Leprechaun story - St Patrick's Day

Tomorrow is St Patrick's Day.  We love to celebrate this festival!  My father's side of the family originate from Wexford in southern Ireland.  A beautiful place!   This day gives me a good excuse to dust off the photo albums and show the children pictures of our travels around Ireland and to tell them family stories relating to Ireland.  One of them being how two brothers  (one of them being my great grandfather) and their cousins, eager for adventure and far off shores, joined the army to fight in the Boer war in South Africa a century and so ago.  Some of them dyed their greying beards black to pass for younger men!  And that is how my father's side of the family came to reside in southern Africa.  

Sol and Leo are in the process of planning designs for a leprechaun trap they are going to make in the garden today.  Tomorrow, we shall bake Irish Soda Bread and I have a special treasure for each child made by my friend Linda....

Here's our favourite story.

Leprechaun Gold

One warm evening Paddy was making his way home when all of a sudden he heard a tap-tap-tapping sound coming from the hedge at the side of the road. Paddy stopped and listened. Well, it wasn’t a bird, nor did it sound like any other creature that might live in the hedgerow. Paddy quietly pushed the thick leafy tangle to one side and peered through the gap. And what did he see but a little man sitting in the field and alongside him was a small pile of tiny shoes, each shoe no bigger than Paddy’s thumb. The little man sat upon a little wooden stool, tapping away at one of those tiny shoes. He was dressed in green as bright and fresh as the spring grass, with a leathery apron and a bright red cap.

Paddy couldn’t believe his eyes or his luck. It was a leprechaun! He hardly dared blink for he knew if he took his eyes off that wee man the leprechaun would disappear and, with him, Paddy’s chances of ever finding the faery’s crock of gold.

Quietly, Paddy crept around the side of the hedge, over the stile and into the field. Slowly, he moved through the long grass until he was standing right behind the leprechaun. He stretched out his arm and snatched the leprechaun off his wee stool and held him by the scruff of his shirt.

The little man kicked and hollered: ‘Put me down, you great lug.’

‘I’ll put you down quick enough, once you’ve told me where you’ve hidden your gold,’ replied Paddy.

‘Gold,’ spluttered the leprechaun, ‘do you see any gold?’

‘Well, of course not,’ snorted Paddy. ‘You wouldn’t just leave it lying about, would you? Now tell where you’ve hidden it.’

‘I haven’t got any gold, you great thug. Now put me down!’ shouted the leprechaun as he dangled in mid-air.

‘What do you take me for?’ growled Paddy. ‘A fool? I know you’ve got gold and I won’t let you go until you tell me where it is.’ Paddy gave the little man a shake and the little man let out a squeal.

‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to put me down so I can show you where it is.’

‘You’re a cunning wee fellow,’ laughed Paddy. ‘If I put you down, you’ll run away. So I tell you what, I’ll hold on to this until you keep your promise.’ And with that Paddy snatched the red cap off the leprechaun’s head and lowered him to the ground.

So the two of them set off. Across the field, and then across another, through a small thicket of trees, up and down ditches, over a boggy marsh and across a small stream they went. Paddy’s boots were wet and his legs were beginning to ache with tiredness and his stomach to grumble with hunger. At last they came to a field covered with thistles.

‘There,’ the leprechaun pointed to a large thistle plant that stood among hundreds of others. ‘If you dig under that one, you’ll be finding the gold that you want.’

Paddy grinned from ear to ear. Gold! He was going to be a rich man. Then he remembered he hadn’t got a spade with him to dig up the treasure. Suddenly he had an idea. He pulled off his sock and tied it to the plant so that he would recognize it again. 
 
‘Promise me, he said to the leprechaun, ‘that you will not untie that sock.’
 
‘Now why would I want to be touching your smelly old sock?’ said the leprechaun.  
‘My hat please.’ The leprechaun stretched out his hand towards Paddy.

Paddy took the cap from his top pocket and tossed it to the wee man. The leprechaun caught it, pulled it tightly on to his head. ‘Enjoy your gold,’ he laughed gleefully and then in a wink and a blink, he was gone.

Paddy hurried home and fetched a spade. Then back across the fields he ran, through the tress, up and over the ditches, across the marshland. With a leap he cleared the stream. As he ran, he thought of all the things he would do with the faery gold!

The sun was just beginning to set and the field itself was doused in a rich golden glow. He looked out across that field and gave a cry of dismay. Every thistle bush as far as his eye could see was tied with a sock exactly the same as his own. Poor Paddy! Heaving the spade back upon his shoulder, Paddy trudged home, without even so much as a penny.

Paddy never saw that leprechaun again, though sometimes, when he was out in the fields working, he felt sure he could hear a mischievous chuckle coming from the hedge. And whenever he pulled on his socks in the morning, Paddy would remember just how close he had come to finding the leprechaun’s gold.