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Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go "trapsin about the earth" at their own free will; "but there are faeries," she added, "and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels." I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs.
They spent the days feasting and the nights dancing in the light of the moon, and they danced so hard that they wore the shoes off their feet, and for a whole week after the leprechauns, the fairies' shoemakers, were working night and day making new ones, and the rip, rap, tap, tap of their little hammers were heard in all the hedgerows.
I liked to wait until the last ripple had lapped against the sand beneath, and then slip quietly in from the margin of the jungle and perch like a great tree-frog on some convenient shelf. Seumas and Brigid would have enjoyed it, in spite of the fact that the Leprechauns seemed to have just gone.
Wait now till I wet my mouth with a sup of tea in it, and I'll be telling you the tale the very same way she told it herself." Adapted from "Marygold House," in Play-Days, by Sarah Orne Jewett. Grannie reached for the teapot and poured herself a cup of tea. As she sipped it, she said to the twins, "Did you ever hear of the Leprechauns?
They spent the days feasting and the nights dancing in the light of the moon, and they danced so hard that they wore the shoes off their feet, and for a whole week after the leprechauns, the fairies' shoemakers, were working night and day making new ones, and the rip, rap, tap, tap of their little hammers were heard in all the hedgerows.
One evening, whilst thus amusing himself, the conversation turned upon the prevailing superstitions of the day. Ghosts, witches, wizards; astrologers, fairies, leprechauns, and all that could be termed supernatural, or even related to or aided by it, were discussed at considerable length, and with every variety of feeling.
And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O'Keefe vanished, I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, his leprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael but only within the limits of Ireland. In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, his mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry.
They do be saying that if you catch one in your two hands and never take your eyes off him, you can make him give up his money. "But they've the tricks of the world to make you look the other way, the Leprechauns have. And then when you look back again, faith, they're nowhere at all!" "Did Mary O'Connor catch one?" asked Eileen. "Did she now!" cried Grannie. "Listen to this.
"Never so much as a ha'penny worth," said Grannie Malone. "I believe I'd rather get rich in America than try to catch Leprechauns for a living," said Larry. "And you never said a truer word," said Grannie. "'Tis a poor living you'd get from the Leprechauns, I'm thinking, rich as they are."
We may mention, in passing, that it has been suggested that Swift derived the idea of the kingdom of Lilliput from the Irish story of the Adventures of Fergus macLeide amongst the leprechauns.
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