nevertheless there isplenty of evidence inmodem folk tradition of identified local spirits, and of the return or sighting of the ghosts of known dead people, all distinct from the fairies. One might add, too, thatmany of these identified local spirits have been of a notoriously evil nature, contrasting with the ambiguous moral position of the fairies. Still, Traditions regarding spirits are so loosely Ireland that it has been very difficult up to to classify them and, at the same time, to between fairies, ghosts, the returned dead, other supernatural manifestations.346 defined in the present distinguish spirits, and
Perhaps, as Hull suggests, time-scale is the important thing here, ghosts and spirits taking their identity from Christian belief and teaching, fairies taking theirs from pre Christian belief. 346a
344 Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales and Legends, Berkeley
and Los Angeles 345 Folklore

op. cit., 81.
1979, 184. of the British
Isles
(1928),
245-7
quoted
in Spence,
346 ? S?illeabh?in, Handbook, 479. 346a Cf. [Mediaeval Metaphysicians]

into four distinct classes: to the gods of parallel or Demons, the Devils who correspond the third class includes all Element?is, and are generally regarded the fourth division of the dead'. as the Angels, the ancients
'divided all invisible beings
who in character are and function . . . are the are below them highest; to the fallen of Christianity; angels sub-human who Nature-Spirits, daemons; the shades
or ghosts
like the Greek stature, pygmy having the Souls of the Dead, and comprises Evans Wentz, 241. op. cit.,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
139
In relation to 'The Ancestral Character of Fairy Spirits' Spence writes It is. . . clear that the spirits of the dead ancestors frequently behave very much as do the fairies, who are wont to be irritable and exacting, who expect tributes of food and drink, who remain invisible, and who exercise a close and sometimes almost "governessy" oversight of human affairs.347 He continues: It is a fact in folk-lore that most ancestral spirits are regarded as the conservators of tribal virtue and decency, and this would go far to explain the fairy insistence on decorum and neatness.348 The household familiar ismost relevant in this connexion and is often seen to be attached to a particular family. 'The banshee is notoriously an ancestral form, haunting families of distinction.'349 Besides the similarities that Spence notes it is worth remarking that people believed to be dead, but who really have been abducted by the fairies, or people who are accepted as being dead, often exercise a benign influence over their kin-folk: they give wamings, or return to nurse babies (in the case of the former, at any rate), and so forth. 350 There is Irish material, too, to support the idea of fairies as elementary spirits; many have seen their wearing of the green as evidence of a close connexion with nature, and their com mon association with certain trees as further proof. The occa sional wearing of brown, a subterranean abode and certain features that point to a chthonic origin suggest an identifica tion with the earth itself. Elizabeth Andrews was probably the best-known - if not the only - Irish exponent of the theory that the fairies were the recollection of an aboriginal race, and her ideas are set
347 348 op. Spence, Loe. cit. cit., 85.
349 Ibid., 86. 350 6 S?illeabh?in, Handbook,
247.
140
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
out in her book, Ulster Folklore, published in 1913. 'Are Fairies derived from Godlike Forms? 'asks Spence, and bear ing inmind that the learned of Gaelic Ireland saw the aes side and the Tuatha De Danann as being one and the same, we might answer 'yes'. But this seems too facile an explanation, and anyway, what did the learned of Gaelic Ireland know or care - about peasant tradition? A statement of E.S. Hartland's suggests that some caution is required: no theory will explain the origin of the fairy super stitions which does not also explain the nature and origin of every other supernatural being worshipped or dreaded by uncivilized mankind throughout theworld.351 Irish fairy belief is only one, local, manifestation of amuch wider tradition and an explanation of its origin that does not hold for thewhole is untenable. But the Tuatha De have influ enced that belief, whether through direct continuity from pre-Christian times of traditions of them, or through later interference from the learned world; the existence of names of Tuatha De luminaries such as Aine and Donn among the chieftains of the fairy world is evidence of this. That 'the fairy tradition is to a large extent the broken down folk-memory of a definite and far-reaching cultus or system of worship which must, at a distant epoch, have had sanctions in practically every part of the British insular
