===TRANSCRIPT START===

Astonishing Legends Network. Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And today, we are donning our finest green, or at least a sort of pasty alien green, and getting ready to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.

I wasn't aware of the topic, so I'm wearing a Bucky's T-shirt.

You know, we could allow the Bucky's beaver mascot if you squint. It's sort of a very lumpy leprechaun shape, I guess, maybe.

Sure, it's not the Bucky I care most about. That's in Ireland and Scotland.

Today, we are getting ready to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a deep dive on one of the most misunderstood legends in all of folklore, the fun-loving, trick-playing, gold-hoarding leprechaun. It should come as no surprise to listeners of this show that despite the portrayal of these mythical beings as serial mascots and greeting card illustrations, the modern image of the leprechaun is not really the most true to life. The history and mystery of the leprechaun is a deep dark tale and involves a lot more water monsters and costume changes than you might expect.

Oh, boy.

In fact, one of the only things that real leprechauns have in common with their cartoonish pop culture portrayals is that they are quite small. But as we'll learn, a leprechaun's size is no indication of how dangerous they are. Or mischievous, as they might prefer to be called. So, listener, today is your lucky day. Grab a Guinness or two or three. Keep your eyes on the end of the rainbow. We are coming back with a pot of gold. Or we aren't coming back at all.

Oh, shit. What are we scared?

When are we?

All the time.

Join us. Now it is time for. It is time for Scared All The Time. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Scared All The Time. We have just a quick housekeeping for you today. It is solo Chris housekeeping once again. So a moment, half a second of silence for Ed's non-existence in this housekeeping. All right, we're back. Ed, we hope you're doing well out there. We'll see you again soon. The really big thing I wanna let you guys know about at the top of this episode is that part of the reason Ed's not here is he is putting so much damn work into our new YouTube video podcasts. So if you like this show, if you've ever listened to an episode or if this is your first one and you love it, don't just listen to it on your regular podcast player. That's for old people. We're young and we're cool. So what we do is search Scared All The Time on YouTube. You will find that we've been posting videos for a couple of months now. They've all been a little bit janky, but we are dialing in on the look, the feel, the vibe, the show and what it is on YouTube. So go over. It's a much more exciting and fun way to watch the show. Ed puts a lot of work into it. There's extra jokes that are visual that you won't see if you just listen to the podcast. Those of you who are loving the audio podcast, keep listening there as well, but please, please, please, I implore you all, go check out the YouTube, share the link with people. It's gonna be a big piece of the Scared All The Time puzzle moving forward. It's a big piece of the platform that we are building, and everything that we build, we build with you guys. So, thank you very much. Please go check it out. I also want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of our Patreon members, everybody at all three levels, from the basic beginner level, all the way up to producer. You guys make this show run. We could not do it without you. We've got lots of great rewards. So if you aren't signed up for the Patreon and you do like this show, head over there and sign up and see what we've got. And I think you'll enjoy the show even more when you get all the fun bonuses and extras. So with all that said, I wanted to hit some five-star reviews. It's been a few weeks, but you guys know if you leave a five-star review, we will read it on the show. And we have two that are really great. So we've got this first one from Nina Z A 1218. Five stars, she says. Fun with just the right amount of scary. I love the topics these guys cover, and their dynamic often makes me laugh out loud. Yes. Since I'm scared all the time, some topics get a little too real. Brain-eating amoeba, but usually the level of scary is just right. Ah, we are, you hear that? We are five-star Fear Chefs. We nail it, people. And then our second five-star review is from Lemon Hayes Lawyer. Five stars, superb. Great word. I would happily recommend this podcast to anyone interested. The topics are fascinating, the hosts engaging, and the overall content amusing. Ten out of ten every single time. Bonus points for the Let's Get Haunted crossover. We love a Let's Get Haunted shout out. Go check them out if you haven't yet. They're a great podcast. Lemon Hayes' lawyer says they're great. So thank you guys. Thank you for leaving 5-star reviews. Leave a few more. We'll read them next time. And check us out on YouTube. Other than that, I think it's time for us to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with this episode on leprechauns. All right. I think we have to kick off this episode by drilling down on the one question that everyone listening is asking. Ed, have you seen the 1993 film Leprechaun starring Warwick Davis and Jennifer Aniston?

Yeah.

It's schlock, right? It's gotta be categorized as schlock.

I would categorize it as schlock. You know, I have very specific parameters. Right. To me, it's schlock, yeah.

I wasn't sure if it was too modern to be schlock.

No, it's not. Well, our schlock takes you to 9293.

Okay, so it's right at the tail end.

We're 79 to 92, 93, but 79, we normally, for our, the K5 metric, it's, I don't, as you know, it's too slow.

Right.

Like even a movie that came out in 1980 is still shot in the 70s and it still has that. It's like they haven't seen Spielberg and Lucas movies yet. You know, and they were definitely doing them in the 70s.

Right.

It's like they haven't caught up. So it's too slow, but like 81 to 93 are like peak schlock. And when I say schlock, it's not necessarily, it could even be like a pretty decent movie. It's just if it hits all the parameters for me, it's schlock.

Right. And what are the parameters that Leprechaun hits to make it fit?

Well, technically it's not, it wouldn't be on the list because it's a comedy.

Well, but it's not, it's a horror movie that is unintentionally a comedy.

And that's why it's fine, but I'm saying if it has the, if it labels the genre as comedy in any way, it technically falls off the K-5 metric.

Gotcha.

But it is funny.

