Irish Culture & Heritage

Faeires exist in Ireland - fact.

They have always been here and they always will. 

They appear in many different forms, often disguised as people but every hedgerow, mountain and stream in the land has a Faerie somewhere, splashing in a pool, peeking from the shadows or playing with raindrops. 

But, Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell is far from the true nature of faeries and whether we choose to believe or not they are always with us. 

Irish faeries can take any form, they can be beautiful, powerful and irresistible and not all of them are good, indeed many are at best mischievous and at worst downright bad.

They come in may different forms.

Pookas for example are very bad indeed, perhaps the worst of all faeries. They spend all their time thinking up ever more devious ways of creating mayhem in our world. 

The pooka appear at night at remote farms tearing down fences and frightening the animals. A pooka will stand outside a farmhouse calling people by name, anyone who comes out will be carried off and never seen again. 

They are wreckers, riding the storms luring ships and sailors onto the sharp rocks of the wild west coast. 

If I were you I’d stay well clear of pookas and if you hear one calling your name at night pull the covers up.

Changelings

Female faeries can be very picky when it comes to their wee’uns1. Since faeries want only the most beautiful babies, they sometimes go into the mortal world and swap with a lovely human baby leaving a changeling in its place. 

Changelings look like a human baby but grow up to be mischievous and evil bringing bad luck and misfortune to the family. 

But not all faeries are bad and anyone in Ireland will give you examples of good fortune at the hands of kind faeries. Faeries are the guardians of the Irish countryside and are often left to clear up the mess we people make of the world we live in. They must be kept very busy indeed these days and couldn’t be blamed if they gave up on us.

Leprechauns

Perhaps the most misunderstood faerie of all though is the leprechaun. Forget the plastic ones you see in the “Irish gift shops”, ask anyone who has seen one for real and they will tell you they are tall not tiny and not at all cheeky or childlike.

They mostly appear as an old man and seldom if ever wear a green suit or a tall hat so they can be hard to spot. Leprechaun can talk the hind leg off a donkey and always tell a good story.

By and large they are good though, and faerie law says if you can catch one they must grant you three wishes. 

However, they are greedy for gold and hide their hoard at the end of a rainbow so that it can only be found in sunshine after the  rain. Whilst it rains a lot in Ireland, sunshine is less frequent so their gold stays well hidden.

Faeries are magic

So, faeries come in all shapes and sizes, they are just as diverse and different as people but with one huge, colossal, stupendous difference….

Wee’uns – (pron : Waines) noun, Irish slang - a small child or baby –
“will someone stop that wee’un from waling, me head’s scundered.”