group'352 is one of the theories which Spence discusses. The
fact that the fairies may be associated with certain days of the week and times of the year he sees as evidence for the existence of religious festivals with which they were iden tified, but he admits himself that while individual days have local significance in this respect there is no unanimity - in deed he mentions no less than four days -, while the two festivals with which the fairies are most closely identified, namely Bealtaine and Samhain, are associated with the super natural in general. Nevertheless, his thesis is that
351 123. 352 Spence, op. cit., 169. In The Science of Fairy Tales, 349-51 quoted in Spence, op. cit.,
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
141
throughout Keltic Britain a very definite belief ob tained until comparatively recent times that the fairies had an extraordinary influence at certain seasons once associated with religious ritual occasion, either as dis credited deities, or because they were regarded as un friendly to a still later pagan faith.353 He instances the leaving of offerings of food and drink for the fairies inmany parts of Britain, something with which the Irish are also familiar.354 'An eighth-century hymn declares that until St Patrick preached the Gospel the Irish people adored the gods of the sz'dh',writes Proinsias Mac Cana; but 'supplication and adoration of the native deities' was one of those matters on which the early Christian Church allowed little compromise.355 We know that the Celts were not the first people to settle in Ireland, and it would be unrealistic to suppose that the traditions and beliefs of the indigenous popula tion were annulled by their arrival. There is in fact a strong presumption that the literary account [of the retreat of the Tuatha De] is coloured by this popular substratum which came into its own once more as the Celtic gods were depreciated through the establish ment of Christianity and the influence of its teaching.356 Estyn Evans sees the veneration of thorn trees - and the cult of holy wells - as beingprobably megalithic in origin.357 Reidar Th. Christiansen, in 'Some Notes on the Fairies and the Fairy Faith' (in Bo Almqvist, et al., Hereditas, Dublin 1975, pp. 95-111), discusses some aspects of Irish and Scandinavian fairy belief, particularly the popular accounts
353 Ibid., 173.
354 355 356 entitled divided and Ibid.,116-7. Mac Cana,M);?/io/o^>;, A major 65-6. Ibid., 'The Cult of 65. section of Evans Wentz's and the Fairies Fairy Dead' '... Faith and sub is
into chapters '. .. Christianity'.
Gods, Spirits, on 'The Testimony
of Archaeology',
Paganism'
357 E. Estyn Evans, Irish Heritage,
Dundalk
1977, 163.
142
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
of fairy origins. He sees the belief as belonging to 'acommon human heritage, having as its function the explanation of un expected happenings, such as the death of young people. The explanation that they are not dead but taken away seems more reasonable. (... ) The idea of a hidden world as con tained in the legends has been developed and transmitted in various ways but in itself it seems to be part of the common heritage of man' (p. 111). Elves and dwarfs are clearly distinct from each other in Teutonic mythology. Motz reveals a bipartite division of elves in Old Norse sources, 'one part living in the sky and lost to view, close to the gods and the light of the sun and the other on and in the earth and alive'.358 These are the light elves and the black elves, the latter coinciding completely with the dwarfs. While the elves are the recipients of sacrifices from mortals, 'Neither poems nor sagas tell us of cultic offerings to the dwarfs'.359 Indeed it seems that the dwarfs are not taken that seriously: 'The sagas contain a recurrent episode in which a dwarf is defeated by human strength and offers a priceless gift as ransom; at times he places a curse on the object.'360 This seems strangely reminiscent of many legends of the lezpreachan, who does not inspire the same fear as other supernatural beings, such as the fairies: people often deliberately set out to capture him, with little fear, it seems, for their safety. 'Grotesque and defeated, of low social esteem, dwarfs do not receive the love of woman naturally';36' the leipreacha'n seems to be in a similar position. It is worth noting, however, that modem German folk tradition seems to contradict the material with which Motz deals, and the dwarfs seem to share many traits with the fairies. But ifMotz's sources - and the Irish lezpreachdn? seem to reveal the dwarf in his earlier form then we might attribute some of the traits of the modem German dwarfs
358 Motz, op. cit., 99.
359 Ibid., 104. 360 Ibid., 105.