I think the sequels would fall off the K-5 metric. Both because they come after 1993, but this is the franchise that famously beat Jason to space with Leprechaun in space. And I think, I think it was the first, and I'm sure by now, not the only, but was the first franchise to specifically take its villain to the hood with Leprechaun in the hood.

That was a choice.

It was.

It's tough, because even that, I'd have that on probably, I'd probably watch that on one of our Sherlock Nights because there's something about sequels that it's a little bit of a loophole.

Right.

Like maybe if it started as Sherlock, when it turned into whatever, we didn't think for a while where we would just start in the middle of a franchise, or we would just like start on Howling 3.

Yeah.

And just see if, do we want to go backwards or forward? So yeah, it probably is fine, but they got a little outrageous. And I think it's probably questionable to go into the hood.

Yeah. I mean, I...

That's an idea.

I... In 2026, the scariest thing about Leprechaun and the Hood is the, we call it maybe indelicate way that it spoofs turn of the century black culture and trans characters. There's some really sketchy stuff that even at the time, I don't know how funny a lot of people would have found it, but that didn't stop. I don't know if anyone has seen Leprechaun in the Hood. I can't really recommend it, but it does star Ice T, and I found a pretty funny quote explaining his thought process on that. This is from Birth Movies Death in 2017. RIP, God bless, by the way. Excellent film website.

Not Ice T, he's still with us.

No, no, no, Birth Movies Death. The quote from Birth Movies Death was, I got the offer to do it, and of course, I was like, get the fuck out of here. What convinced him is that at the end of the day, his son apparently was a big Leprechaun fan, and he said, dad, you've got to be in this movie, so I did a little more research, and I found out the Leprechaun had like four movies already. This motherfucker was an institution, so I signed on for it.

It made Jennifer Aniston.

Well, no, Leprechaun, the first one.

No, I understand, but that's a selling point.

Yes, that's the, well, I don't even, it didn't really make Jennifer Aniston.

She existed.

She did exist. I think she wants to forget that that movie exists, because I don't think she's ever given an interview about it or anything.

I think some people get pumped all these years later when you're like, yeah, I was in this horrible movie. What was I watching? I was watching on Shrug Buds. It was like Ringo Starr made like a caveman movie. It might have been called Caveman.

Yeah, yeah, terrible movie.

Yeah, and it was Shelly Long's first, like, anything that would later go on for like a million years of Cheers and stuff.

Oh, yeah.

Is that Shelly Long? I think it's her name.

Maybe.

And so it's something where, you know, you find success later on and maybe it is fun to be like, yeah, I was in like a B movie when I started. Yeah, I don't think it's fun for her.

Okay.

I don't think so. Jen, if you're listening, give us a shout. Yeah. I start by discussing the Leprechaun, the film, because I think for most people, it's maybe the only connection they make between the idea of a leprechaun and anything even remotely scary. And, you know, I would feel the same way. I haven't really found leprechaun scary in my lifetime, but after digging deep on leprechaun lore, I would argue that these little creatures are a lot scarier than anybody might think of them as today. So, let's start with what we know about leprechauns. Ed, what do you know about a leprechaun?

They have a pot of gold that presumably kept under a rainbow, which I guess it's always on the move, I'm not sure. Do they grant wishes? Is that a thing? They might grant wishes and they Keep going. Are, I think, a mascot for the Boston Celtics, but that could also just be like a short Irishman.

Well, no, I'm just asking, what do you know about the leprechaun as a creature? Forget what their gold, Gold, rainbows.

Potential wishes.

Potentially wishes. I think that's mostly genies, but we'll get into it.

And that's it, I think. I mean, Irish, maybe?

Yes, maybe.

Clover, four leaf clovers, I think has something to do with it.

Maybe, Irish, maybe.

No, I'm just saying, I didn't want you to come out and be like, actually, it's from the fucking They're not Chinese. The Ottoman Empire, and it was, you know, in order to get Jesus into the churches, they decided to take some pagan. You know what I mean? No.

Well, there's a little bit of that, but not nearly quite so off the beaten path.

Okay, well, I'm just trying to cover my bases here.

That's okay. I think you do that.

I guess I'm realizing right now that if you just said that the movie makes you think you're scary, I guess I'm realizing right now I don't really know, like, the scary stuff they do. I just know that they have a pot of gold, and I think Four Leaf Clovers are involved.

Well, Four Leaf Clovers are a symbol of Ireland, and they sort of play a little bit of a role in The Leprechaun. We'll get into that later as well. But, all right, I was just wanting to take a temperature check to see if you knew anything about Leprechaun.

Turns out no.

Turns out you know a little bit.

I think we all know about the gold. We all ate Lucky Charms.

Yes. Well, Wikipedia fills us in with some basic details right off the bat. Quote, a leprechaun is a diminutive supernatural being in Irish folklore, classed by some as a type of solitary fairy. They are usually depicted as little bearded men wearing a coat and a hat who partake in mischief. And later times, they've been depicted as shoemakers who have a hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Okay, so if fairy circles are attributed to fairies, they're like not in the inner circle of fairies. They're on the outside looking in. They're solo bearded losers who are cheap as fuck, I guess, and don't pay for anything. They just hoard their gold.

Kind of, yeah.

So they were like, you can't come take over farmer's wives with us?

I was surprised that when I asked you what you think of leprechauns, that you got gold and you got rainbows, I was surprised that you didn't get funny hat or green suit, because I feel like that's also...

