Creature Feature Friday: Leprechauns
What better Creature Feature Friday for the week of St. Patrick’s Day than the LEPRECHAUN?
1) In Irish folklore, leprechauns are part of the fairy family, a solitary kind of fae that practices shoe-making and playing practical jokes. If captured by a human, they may offer to grant three wishes or reveal the location of their hidden pot of gold - but they usually succeed in tricking the foolish mortal and escaping unscathed!
2) Nowadays leprechauns are famous for dressing in green, but in many accounts of leprechauns, they actually sport red threads. Some authors and researchers suggest that leprechauns vary their clothing based on the region from which they come.
3) Leprechauns are always male - there are no accounts of female leprechauns. With the lack of a female population, no one is sure how they reproduce, but one explanation says that leprechauns are the “defective” offspring of fairies who abandoned them. This sad origin story would certainly account for the leprechauns’ isolated and mistrustful existence!
4) Leprechauns are officially protected under European law. In 2009, the European Union decided to add leprechauns to their endangered species list, because they could neither prove nor disprove their existence. A leprechaun sanctuary was established on Carlingford Mountain, where in 1989 a man named P.J. O’Hare claimed to have found the remains of a real leprechaun. After his death, his friend by the name of McCoillte - originally a nonbeliever of O’Hare’s story - began having leprechaun sightings of his own. McCoillte even said he had a conversation with an elder leprechaun named Carriag, who informed him that only 236 little green men remained on Carlingford Mountain - millions of others had died out due to humankind’s unbelief. Today Carlingford maintains a folklore park and a leprechaun hunt each March to keep the belief in the little folk alive!
A sketch of the Crichton Leprechaun.
5) One of the most famous leprechaun sightings of modern times may arguably be the infamous Crichton Leprechaun in 2006. Residents of the Crichton neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama reported seeing a leprechaun in a tree, conveniently just a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. Crowds and reporters gathered to catch sight of the leprechaun, and a video of the event posted on YouTube by an NBC news affiliate became one of the internet’s very first viral sensations. (As of 2018, the clip had over 28 million views!) In a disappointing, non-magical turn of events, in 2014 a man known by the moniker “Midget Sean” was outed as the hoaxer behind the sighting, revealing that he dressed in green and used a ladder to climb the tree, where he says he pretended to be the now-notorious Crichton Leprechaun. It seemed the mystery of Mobile’s leprechaun legend was finally at an end - except it wasn’t entirely. In 2015 a reporter revisited the viral story and interviewed Shun Thomas, the man who said he had discovered the leprechaun. Thomas maintained that the leprechaun he saw materialized in front of him, first appearing as just a nose and mouth and the rest of his face following afterward - top hat and all. Thomas’ account includes supernatural elements that alleged hoaxer “Midget Sean” probably could not have possessed, calling in to question just what Thomas and the rest of his neighborhood saw back in 2006. Not only that, but Thomas also revealed that he saw the leprechaun again in 2010, four years after the original sighting. So just what is the true story of the Crichton Leprechaun?!
Do you believe in leprechauns? Share your thoughts about the famous folklore legend with us in the comments!