361 Loc. cit.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
143
to confusion with fairies, and the fact that the household familiar also seems to be mixed up in this suggests a large overlap between these three similar classes of beings - fairies, dwarfs and familiars - inmodem folklore. The fairies always seemed to have formed a complete community; as for the dwarfs, 'There were no women among them and hence they had no children. But, as and when they disappeared, two princes whom the gods had given them replaced them by other dwarfs, moulded from their natal earth';362 the house hold familiar has always been a solitary creature. Motz mentions 'the alliterative formula Aesir ok alfar, gods and elves, occurring repeatedly in the poems of the Edda'363 but 'dwarfs are very rarely cited with the gods'.364 This of course parallels the connexion between the Tuatha De Danann and the fairies in Ireland, but is this a coincidence among the learned of Ireland and Scandinavia, or does it reveal a general association of fairies with gods which was once recognized? Georges Dumezil has pointed out that there are two fundamentally different ways of behaviour for the ... Ouranos sovereign gods of Indo-European mythology and Varuna are the gods of an older generation who rule by magic, whom Dumezil calls dieux lieurs, and who are always overthrown by the more modem gods Zeus and Indra, aggressive gods, dieux combattants, who fight in the way of men in open battle with aman's courage and aman's cunning. Dumezil understands the account of such a victory as the reflection in myth and literature of a new stage in the history of the world in which man has attained greater confidence in his powers . . .Dumezil points to the monstrous appearance of the older gods: less the personification of man, they are closer to the forces of chaos, the primeval antagonists of cosmic order.365
362 New 249.
363 Motz,
Larousse
op. cit.,
Encyclopaedia
95.
of Mythology,
Hamlyn
1978,
364 Ibid., 106. 365 Ibid., 109-??.
144
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
Motz sees the dwarfs as ultimately belonging to the older generation of gods (a position they share with Hephaistos); he cites a recurrent theme in the tales of the dwarfs 'inwhich the smith-magician was overcome by an aggressive warrior', 366 'yet they are not sovereigns destroyed, but rather the servants of the new rulers who present their inestimable gifts'.367 The dwarfs do not have mother or father but grew from the body of a giant or from the earth, like the less anthropomorphic, archaic, deities resembling natural phenomena, who were not sexually begotten.368 The deformity of Vslundr and Hephaistos he sees as 'part of the concept of the mythical smith' and he notes Dumezil's observation of physically defective figures in the Indo European pantheon: 'In these cases themutilation, self-willed or inflicted, was the price paid for a certain acquisition': that of magic smithcraft.369 There is no Germanic equivalent of the fall from heaven of Hephaistos and other smith figures, he writes, but the elves have left heaven for the earth: . . . the word dvergr [dwarf] may carry the meaning of 'physical defect', and one could assume that some gods fell from the heavens, were thereafter called 'the crippled ones' and became the magicians of metalcraft. One might in this way understand the change of residence of these gods and their fusion with the dwarfs.370 Motz notes that the theory he proposes contradicts the Eddas where dwarfs come from the body of a giant, but he shows with the example of Hephaistos that conflicting accounts may exist side by side. Creation from the body of primeval being belongs to legends which tell of the birth of the cosmos and its regions: the mountains, the sea, the sky. The dwarf is
366 Ibid.,
367 369 370 Loe.
110.
cit.
368 Ibid.,
Ibid., Ibid.,
111.
112-3. 118.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
145
both: a feature of nature (spirit of themountain) and an anthropomorphic being; asmountain he was shaped from giants' bones, as magician and master of metal craft he was flung from heaven.371 The dwarfs, then, inMotz's opinion, represent the super annuated gods and the elves the new, vigorous generation, but folk tradition seems to throw a spanner in the works as far as this is concerned, in the form of the following wide spread belief - 'The fairies had a decided aversion to iron in all its shapes and forms - a dislike shared by ghosts and other spirits inmany parts of the world. ( ...) This fear of iron on the part of the elves has been construed as the dislike of a Stone-Age folk for metal implements, which they regard as magical.'372 This belief - so well-attested in Irish tradition suggests a clear difference in time-scale between the fairies on the one hand and supernatural artisans (metal-workers or workers with metal tools) such as dwarfs and the leipreachan on the other. The fairies belong to an agrarian society, sow their own crops, and possess cattle and horses, and hunting is a favoured pastime;373 theymove their residence twice a year at times suggestive of transhumance. They do not seem to have any particularly important developed skills: magic is their great gift. The dwarfs and leipreachan on the other hand are technologically more advanced, being a select group (males only) whose great skill is developed rather than innate and whose craftsmanship always seems more important than the magical powers also attributed to them (which at any rate do not appear to be sufficient to deter mortals from inter fering with them). The origin and function of the household familiar seems much more clear-cut; it reflects, in Van Gennep's previously quoted words, the 'besoin gene'ralement humain d'une pro tection directe et a demi humaine et concrete'. The Roman