I thought that might have just been like a Coca-Cola Santa Claus. You know what I mean? I thought that might have just been like an artist's rendition for the Celtics and or the artist's rendition for Lucky Charms. I didn't think they were actually going to have buckled shoes and stuff.

There's a little bit. The details for some of this stuff is a little hazy, but the history is kind of interesting. John O'Donovan's 1817 supplement to O'Reilly's Irish-English Dictionary, which really tells you something about what kind of language Irish used to be.

I mean, I guess it would be like a Gaelic type of thing.

Gaelic type thing, yeah. There was much translation to be done. Now, it feels like kind of the same language, unless you're way out in the boonies in Ireland. I feel like there's still some.

I think there's also schooling and government money towards keeping that heritage alive where kids can take old Irish or something.

But his supplement to the Irish English Dictionary gives us a more concise definition with an additional important detail, a sprite, a pygmy, a fairy of diminutive size who always carries a purse containing a shilling, which is- One shilling. Which is the first mention I found of the Leprechaun's appreciation of a coin.

But just one, his coin purse is not runneth over.

His coin purse does not runneth over, but in many Leprechaun tales, the coin reconstitutes itself once you remove it.

That's pretty nice.

A bottomless pit of Leprechaun coins.

Healers' bag.

Or Leprechauns.

Leprechauns.

Is that a cryptocurrency?

It's gotta be. If it's not, we don't know how to start it. So if anyone who's listening knows how to create coins, give us a few once you make it, thank you.

Leprechaun. Take that to the bank. Take it to the end of the rainbow.

Take it to the bank a million times, apparently.

The History Channel tells us that early folk tales depicted Leprechauns as wily, somewhat menacing male cobblers who hid their treasures.

I can see why they didn't want them around.

Yeah, they solo, these guys were like mythical incels, just off by themselves in a little cave, cobbling their shoe.

If their beard, I have not looked at the Boston Celtics logo in a while, if their beard does not connect with the mustache, they are for sure the incels of the fairy community.

I think there's different stylings of Leprechaun beards. Many of them are, when I think of the Celtics logo, I don't think of a guy with a beard. I don't think the Celtics logo has a beard, I don't think he is.

I'm the only one who's mentioned this to you so far.

I don't think he is, I think he's just a guy. I think he's just an Irish guy.

But he's got the clover, and he's got...

A cigar.

There's no cigar.

He doesn't have a cigar?

This is your Mandela effect about fucking Monopoly, man. He does not have a cigar. Pull him up, and then I'll have to put it on the screen like an asshole later.

Okay, he has a pipe.

Okay, that's very different.

Not really.

I mean, if you've ever been around either smoke, yeah.

He does. Okay, wait, the team's mascot is Lucky The Leprechaun.

There you go. He's a leprechaun.

Okay, he is definitively a leprechaun, but he does not have a beard.

He's black Irish, which is to say he's got... Is that a thing where you just don't have red hair? Is that a totally different type of thing?

No comment. I don't want to...

Dark haired gentleman. I guess the thing is he's not giving leprechaun so much as he kind of is and isn't. Like, I'm going to look at the 1968. Yeah, no. Don't go before 1968, guys. On the...

Do not.

Do not. The Boston Celtics logos are wild from like 1950 through 67 are genuinely an insane image. But, yeah, he just kind of looks like a guy. He looks like a bookie in town more than a leprechaun.

I think that's what I always thought, that he was just like some sort of degenerate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, the History Channel tells us that these leprechauns back in the day were portrayed as menacing male cobblers who hid their treasures. They were portrayed as cunning and untrustworthy tricksters who were often mean.

But they had a job. They made shoes? They fixed shoes?

They made, they're cobblers, yeah. Many of them work on shoes.

I guess I don't think of, that's like if Bigfoot handed out towels somewhere. Like, I just don't think of cryptids or like supernatural beings also getting like a paycheck.

I don't know that any of the myths really go as far as saying that this was a paid job. I think it was more, you know, a sort of, the way that they fit into the fairy society, it was maybe their little.

Sure, in case magic doesn't work out, you should have a fallback like making shoes.

It's a really practical skill. I mean, Daniel Day Lewis did it for a while.

Still does.

He still does. Still does. They were often mean, delighting in leading people astray, stealing or playing harmful pranks. One classic tale from a website called mythosanthology.com involves a man capturing a leprechaun and demanding to be shown the location of his gold. The leprechaun leads the man to a field and points to a specific bush saying the gold is buried beneath the bush. The man not having a shovel with him ties a red ribbon around the bush to mark its spot and hurries home to fetch his shovel. When he returns, he finds that every bush in the field has been tied with a red ribbon, making it impossible to find the treasure.

That's like in Batman Begins, when he's like finishing his training on the mountain and they cut his arm. So then he goes around and like cuts all the other ninja's arms so that Ra's al Ghul doesn't, can't tell. That's great. He probably got it from this leprechaun story.

He knew.

I think leprechaun wrote the foreword to the art of war.

Yeah, the secret is a red ribbon around every bush.

Also real fast, we are born, I mean not everyone, I guess I'm gonna be ableist, but our hands become shovels real easily. So, I don't know why this guy, what's the matter with hard tack ground?

If someone said that's where a bunch of gold is. Yeah, I'm on my hands and knees, I'm kicking, I'm digging with my heel.

Exactly.

Don't turn your back for even a second.

Don't go home.

Don't go home.

Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Versions of these creatures have been around for a very long time. They're almost as pagan as any of the creatures we've talked about in our ancient Halloween or ancient Christmas episodes. The earliest mention of a leprechaun in Irish folklore dates to the 8th century, and the first recorded instance of the word in the English language is in a writer named Decker's comedy, which Decker just makes me think of the Tim Heidecker spy show that he makes. It's called Decker, I'm pretty sure.

I don't know anything about that.

But this is not that Decker.

Nor is it Ted Danson's Becker.

No, it's not Becker either. Both incredibly well written projects, but this in the 8th century written by Decker is his comedy, The Honest Horror Part 2.

Calm down with this.

So really, entertainment hasn't changed.

Nope, I'm sure I can't believe I don't have one of those posters.

I know, right?

I could have replaced Red Sonja with that.

Could have made a ton of money in like 71, 72 Times Square, The Honest Horror Part 2.

I'm sure, was that show that every woman in it was canceled now? Yeah, with Franco, it was like a 70s HBO.

Oh, that was actually pretty good. I like that show.

That sounds like a movie that would have been in the universe there.

Yes. The quote is, As were your Irish Leprechaun, that spirit whom by preposterous charms thy lust hath raised in a wrong circle. That is the first instance of the word Leprechaun, although it's spelled L-U-B-R-I-C-A-N.

A real Hamnet situation.

A little bit, a little bit. Except this Hamnet was getting up to some dirty business, I think, with the Honest Tour, because whom by preposterous charms thy lust hath raised sounds very sexy.

Or just a guy who's like, I got tons of money.

That's true.

Be with me, and then she finds out he's broke.

He's throwing his gold around. Interestingly, Wikipedia tells us that Leprechaun-like creatures rarely appear in Irish mythology and only became prominent in later folklore. Which is a little surprising because, as we discussed a little bit earlier, they are like the most Irish thing in the world, besides four leaf clovers and Guinness and potatoes. So yeah, leprechauns weren't prominent in ancient Irish mythology. These sprites and creatures and stuff existed, but not leprechauns the way that we think of them now.

Is it derogatory? Is it like, did it only come about not by them and after? I don't know how I'm even getting there, but just something where it was like, if you were to draw a racist newspaper thing of Irish people coming off the boat, it would include this, you know, cheap fucking jerk.

No, no, no.

You know what I mean?

Like, okay. It wasn't that. It wasn't that at all. It just, it wasn't built into their ancient mythology. It just, it became, it's a more modern invention.

Is it older than Lucky Charms though? Yes. Is it like actually the Coca-Cola Santa Claus? They just like made it up?

No, it's much, it's older than that. But like as we just discussed, the first use of the term was in.

Yeah, but he didn't say, you didn't read the part from The Honest Horror where she's like, my favorite things about you are your little hat and your little coat tails and your buckled shoes.

That's from The Honest Horror part three.

Yeah, but what I'm saying is like, we got a leprechaun in that story, but not necessarily the iconography of leprechauns.

I also think it's kind of like the bald eagle becoming the symbol of America, even though it's not necessarily the most culturally meaningful or important bird that we have.

It also sounds like shit.

It sounds like shit.

Every time you've ever heard it in anything, it's actually like a hawk or a falcon or something screaming.

As an aside, in my research, it has nothing to do with leprechauns, but everything to do with the bald eagle. I'd always heard that Ben Franklin wanted the national bird to be a turkey, but in the research that I found, he did not say that. He joked to his daughter in a letter that the eagle is of quote, poor moral character compared to the turkey, but he didn't want birds to represent the country at all.

That's a good move. It's a smart move to just go with the latter, which is why is a bird involved at all? But I don't understand their moral character.

I don't either. I couldn't find it.

I don't even know. I can't even think.

I couldn't find a reasoning.

Because turkeys are fucking scary.

Turkeys are scary. I, one of the scariest moments of my life was when we were shooting a short film in college. I don't remember if you were on, you were on Razorman, our friend Kettos short film?

No, I was not. I remember the movie. I probably have it on a hard drive.

I was, we were shooting like out in the woods and I was, it was one of the first sets I'd ever been on at college. And I was like, you know, I was like a food runner basically. And I was taking a shortcut back through the woods towards the equipment truck or something. And I stepped on a turkey that was like low to the ground. Like I don't know if it was asleep or what, but I didn't see it and it burst up out of the leaves. Scared the shit out of me.

Yeah. Like ugly, they're big.

I thought I stepped on a landmine for a second. Like I thought I was about to die.

Yeah.

Yeah. But I don't know.

I mean, you see, there's like a weird, like the Germans had like a pilot program where they would like balloon in turkeys.

Yeah.

Yeah. Turkeys are gross, but I can't possibly know how they have a higher moral or to then an eagle.

Look, we don't have all the answers on this show, okay?

An eagle stole something from Ben Franklin once.

Yeah.

So how did the Leprechaun00 rise from obscure beginnings to such mainstream attention? According to mythosanthology.com, the word leprechaun00 is believed to come from the old Irish word leucharpon, meaning small body. This reflects their diminutive.

I gotta get a leucharpon.

Yeah, well, that'll be our second, we've got getting square and then leucharpon. Yeah, getting small bodied. This reflects their diminutive size, as leprechauns are typically described as being no taller than a child, usually between two and three feet, and the term likely evolved over time with variations appearing in different parts of Ireland. Others argue that the word leprechaun can actually be traced back to the Celtic lavrogan, which means shoemaker, which might be part of where the shoe thing came from.

Is derivative of a word for shoemaker.

Yes, whether or not they actually were making shoes at the time, the word came from that, and so possibly a lot of the information about the Leprechaun fits in this space of, little unclear if the myth was derived from other pieces or if the myth inspired the words. It's kind of a hazy history.

