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Updated: May 3, 2025
Of course, I do not mean that these folk could make themselves invisible, or that they had any supernatural powers any more, at least, than you and I have or that they were anything but savages; but this I do think, that out of old stories of these savages grew up the stories of fairies, elves, and trolls, and scratlings, and cluricaunes, and ogres, of which you have read so many.
The tireless Dick, young and active, with no original laziness in his composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after him like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him off with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to build a house. Mr Button didn't. He wanted to rest.
To her, dreaming as she sat, came all sorts of coloured pictures, recalled by the scene before her: the green water under the stern of a ship, and the word Shenandoah vaguely reflected on it; their landing, and the little tea-set spread out on the white sand she could still see the pansies painted on the plates, and she counted in memory the lead spoons; the great stars that burned over the reef at nights; the Cluricaunes and fairies; the cask by the well where the convolvulus blossomed, and the wind-blown trees seen from the summit of the hill all these pictures drifted before her, dissolving and replacing each other as they went.
But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even further than that; for he had read at the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, in the year 1999, a paper which assured every one who found himself the better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never had been, and could not be, any rational or half- rational beings except men, anywhere, anywhen, or anyhow; that nymphs, satyrs, fauns, inui, dwarfs, trolls, elves, gnomes, fairies, brownies, nixes, wills, kobolds, leprechaunes, cluricaunes, banshees, will-o'-the-wisps, follets, lutins, magots, goblins, afrits, marids, jinns, ghouls, peris, deevs, angels, archangels, imps, bogies, or worse, were nothing at all, and pure bosh and wind.
The Cluricaunes dwelt there, and vague shapes born of things she had heard about or dreamt of: she had thoughts about the sea and stars, the flowers and birds. Dick would listen to her as she talked, as a man might listen to the sound of a rivulet. His practical mind could take no share in the dreams of his other half, but her conversation pleased him.
Cluricaunes, banshees, giants, witches, monsters, pookas and the little red-capped people of the fairy rings, were known to the dwellers in many a wattled hut where Padraig had slept. Old people who spoke no language but their own luminous Irish winged his young imagination with tales far more marvelous than those of Nennius, the monk of Bangor.
Sims made Dicky sick," said Emmeline, "he said the wonder t'im was how Dicky held it all." "Come on," said Mr Button, "an' don't be talkin', or it's the Cluricaunes will be after us." "What's cluricaunes?" demanded Dick. "Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for the Good People." "Who's they?"
The sun had set, but the moon had not yet risen as they sat in the starlight on the sand near the temporary abode. "What's the things you said made the boots for the people, Paddy?" asked Dick, after a pause. "Which things?" "You said in the wood I wasn't to talk, else " "Oh, the Cluricaunes the little men that cobbles the Good People's brogues. Is it them you mane?"
The children said nothing for a while, and then Dick said: "Tell us about Cluricaunes, and how they make the boots." "Whin I'm tellin' you about Cluricaunes," said Mr Button, "it's the truth I'm tellin' you, an' out of me own knowlidge, for I've spoke to a man that's held wan in his hand; he was me own mother's brother, Con Cogan rest his sowl!
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