371 372 numerous Ibid., Spence, 118-9. op. 29-30. cit., of this and See The Penzer, Forge and op. cit., Vol. the Crucible, for II, 166-8 27 et seq.
examples
373 ? S?illeabh?in,
Folk Custom,
89-90.
146
DIARMUID
O GIOLLAIN
lares played the role of guardians. Their image was crudely sculptured from a tree stump and was usually situated at the approaches of the farmhouse ... Their altar was also the hearth and they received similar homage.374 There was only one family lar, who symbolized the house 'andwas invoked on all important occasions of family life ... The family Lar was habitually represented in a juvenile aspect with curly hair, a short tunic and in a dancing posture.'375 It is not difficult to see how the household familiar and dwarf tradition could be confused in districts in which both traditions are known: both are male supernatural beings, the one solitary, the other gregarious; both are seen in a protec tive role, one of the homestead, the other of precious stones and metals; the familiar often does work in and about the house or completes unfinished tasks, which suggests dwarf like skill; both aremorally ambiguous beings and may become quite troublesome if vexed; the familiar ensures the luck of the household, which to a certain extent involves the acquisi tion of wealth and might thus lead to an identification with wealth itself, as in the dwarf's case; they look very much alike in folk tradition, but this may be due to confusion in the case of the Roman lar could a 'juvenile aspect' be represented in terms of reduced stature, and could some of the traits of the dwarf then grow from this, particularly ugliness, to ward off evil? -; both are humble beings, the dwarfs, inMotz's words, 'the servants of the new rulers who present their inestimable gifts', the familiar, with his com plaint 'ich bin herrenlos', very much dependent on man and prepared to follow when his master changes house(ML 7020). Neither is it difficult to surmise how dwarfs and fairies might be confused: there exists a tradition of diminutive fairies for a start - but might this be due to interference from the dwarf tradition? -; both dwarf and fairy are gregarious, leading perhaps to a community including women and chil
374 375 Larousse Loe. cit. Mythology, 218.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
147
dren beingunderstood in the case of the former; fairy glamour gives the appearance of opulence in, for example, Midwife to the Fairies (ML 5070) where the fairies in reality are very often ragged, hungry-looking and living in a damp cave could glamour, then, be seen as obscuring a dwarf-like pro saicness? -; both are morally ambivalent beings and can be most disagreeable to mortals; great wealth is associated with both of them, with the dwarf through his work with precious stones and metals, with the fairy presumably through his magical powers, the bestowing of inexhaustible gifts being identified, perhaps, with the endless fruits of the dwarf's tireless labours; very often they have a similar habitat, fairy hills and knolls, for instance, being easily identified with a subterranean habitation; both dwarfs and fairies - as well as 'Danes', Picts and Moors - become a sort of mythical race to whom ancient monuments are ascribed, or with whom they are associated; both dwarfs and fairies have been given an origin which fits them into the Christian scheme of things. The leipreachan is identified with the fairies because as a solitary being he cannot form a distinctive group on his own and must be either a phenomenon suigeneris or amember of the fairy tribe, the latter being the easier solution: the bean sz' must have been in a similar position; her name identifies her with the fairies but her role is of a different order; the puzca, too, is often identified with the fairies, for whom puicaz', in deed, often appears as a generalized name. Other reasons for this identification include his diminutive stature, his dress, his moral neutrality, his wealth and inexhaustible purse, his habitat, his skill, perhaps, and of course his sobriquet, 'the fairy shoemaker' - 'fairy' here, note, not necessarily being an adjective - and the fact that a supernatural cobbler's clientele would most appropriately be supernatural beings of whom the fairies in Irish tradition form the only community. There seems to be no modem indigenous tradition of a household familiar in Ireland, but certain features associated with the leipreachadnsuggest confusion either with an imported household familiar (as in the North-East; and possibly failed plantations and the new land-owning class in other parts of
148
DIARMUID
0 GIOLLAIN