We should have Mike Shoemaker on from SNL. See if, he's a long time SNL writer. I wonder if he's a leprechaun.

Mike, you're welcome on the show anytime.

Mike, come on anytime you want. We gotta know more about, you were named this for something. Your family was doing something.

Maybe he's like, he's like Elf. He's the full human size version. The rest of his family. Yeah, he grew up.

He grew up. What was that movie that's fucking, speaking of things you wouldn't make today, like Leprechaun in the Hood, what was it, Tiptoes or whatever? Like Gary Oldman.

Oh, where Gary Oldman played a little person on his knees the whole time.

And he has a normal size, not normal. He has a not little person brother in Matthew McConaughey.

Yes.

But neither one are little people.

If you haven't seen Tiptoes.

Don't.

Well, don't, but do and watch it before Leprechaun in the Hood.

Oh my God.

I think it's a more enjoyable.

Why do this double feature?

Yeah. A third theory of where the term Leprechaun comes from that I think is the most interesting of all comes from an article about Leprechauns hosted on usghostadventures.com. Their theory, well, not their theory, but what they put forward is millennia ago, Lu, L-U-G-H, pronounced Lu, was the Celtic god of sun and light. He was worshiped by the Celts for many generations, but his influence began to diminish as Christianity spread throughout ancient Ireland. To reflect the decline of the Celtic influence, Lu began to physically shrink until he was so small that he went to live in the underground world of the Ishii, which is not spelled that way at all. It's A-O-S, space, S-I-D-H-E, the Ishii. This is the world where other Irish fairy creatures like Banshees and shape-shifting goblins called-

Great show, Banshee, unrelated entirely.

This is the world where Banshees and shape-shifting goblins called Pukka resided. By this point-

Like the shell.

Yes, but not at all. Okay. That's P-U-K-A.

Okay.

By this point, Lew was known as Lew Croman, or Stooping Lew, which would explain the Leprechaun's small stature. So this suggests that the word Leprechaun comes from a shrunken god, literally. Okay.

And now he lives in this small town.

Well, I-

Town for small people.

The Eeshee is not a town, it's a state of mind. It's a state of being, it's another place.

Yeah, he moved in.

According to a WordPress article on Irish folklore, the Eeshee were colloquially known as Fair Folk, not because they were always just or always beautiful, but as flattery to prevent their terrible anger.

Oh, wow.

And I think we discussed this, a little of this in our A Side About Fairies in our three-part series on alien abductions, which I think is one of the best run of shows we've ever done, if you haven't.

Didn't we do fairies? Was that literally just part of Aliens, the whole fairy circle section?

Yeah, because it was the-

That section rules.

It was sort of the origin of abduction stories in culture. Because before Aliens, it was fairy abductions.

And that was the one where the guy killed his wife because he thought she was a fairy?

Yes, yes.

That was an unbelievable story. That's a great episode. Everyone should go to the third, I guess the third part of alien abduction and listen to it. It's excellent.

So yeah, I think we talked about this in the fairy episodes, but much like Leprechaun's fairies, we're never seen as cute little Tinkerbell pixies. They were mischievous at best and outwardly cruel at worst. So the article continues though that many of the stories of the Fair Folk's interactions with humankind are haunting stories of madness and tragedy. Maidens seduced away from earthly pursuits who fast to death, heroes being dragged into bogs and drowned, lonely people who think they see a dead loved one and walk into the ocean desperate for one last embrace.

Yeah.

That sort of thing. Those are fairy stories.

Yeah, yeah. They're not, you didn't win a lot. They're not good.

No. And that's, wouldn't you know it, fucking with people is exactly what leprechauns were getting up to in the very first story to mention them.

You think they hang out with, where's Rumpelstiltskin from?

I don't know if Rumpelstiltskin is Irish. And I don't think he would be categorized as an Ishi.

No, I'm just saying that like seems like they're kind of in some ways cut from the same cloth. They fuck with people. They have like a gold element to them. Yeah. They appear and disappear.

There's some trickery. I don't know. That's a bit of a stretch. But I mean, listen, I'll allow it. I'll allow it.

Yeah, I'm going to get in trouble. So for having an idea.

This is not for me.

OK.

Now, this dates back to way before that 1604 reference in The Honest Horror.

The Honest Horror.

That was the first use of the word Leprechaun. OK. This is the first mention of Leprechaun type creatures. They were using a slightly different word.

OK, got you.

This dates back to the eighth century and concerns a legendary king of Northern Ireland, King Fergus. According to an article I found called The First Leprechauns, the story goes like this, quote, While King Fergus slept by the water, a group of water sprites called Luhirpong emerged from the sea and attempted to drag him into the water with him.

That's where they live.

Attempted to drag him into the water with them.

That's what you said.

I said with him.

Oh, well.

When his feet touched the icy water, he awoke and grabbed hold of the tiny creatures.

Give me you fucking little creeps.

In exchange for their lives, they offered the king three wishes.

Oh, there's some wishes.

Now, the wishes are hilarious because I found a couple versions of this tale, and some say that one of his wishes was to breathe underwater, with no mention of the other two wishes. Another version I found claims that Fergus demanded the sprites grant him three wishes.

Okay.

The first wish being the ability to breathe underwater in seas, the second wish being the ability to breathe underwater in pools, and the third wish being the ability to breathe underwater in lakes.

Okay, this guy is obsessed with living underwater, but is strangling them to not go underwater.

