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What this episode is about
In Part 1 of the Ireland special I only told the old leprechaun stories. In Part 2 I ask who wrote them down and what happened to the character along the way. What comes out is a chain of people who each shifted the figure a little, from a monk in the 12th century to an advertising agency in the 1970s.
A water creature from a cursed line
Middle Irish scholars traced the world’s monsters back to Cain and to Ham, the cursed son of Noah. A text that Simon Rodway re-edited in 2010 tells of Ambia, a daughter of Cain, who as a siren has twenty-two children with a trout. One daughter, Becnait, becomes the mother of the leprechauns. In the Life of Saint Brendan, the monks meet demons in the shape of dwarfs and leprechauns, and a medieval glossary explains the word as “heir of the lake.”
A word that doesn’t fit
Ever since Whitley Stokes in the 1870s, the accepted meaning of lúchorpán has been “small body.” I said the same in Part 1, and in this episode I correct myself. In 2012 Jacopo Bisagni showed that the oldest manuscript, the Lebor na hUidre, has the form luprucan with a p, and that a compound meaning “small body” is very unusual in Old Irish. His explanation leads to the Roman Luperci. Irish scholars read in Augustine about men who swim across a lake and turn into wolves, and they took the Luperci to be a separate people of shapeshifters. The little Lupercus became the lupracán. Since 2019 the major dictionary of medieval Irish has followed this reading. That doesn’t settle the question, but it does reopen it.
A king in the law books
The Fergus saga, the oldest leprechaun story, survives in the commentaries on early Irish law, right before a section on distraint. Neil McLeod showed that almost every scene raises a legal case. Bisagni also thinks the usual dating to the 8th century is more precise than the evidence allows.
A household spirit, not a fairy
Diarmuid Ó Giolláin went through more than three hundred manuscripts in the Irish folklore archive. His conclusion: the leprechaun has little in common with the fairy folk. He is closer to dwarfs and to the household spirit. The story of Naggeneen, who wants to come along when the family moves house, is also told about the English boggart and the German kobold.
Croker, Keightley and the Brothers Grimm
Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends of 1825 made the figure famous. The manuscript was lost, and friends rewrote the book. One of them, Thomas Keightley, later admitted that he had invented the story “The Soul Cages” based on a German legend. That legend came from the Brothers Grimm, of all people, who translated Croker’s book in 1826 as Irische Elfenmärchen.
Red, then green
In the 19th century the leprechaun wears red: in Croker, in Samuel Lover and in McAnally. As Frank Kinahan showed, Yeats’s division into trooping and solitary fairies didn’t come from his own fieldwork but from older books. No single source shows exactly when the green came in.
Disney in Killarney
The Irish Folklore Commission offered Walt Disney one of the largest story archives in Europe. According to Tony Tracy, he chose an American children’s book from 1903 instead as the basis for Darby O’Gill and the Little People. The Lucky Charms mascot followed in 1964. When it was briefly replaced in 1975, the reason given was that the leprechaun was too unfriendly for children because he wouldn’t share his cereal. That is exactly the trait that has lasted for a thousand years.
Frequently asked questions
What does the word “leprechaun” mean?
Traditionally, “small body.” According to Jacopo Bisagni, though, it more likely goes back to the Roman Luperci, whom Irish scholars took for a people of shapeshifters. The question is not fully settled.
Why are leprechauns green?
In 19th-century sources he wears red. The green came in the 20th century, probably by way of Ireland’s national color and St. Patrick’s Day, but no single source pins down the change.
Is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow in the old leprechaun stories?
No. It’s not in Croker or in McAnally. I couldn’t reliably find out where the connection comes from.
More in the lexicon: Leprechaun.
About this episode
Last week we told the old stories. Today we ask who wrote them.
The leprechaun probably isn’t named after his “little body” at all, but after Roman priests whom Irish monks took for a race of wolf-men. His oldest story is a teaching tale about the law of distraint. In the nineteenth century he wore red, not green. The book that made him famous was lost by its editor and rewritten by his friends, and then translated by the Brothers Grimm. And when Walt Disney was offered Ireland’s greatest folklore archive, he chose an American children’s book instead.
Sources
— Jacopo Bisagni, “Leprechaun: a new etymology”, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 64 (2012), pp. 47–84. The core source for this episode. Shows that the oldest manuscript form is lupracán, argues that the “little body” reading is linguistically very hard to sustain, and derives the word from the Luperci, whom Irish scholars, via Augustine, understood as a race of shapeshifters. Also contains the critique of Binchy’s eighth-century dating of the Fergus saga.
— D. A. Binchy, “The Saga of Fergus mac Léti”, Ériu 16 (1952), pp. 33–48. The standard edition of the Fergus saga; source of the traditional etymology and dating.
— Neil McLeod, “Fergus mac Léti and the Law”, Ériu 61 (2011), pp. 1–28. Shows that the Fergus saga was constructed as a legal teaching tale on distraint.
— Simon Rodway, “Mermaids, Leprechauns, and Fomorians: A Middle Irish Account of the Descendants of Cain”, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 59 (2010), pp. 1–17. Edition of the tale of Ambia the siren and Becnait, mother of the leprechauns.
— Diarmuid Ó Giolláin, “An Leipreachán san Ainmníocht”, Béaloideas 50 (1982), pp. 126–150, and “The Leipreachán and Fairies, Dwarfs and the Household Familiar: A Comparative Study”, Béaloideas 52 (1984), pp. 75–150. The foundational folkloristic study, based on more than three hundred manuscripts from the Irish folklore archives; places the leprechaun with dwarfs and household spirits rather than the fairy host.
— Maureen Murphy, “Croker, Thomas Crofton”, Dictionary of Irish Biography. Source for the lost manuscript, the co-authors, the edition history and the later criticism.
— Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (later edition). Contains Keightley’s admission that he invented The Soul Cages from a legend collected by the Brothers Grimm.
— Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (trans.), Irische Elfenmärchen, Leipzig 1826. Translation of Croker’s collection with the introduction “Über die Elfen”.
— Frank Kinahan, “Armchair Folklore: Yeats and the Textual Sources of Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry“, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 83C (1983), pp. 255–267. Traces Yeats’s fairy classification back through McAnally to O’Hanlon.
— Tony Tracy, “When Disney Met Delargy: ‘Darby O’Gill’ and the Irish Folklore Commission”, Béaloideas 78 (2010), pp. 44–60. The main source for the Killarney chapter.
— Diane Negra (ed.), The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and Popular Culture, Durham 2006. Background for reading the modern leprechaun as a descendant of anti-Irish caricature.
— General Mills, “The History of Lucky Charms”; Atlas Obscura on Waldo the Wizard. Sources for the launch and temporary replacement of the Lucky Charms mascot.
— Dáil Éireann, debate of 11 December 1963. John A. Costello’s criticism of Irish tourist advertising.
Next episode: the start of our series on the Brothers Grimm.