the country maintained the tradition long enough to have some slight influence on that of the leipreacha'n) or with a native one, now defunct, or the absorption, at some stage, of a native household familiar by the leipreachdn. Both super natural beings are solitary and share the same general appear ance: this alone would make the existence of the two, side by side, quite confusing; both, to an extent, are guardians, one of the house, the other of great riches, and, as I have al ready mentioned, the luck of the house assured by the familiar often leads to enrichment, and conversely - and tantalizingly - we are told of the lutharagan that 'anyone that ever caught one is supposed to have great luck about a house.'376 The familiar shows great versatility in the tasks he executes - or completes - in the house and farm while the leipreachadn, besides his shoemaking craft, does the very familiaresque task of working the quern in a number of accounts. Neither is intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad. Both are at least partly associated with the dwellings of man, the familiar with those of the present, the leipreachdn mainly with those of the past - ring-forts. Both are humble beings, neither greatly feared by man and often directly abused. The West Clare luthraddn (supra) entering houses, sometimes coming down the chimney, recalls the familiar. At this stage it seems superfluous to enumerate comparisons between the leipreachan and the dwarf. Rather it seems more useful to note the differences between the two beings, and the first that comes to mind is also the most obvious, one is solitary, the other gregarious, a contradiction which might be explained in the following manner: the existence of a gregarious race of male supernatural beings is bound to lead to perplexity so that the tendency would be either to turn them into a full society including women and children like the fairies - or to turn them into solitary beings - like the household familiar; the former seems to have been the case inGermany, but in Ireland, where there does not seem to have been an indigenous household familiar to cause con
376 IFC S 520: 356-7.
THE LEIPREACHAN:
A COMPARATIVE
STUDY
149
fusion, the latter situation came about. If this were the case it might show how the leipreachan half-lost his association with precious metals (which he does not work, but possesses), because mining is not a solitary task, and thus had his trade specialized so that it could be solitary, and became a shoe maker. But why a shoemaker rather than, say, a potter or a tailor, jobs also carried out by German dwarfs? It seems that the association with metal-work would be lost if he became a potter, but the tailor and shoemaker at least use metal tools. Tailoring, however, is a mediaeval trade, which began in the towns. Perhaps it has to do with his clientele, fairies, who are particularly fond of dancing. The leipreachan, then, belongs to an Irish dwarf race and may have changed for the above reasons from being gregarious to being solitary, and if the old literature reflects the folk tradition we see him in his gregarious state in the luchorpacin - but we should be cautious here: the luchorpain or lupracain of Aidedh Ferghusa are a community living beyond the seas, they are not ugly or deformed (indeed Fergus finds their queen sexually desirable), and except for their size, the super natural knowledge of Eisirt and Iubhdan and the latter's magical possession they do not differ greatly from the Ulster people; Winberry suggests that Iubhdain's magic cauldron anticipates the shilling purse and his magic shoes 'suggesting perchance the leprechaun's eventual occupation with cob bling,'377 but none of his other magical possessions suggests any aspect of themodem leipreachan tradition, the cauldron, crucially, is not an inexhaustible container but rather has the power of transforning what is put into it, and there is no suggestion that the lupracain are artisans of any kind, let alone shoemakers. On the other hand, we do not know to what extent Aidedh Ferghusa may have been based on folk tradi tion. Other early literary sources indicated in the beginning of this paper give origins for ungainly luchorpain which tally with those given in a later section of the paper to the Ger manic dwarfs.
377 Winberry, op. cit., 67.
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O GIOLLAIN
Some interference from a household familiar tradition seems evident but since no such being exists in the folk tradi tion of the greater part of Ireland today it is possible that this interference is foreign in origin, most likely British. Motz sees the dwarfs as deliving from an earlier period than the elves. But the latter's fear of iron and the former's use of it, plus the other factors discussed above, seem to contradict this. Iron protects against evil spirits but both fairies and dwarfs are neither good nor evil; however, the nasty side of the fairies does induce fear and respect while nobody seems to be too perturbed by irate dwarfs or leipreachain - 'nobody takes precautions against the poor little leipreachan',378 and indeed his humility is such that he can be held by a stare which seems to be simply the imposition of a superior will rather than any recollection of Balor of the Evil Eye, as sug gested by Winberry379 - and can only escape (and disappears into thin air suggesting the invisibility bestowed by dwarfs' caps) by distractinghis captor, atwhichhe is expert and which is essential to him, being basically his only defence. The leipreachan 's relationship to supernatural artisan dwarfs of other countries seems undeniable, the leipreacha'n simply being an Irish expression of a wider tradition shared by many European peoples. DIARMUID 0 GIOLLAIN University College Cork
378 Kevin Danaher, 'Folk Tradition and Literature' in The Journal of Irish Literature (1972), Vol. I, 73 quoted in Winberry, op. cit., 63. 379 Winberry, op. cit., 70.