He's covering his bases.

Yeah, because it feels like the last person to drag him out of bed was a genie, and they're always like, you can fuck yourself so easily with wishes with genies, and it's like this guy was like, not today, you're not going to only be breathing in saltwater.

Right, exactly.

I want to be kissing mermaids in all the waters.

Right. So this seems like he either learned his lesson the hard way, or was the dumbest wisher of all time. I'm not sure which one, but either way, I think it was, oh no, I'm being dragged into the water. I need the ability to breathe underwater, so I'm going to ask for that as one of my wishes, that I'm strangling out of these Leprechauns.

I don't think they're still dragging them when they're being strangled, so he probably has some time. In any case, to come up with better wishes.

The sprites granted him his wish in the form of enchanted earplugs and a tunic to wear around his head.

Wait, your ear is not how you breathe?

Well, earplugs.

Yeah?

If you go underwater without earplugs, if you go too deep, your ears might pop.

But that doesn't help you breathe underwater.

I didn't write the legend.

And the tunic, it's only gonna weigh you down.

A tunic to wear around his head. Yeah, you shouldn't wear heavy fabrics underwater. It makes it very hard to resurface. But like all wishes granted by the Fair Folk, it came with a caveat.

Pay a heavy price.

Fergus was not to use his gifts at Loch Rudreg, Dundrum Bay, in his own land of Ulster. This is where the story gets really wild. The king ignored the warning of the Fair Folk, and sure enough went swimming in Loch Rudreg. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he could breathe under the water in this loch that they said do not use your powers in. But he soon realized that the Lunar Pond's warning was meant for his own safety, as the lake was home to a gigantic sea creature called the Moridris. I dug up a description of this thing.

Moridris Elba?

Moridris Elba. I dug up a description of this thing from bookofcreatures.com. It's known as the Sea Bramble or Sea Briar, a huge mysterious undefined horror that inflates and deflates, expands and contracts like a bellows. It has features of a thorn bush with branches and stings, and its appearance alone is deadly. There's some crazy images of these things. Maybe you can pop a few up in the screen here. Some people think that what it's actually describing is a jellyfish. In a lake, though? Well, in a lake, it doesn't make any sense, but it inflates and deflates, it spans and contracts like a bellows, features of a thorn bush with branches and stings. Sounds like a jellyfish. I don't know what it's doing in a lake in Ireland, but it does sound like a jellyfish.

I would also like to know the rules about bodies of water at the time, too. Is it something where he was like, fuck you, I'm just going to use it in my, because of one place you said I'm not going to be able to use it, or is it like people were very, like if you use someone else's pool of water, like sentenced to death.

I don't know.

And it was like, well, I'm not going to test this in Charlie's lake, it'll kill me.

To me, it seems like it's saying something about the, look, I'm no English teacher here, but to me, it's-

Nor is this England.

It feels like it's saying something about the hubris of kings.

Oh yeah.

That he was like, fuck you, I'm going to use the power. You can't tell me I can't swim in my own lake, basically.

You think he goes back that night to his wizards? He probably had some wizards.

Probably.

And was like-

Safe to assume.

You guys are trash. I met these little losers and they like gave me sick ass wishes right away. And you guys have been trying to make gold out of stones or whatever for 30 years.

Yeah. I mean, just at that point, behead your wizards and go hire the Luhur Pan.

You gotta get to hire them.

Gotta hire them. Upon seeing the horrific beast, the king's face became permanently contorted in fear. The Book of Creatures says his mouth migrated to the back of his head. Oh, which is-

That's not contorted. That's death. That's a death sentence.

I never in all of the folklore that I've ever read, I have never once heard of short of someone's head being turned completely around. I have never heard of a mouth just like popping through to the back of your head.

Even your mouth is running away.

Yeah, but whatever happened, when the king emerged from the water, his men were shocked by his appearance.

I bet.

Now the king was completely unaware of what had happened to his face, which I don't know how that works if your mouth is now on the other side of your head.

Sure.

But his men, in order to avoid the wrath of the king, decided to keep the details a secret from him, and as the legend goes, went on to cover every mirror in the kingdom.

Okay. This is, I mean, it wouldn't have been that many, but this time period, I mean, these are really expensive mirrors. I think it's why the palace of Versailles is so insane. It's got all those mirrors. Interesting that he, that the highest position in the land, the king, is treated the same way as the people who live in that hobbit hole or whatever, the Easy Bakes, what are they called? Eeshees?

Well, the Eeshees, the fairy people, yeah.

They were also, when you met them, you had to be very like, oh, you're the best. Absolutely, your face is great. It's funny that you had to do that at the level of the king and at the level of, and I guess it's just power, right? Like that little boy in Twilight Zone. Everyone had to be like super nice to him because he could turn you into a jack-in-the-box or something.

Well, over the years, the king was more and more hated by his servants by the harsh way he treated them. And eventually, he pushed them too far. One brave, frustrated servant finally revealed the truth to him. The king was furious. With such a deformity, he realized he could never become the high king and ruler of all of Ireland. The king wanted revenge and went back to Lockwood Rage to kill the monster that had disfigured him.

Years later.

Years later. The battle raged over two days. When the king finally emerged victorious, his eyes were on his elbow, his nose on his ass. He picassoed himself through and through. The water had turned red from the beast's blood and exhausted from the battle, the king died a short time later.

Everyone was pumped.

Yeah, probably.

Unless he had like Joffrey ass kids.

Probably. It's crazy to me that somehow the part of this story that stuck around for centuries is the part about the wish-granting little people and not the-

The beast of a thousand names?

