The leprechaun, if you’re anything like me you kind of have a vague idea
what they are and what they do. To most they are little Irish fairies that have
a pot of gold, give wishes and look snazzy in green. The image of them nowadays
is promoted as the cover of the lucky charms cereal (which if you don’t know
what is imagine crack for kind but with more sugar, that is to say awesome).
But in fact there is so much more to them then meets the eye. In their current
state leprechauns have been around for about six to seven hundred years and are
way more evil then you thought. They have always been shown as grouchy old men
but essentially harmless, well like most fairy stories it gets more messed up
the further back you go.
They were never classified as evil but apparently back in ye olde days
they were much more forgiving. Cases such as for a bit of a joke three
leprechauns dragged a king out of his bed with the intent to drown him. He woke
up and got three wishes out of them, but not because they were sorry, just
because they were caught and those were the rules. Frankly that is the
behaviour of a sociopath, no remorse just doing what he or she wants without
thought of right and wrong. And what makes it worse is that apparently people
would hear these stories and go “well he got a pot of gold from him, the
leprechaun can’t be all bad” and went and classified the leprechaun as neutral.
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Tee hee! I burn down orphanages with the souls of puppies and tears of
koala bears. Tee hee!
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Is it just me or is that a kick in the teeth for the leprechauns, I mean
if you go to all the trouble of dragging someone to the sea just to drown them
I would want some recognition. I would want people to see a little old guy in
green and shout “don’t let the leprechaun try and kill me in really elaborate
ways!”. Maybe that whole sentence is a little much to ask for, but really a
little fear would be nice for these small green killing machines. But they didn't just try and drown people there are load of cases where they would play
tricks on humans, normally leaving them dead. Sure they sometimes made shoes as well (it’s
the fairy family business, for some reason), but seriously how are murderous
old men who like to trick humans a good or even a neutral thing? None can like
having shoe made for them for free that much.
This prettying up of fairy tales though is fairly common, and if the
leprechaun tale ended with that we could all stop imagining the dead eyed
killing machine above trying to tricking us into eating a spatula but the tale
of why they became what they are today is just as interesting (and like 50%
less creepy). Before the Anglo-Saxons decided that Britain looked pretty nice
this time of year, and even before the Romans started prancing around Europe
there was a Celtic Empire (kind of). It was a huge amalgamation of different
tribes that had moved over from around India and spread out. The Celtic and Indian tales are surprisingly similar and the ancient language of the Celt (which can be found as an ancestor of ancient Irish) and Sanskrit are as
related (like first cousin you see once a year but had to pretend you knew/
cared about related not brother sister
related). They all tell the same kind of
origin story, which as always seems the ways with the more interesting gods,
they were born out whole and got down to the business of marring their own
sisters and deciding who to go to war with. Various hijinks ensue and the
children of Danu (a big river/mother goddess to all the other gods) find
themselves at war because they got bored and the other people looked at them
wrong (there is more to it then that but that really is the core reason).
Anyway the good (and remember these were old style flawed gods so words
like good just mean slightly less of
bastard) guys find themselves losing, their main king has just been killed
by a guy called Balor who has such a huge eye that it takes ten men to hold the
eyelid open, and a single look from it kills. Then rides in Lugh Lamfada who is
the god of... well just about everything, he makes stuff is apparently all wise
and is the best sword swinger around. Honestly reading some of his tales is
like reading well written fan fiction. By this point i wouldn't be surprised if
i read something like “and then he used he super awesome sword to kill all the
bad guys because he is super cool and amazing”.
But in the tale everyone seems to think this as well and he was locked
up as he was to precious to be let near a war.
despite this stupendously stupid plan he turns up fashionably late kills Balor (the eye guy) and drives
the other army into the sea for eternity because he’s awesome thats why. He
then goes on to be at least three other times bitch slaps a sea serpent, wins
some shoes off a giant and generally acts the part like a thirteen year old is
writing his life.
But like most things someone had to be the boring one and in this case
it was the church, when Christianity made its revival in Britain after the Anglo-Saxons they weren't going to have this guy reminding people why paganism was
more fun. This sounds glib but honestly at this point Britain was happily
toasting thor and even the older gods and generally having a grand old time
acting like barbarians, and Christianity was like the parent who had been gone
for the weekend. It tidied up, told the child off and tried to warn him away
from such behaviour by villainising and generally insulting the bad influence
friend, which in this case was Lugh. Sadly over time he was made ito little
more then a grumpy old man, who was still good a making stuff but that was
about all, and Britain went back to being a good boy and getting drunk with his
friends (quite so much).
So there you have it, this has been an extremely brief introduction and
honestly i could of gone on at length about all of it, but at a certain point i
would have put on my lecturing hat and gone boring. But honestly the whole history
of celtic myths, and how they declined, let alone the myths themselves are well
worth checking out.
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