The Leipreachán and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study

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The Leipreachn and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study Author(s): Diarmuid Giollin Source:

in p. 134 are neutral, are omitted in both

'The Saga of Fergus Mac L?ti' in ?riu XVI, 33-34.

Irish text 1817.

8 Edward O'Reilly, An Irish-English Dictionary,

17 SirWilliam Wilde, Irish Popular Superstitions,

'Tales of the Fairies' in B?aloideas Irish Folklore,

III, (1932), 1870,

20 William Hugh Patterson, MRIA, A Glossary

24 Pp. 139,268. 25 P. 22.

The Crock of Gold, Pan London

and the Printed Word'

plagiarism from is transferred as having Colum's

Kennedy's Legendary to Gneeveguilla, Edenderry

from Co. Mayo,

from the same

IFC S 622, 408-10,

IFC S 915; 199-201,

and IFC S 1079:

lore, 608 in the New York

and the Study of Folk Beliefs' (1964), 5-19.

39 Sean O'Sullivan, Folktales of Ireland, Chicago IFC 451: 71-6;IFC483:469-72;IFC1133: 374-7.

be the origin of that in Funk and Wagnall's

as the Three Laughs

during his imprison

leipreachdn's advantage. ? Danachair, demons transactions, household 48 words IFC

guarantee connexion between moral Hall,

spirits. Asimilar 112-13. in Mr

in the Quricaune's 35-7.

those which valuable.53

54 i.e. Tadhg 0 Murchadha

THE LEIPREACHAN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

spirits called Cloorahauns -

Irish Folk Custom

120 Only one account to IFC S 430: According

121 IFC S 11:436.

146 IFC 832: 475-9. 147 IFC S 88: 43^.

S?amus Caomh?nach who

smoothed my difficulties with

157 Katherine 158 Sean ?

Briggs, A Dictionary S?illeabh?in,

of Fairies, Penguin Books of Irish Folklore,

op. cit., illustrations. title of this

'Diminutive For more

to parallels 226-32. Wentz, London

Evans Wentz, 161 Handw?rterbuch,

166 Julio Caro 169. 167 Ibid., 170. 168 Ibid.

and Wagnall, cit.,

171 Ibid., 89.

op. cit., 45. Briggs, Caro Baroja, op. cit.,

109. cit., 299. 169. s.v. *household

156 and 169-70.

194 ? S?illeabh?in, Handbook,

205 Pierre Charri?, Le folklore

Paris 1968, 194.

209 Ibid., 165.

220 Charri?, op. 221 Handw?rterbuch,

194. s.v. 'Zwerge': 'Speisediebe', 1064-67, 'Verkehr

226 Ibid., 169.

228 Ibid., 417.

231 Ibid., 459.

(Type 503); S?billot,