Yeah, the beast of a thousand eyes, the Cthulhu-like creature that emerged from this lock.

Yeah, to battle for years.

Days.

I'm sorry, two days. That just said multiple years.

Well, it was years before he went back to fight him.

Got you.

But I do like imagining that the Mudares became the symbol of Valentine's Day, of St. Patrick's Day. And they put just like indescribable horrors on every St. Patrick's Day card.

And Chicago dyes the water red or something.

Yeah, because I mean this-

Because of all the blood from this famous battle.

But the creation of the Leprechaun myth doesn't begin and end here. Many traits that we think of as being a Leprechaun in nature have actually been combined from other myths and legends.

Okay.

One of the most stolen from and I think sort of erased from history creatures that the Leprechaun stole from is the Clurican. The Irish Post says it's argued that the legend of trying to catch a Leprechaun actually stems from stories about Cluricans. The idea being if you catch a Leprechaun, it'll tell you where its gold is or whatever.

Do we know anything about Khan, like Clurican, Leprechaun? Does Khan have like a?

It comes up, the Khan comes up a few other times and I'm not sure, clearly they all derive from the same like.

One of our Irish listeners hit us up, we know who it could be.

Gaelic words. Cluricans were known to carry magical purses which contained a lucky shilling that always.

Oh, so this is the other.

Yes.

This is where that comes from.

Yes, the lucky shilling always returned to the purse no matter how many times it was spent.

And luck, first time you've heard of luck. Lucky leprechaun, lucky four-leaf clover.

Yes. Because of this coin, many mortals were seen trying to catch a clurican as to seize ownership of the coin.

Give me that coin.

These fellas were pranksters and jokesters and shoemakers too and were very rarely seen.

Mike, get on the show.

Without a jug of booze.

Oh, so I wonder if Boston took them on as their.

Well, this was the clurican, remember, not necessarily the leprechaun. Yeah. They most often hung out in people's wine cellars stealing whatever alcohol they could and getting up to all kinds of trouble, sort of like froggers of the ancient past. Because of this-

If froggers got so drunk, they fell through your wall like every other week?

Yeah.

What the hell was that noise?

Because of this, many believed, incorrectly, that cluricans were simply drunk leprechauns. But this is incorrect. They are a distinct species. And again, according to the Irish Post, they can be merry and even quite charming, but their pranks have been known to border on the unpleasant. Due to their excessive drinking, they have short tempers and have little gauge or care for the troubles of others.

They're just ascribing drunk people, like drunks.

Yeah. Their pranks are unpleasant.

They're a lot of fun until they aren't.

They've been known to harm livestock and even people should anyone stand in the way of their acts of debauchery. There are tales of sheep and cattle falling ill and family members catching a pox after disgruntling a cluricon.

Yeah. Once again, you got to be nice to them.

A famous Irish story from 1828 called The Haunted Seller, is the gold standard of cluricon tales regarding one, Justin McCarthy of Ballinacarthi, a legendary host known for his immense hospitality and a seller overflowing with wine. Problem is, you have a seller overflowing with wine, you're going to attract a cluricon. He struggles to keep a butler because everyone who enters the seller is frightened away by strange occurrences and rattling barrels of wine and horrible snarls and growls from the shadows.

Okay.

McCarthy decides the only way to keep the party that he's famous for going is to move away from the house. But when he goes into the seller to fetch his final round of wine, he comes face to face with his problem. A cluricon named Naganin. The tiny creature wearing a red nightcap and leather apron is sitting astride a pipe of port.

Okay, the top is fun. The bottom is I'm cutting people apart.

Yeah.

Like why a leather apron? Well, I guess he's a cobbler. Maybe there's something where sparks are hitting your.

He's a drunkard. I don't know if Naganin is a cobbler or if he's just hanging out in his basement.

I'm just saying like nightcap, cute, adorable, you're small, you're fun. And then the leather apron is like, what are you getting up to?

When McCarthy mentions the fact that he'll be moving to escape the Cloricon.

Don't say that to the Cloricon.

Well, he just mentions moving and Naganin cheerfully replies, sure, Edmaster, ain't we going to move tomorrow?

We don't need to do accents.

He says, sure.

Comes out Jamaican anyway when you do it, you and Forte.

Sure, Edmaster, aren't we going to move tomorrow? Which means.

I'm coming with you.

McCarthy realizes the spirit intends to follow him, wherever he goes, so he decides there's no point in leaving his ancestral home, and he continues to live at Ballancarthy to a ripe old age, personally fetching his wine to keep peace with Naganin. The tale concludes by noting that as the cellar eventually grew empty over the years, the Cloracans' revels faded, and some say he eventually turned to making shoes.

Oh.

Which is a very inspiring tale of sobriety.

Yeah.

He chilled out, he turned to shoemaking, he gave back to the community.

Sure. Interesting to me though, that story, the most famous story is that there was no barter in that. It was just like, the guy lives in my basement now, I'll let him siphon.

I accepted this.

He didn't ask for a wish, he didn't like, let me get that crazy coin.

Yeah.

It was just like, all right, you know, get along, get along, whatever the saying is.

When Ed lived on the couch in my college apartment, it was very similar situation.

I had nothing to offer.

He wasn't drunk all the time.

No, by no means, but I was there all the time.

