The Irish peasants left to fend for themselves in a world dominated by a corrupted church,oppressive landlords and an absence of local government and medicine turned to their own imaginations to understand and order the world around them-to make their peasant culture work. Stories like Nera and the Dead Man helped children to remember rules for staying healthy and safe and to maintain sanitation. Images from the ancient tales combined with observations -the wind in the winter forest-the Banshee- helped them to explain natural occurrences. You too should know them when you meet them!!
l.The Sheoques: Lived in sacred thorn bushes. Thief fairy music lead humans astray.Sometimes they switched a child with a fairy child to create a changeling which they caused to die in one year.
2.The Merrows:Seen as little hornless cows but really they have fishes tails and wear a red cap(cohuleen driuth).The men have green teeth.green hair,pigs eyes and red noses-women are beautiful and prefer human mates.
1.The Leprechaun: The one shoemaker seen mending shoes.Catch him and get crocks of gold.A thrifty professional.Take your eyes off of him and he vanishes. Red Coat seven buttons in each row and he spins sometimes on the point of a cocked hat.
2.The Cluricaun: Robbing wine cellars and riding sheep and shepherds dogs the live long night-found panting and mud covered in the morning.
3.The Gonconer(Ganconagh)-Love talker,Idler,appears making love to shepherdesses and milkmaids -smokes a pipe.
4.The Fear Darrig-Red man,Joker gives evil dreams
5.The Pooka-A horse ass etc... takes rider on a wild ride and shakes him off in the grey of morning especially drunkards-a drunkards sleep is his kingdom.When it rains with sun shining that means he will be out that night. When berries are killed by frost it is the Pooka's spit which is upon them and they should not be eaten.
6.The Dullahan-Headless or carrying his head.Black coach a bower with headless horses it goes to your door and if you open it a basin of blood is thrown at you-death omen.
7.Leanhaun Shee-Fairy mistresses seeks love of men-if they refuse she is their slave -If they consent they are hers-her lovers waste away -you must find one to go in your place.
8.The Fear Gorta-Man of hunger-brings good luck to those who give him food.
9.Banshee-Fairy woman -morning-wails over dead and calls for them.
10.The Fear Sidhe: Male Fairy (there are also fairies for parts and aspects of the home,for water(sherie) light Soullh and a host of lake fairies,dragons and ghosts)
Sometimes the fairies fancy mortals, and carry them away into their own country, leaving instead some sickly fairy child, or a log of wood so bewitched that it seems to be a mortal pining away, and dying, and being buried. Most commonly they steal children. If you "over look a child," that is look on it with envy, the fairies have it in their power. Many things can be done to find out in a child a changeling, but their is one infallible thing--lay it on the fire with this formula, "Burn, burn, burn--if of the devil, burn; but if of God and the saints, be safe from harm" (given by Lady Wilde). Then, if it be a changeling it will rush up the chimney with a cry, for, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, "fire is the greatest of enemies to every sort of phantom, in so much that those who have seen apparitions fall into a swoon as soon as they are sensible of the brightness of fire."
Sometimes the creatures is got rid of in a more gentle way. It is on record that once when a mother was leaning over a wizened changeling the latch lifted and a fairy came in, carrying home again the wholesome stolen baby. "It was the others," she said, "who stole it." As for her, she wanted her own child.
Those who are carried away are happy, according to some accounts, having plenty of good living and music and mirth. Others say, however, that they are continually longing for their earthly friends. Lady Wilde gives a gloomy tradition that there are two kinds of fairies--one kind merry and gentle, the other evil, and sacrificing every year a life to Satan, for which purpose they steal mortals. No other Irish writer gives this tradition--if such fairies there be, they must be among the solitary spirits--Pookas, Fir Darrigs, and the like.
The Merrow, or if you write it in Irish, Moruadh or Murrughach, from muir, the sea, and oigh, a maid, is not uncommon, they say, on the wilder coasts. The fishermen do not like to see them, for it always means coming gales. The male Merrous (if you can use such a phrase--I have never heard the masculine of Merrow) have green teeth, green hair, pig's eyes, and red noses; but their women are beautiful, for all their fish tails and the little duck-like scale between their fingers. Sometimes they prefer, small blame to them, good-looking fishermen to their sea lovers. Near Bantry, in the last century, there is said to have been a woman covered all over with scales like a fish, who was descended from such a marriage. Sometimes they come out of the sea, and wander about the shore in the shape of little hornless cows. They have, when in their own shape, a red cap, called a cohullen druith, usually covered with feathers. If this is stolen, they cannot again go down under the waves.
Red is the color of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times. The caps of fairies and magicians are well-nigh always red.
The banshee (from ban [bean], a woman, and shee [sidhe], a fairy) is an attendant fairy that follows the old families, and none but them, and wails before a death. Many have seen her as she goes wailing and clapping her hands. The keen [caoine], the funeral cry of the peasantry, is said to be an imitation of her cry. When more than one banshee is present, and they wail and sing in chorus, it is for the death of some holy or great one. An omen that sometimes accompanies the banshee is the coach-a-bower [coiste-bodhar]--an immense black coach, mounted by a coffin, and drawn by headless horses driven by a Dullahan. It will go rumbling to your door, and if you open it, according to Croker, a basin of blood will be thrown in your face. These headless phantoms are found elsewhere than in Ireland. In 1807 two of the sentries stationed outside St. James' Park died of fright. A headless woman, the upper part of her body naked, used to pass at midnight and scale the railings. After a time the sentries were stationed no longer at the haunted spot. In Norway the heads of corpses were cut off to make their ghosts feeble. Thus came into existence the Dullahans, perhaps; unless, indeed, they are descended from that Irish giant who swam across the Channel with his head in his teeth.
The name leprechaun comes from the Irish " Leith bhroyan " or " Leith phroyan " meaning " one shoemaker ", as he is usually seen working on only one shoe. He is erroneously called the " fairy shoemaker " but he is really an elf and not a fairy.
The elf family consists of not only the Brownies of Scotland and the Leprechans of Ireland, but the Trolls and Gnomes of Scandinavia, and the Pixies, Pookas, Knockers, Dulachans, Cluricanes, Red Caps and Bogles of the British Isles. Truly, the Leprechaun is a shoemaker, for he has made shoes for the fairies non-stop for centuries. He is also very rich and he covets his wealth.
He is of a much smaller stature, he is uglier, older, and of a more tempermental nature than his fairy counterparts. And, he is almost always a male of the species.
Siúsaidh says she would not be surprised if he didn't don " a bit o' plaide", if the spirit moved him!