So yeah, Clorachon aren't the only creatures related to leprechauns that have had their thunder stolen over the centuries. The Far Darug are another race of tiny mischief makers from Irish legend, and their appearance might also sound a little familiar. According to yourirish.com, not an accusation, not a finger pointing, yourirish.com, far means man or person, and Darug translates to red man. This I found really interesting. The name aptly describes the creature's appearance, often depicted wearing red clothing or adorned with fiery red hair.

That changed.

Sort of like the Shadow The Hedgehog version of a leprechaun.

This almost feels like the Boston Celtics was trying to escape litigation. They were like, he wears green, he's got black hair, this is not a leprechaun.

It's a Far Darug.

It's neither of those things. It is a Boston resident.

A different site, firesidehorror.com, offers this additional description of the Far Darug. They are sometimes called Rat Boys, as they are believed to have dark, hairy skin, long snouts and thin tails.

That's not even a person at that point. That's actually a rat.

Depending on the source, these rat-ish qualities may be understated, giving them more of a human appearance. But whatever form they take, they are regarded as eaters of carrion.

What's carrion?

Like corpses. It's what vultures would eat. Like dead animals on the side of the road, carrion.

Fucking cowards. A cowards meal.

Yes, exactly. They're too...

They come in after all the work is done.

Yeah, they won't... Well, hey, T-Rex most likely didn't kill its own prey either. T-Rex, I think, was a scavenger.

Couldn't do anything.

True, but it's a hell of a mouth, you know? And they think it might have been able to run pretty fast, but it's neither here nor there.

The Doctor's in the honest whore.

Yeah. Unlike the solitary and wealth obsessed Leprechaun, the far derrig delights in playing pranks on unsuspecting humans, often under the cover of darkness. They are also shapeshifters.

Sure, why not add another power?

Why not? I feel like modern day, you know, if you want to call comic books modern day folk tales or whatever, we've gotten really good at sticking to a suite of powers that becomes narratively interesting. I feel like a lot of these older creatures, it was just like, he can shapeshift, he's got a rat face, he shits gold, and he travels through time. You're like, okay.

It all depends on what you were caught that day. What got you out of trouble? Where it was like, well, there's nobody here now. Well, he shapeshifted and he's gone. Or it's like, I think you just have a rat infestation. It was like, no, they were rat-like people.

They're rat boys, trust me. I say, hey, rat boys, I'm home. And they all scurry away.

They scurry away. Some of them were pretty, you almost look like a man. And so that's where maybe some of this came from, trying to not be beheaded for being the town loon or something.

Yeah. Well, these creatures, the far derrig, are also shapeshifters, quote, appearing to travelers in need of guidance, only to lead them astray or into risky circumstances.

That's really such a dick move. Yeah. Do you ever watch 30 Rock?

Not that much.

I really should. I want to say, I think it's the episode where Liz has to go to her high school reunion or some reunion. She goes back to her town and she's getting, I think the person at the hotel they're staying at is giving them directions to somewhere, and one of the parts of the direction was like, you're gonna see a sign that says detour. You're gonna want to ignore that? That is a trap. That's some line like that. Literally. And then they continue on with the instructions like that was normal.

Yeah, this creature's ability to manipulate perception and misdirect wanderers adds to the unpredictability of its antics. As with many figures in Irish mythology, the depiction of the far derrick varies from region to region in Ireland. In some areas, it is portrayed as a more spiteful being capable of wrecking havoc on households and farms. In others, it retains its more playful nature, content to engage in harmless pranks. Some of these pranks don't sound super harmless to me though. Fireside Horror tells us, I guess, look, also when you're back, and this is 1500s, 1600s, you're facing fire, famine, black plague, death, whatever, a little throwing axes at your head or poxing your children. At the time, maybe those were sort of playful things.

That's Gallo's humor.

Everything was so horrible.

Did you ever read, it's such a good book, and I won't give away the moment for people, did you ever read Salem's Lot?

Yes.

And so I won't give away the moment for anybody who's reading it or who perpetrates it or whatever. But the thing where someone cuts the stairwell out of the cellar so that you just fall onto knives and shit, that's what I feel like you're going to say is like, here's a fun prank. You thought you were going to get something from the wine cellar. You fell on knives.

Very close.

Okay.

The Far Derrick, if they heard, if they ever read Salem's Lot or listened to this podcast, they are feverishly working on cutting away someone's stairwell because according to Fireside Horror, they tell us that the Far Derrick is most active during the winter and delights in startling unsuspecting households by banging on their doors in the dead of night, demanding entrance and a place by the fire.

Fuck that. It's cold.

It's cold. It really just might be your neighbor. At this point, it's sort of like, I feel like maybe it was just people were not wanting to let beggars into their home, and the kids are like, Mama, Papa, the person at the door is freezing and starving. And they're like, it's a shape-shifter, hon. You can't let him inside.

That's how we lost The Last Village.

Yeah.

I was reading something recently about log cabins, and if you build them out of like too young of tree or some stupid shit that I didn't fully understand, but like they would still have like water in them, and then like the winter would come, and then the water would turn to ice and explode at night. And so like it was this thing about how like it would constrict and then explode. And so sometimes you'd just be in a log cabin, and if you didn't build it with the right type of dry wood, it would just be terrifying.

Right.

Well, because then you would warm up your house with the fire at night, and then it would no different than throwing a log in the fire.

Right.

It has water in it, and it cracks. But these are your fucking walls.

Cracking and exploding.

Exploding, though. Like, people got hurt, I think they were saying.

From the force of the blast.

Like, something with like a, like a chypsia.

I mean, yeah, I guess if you're expanding water in a contained, it's like if you put a fizzy can in the freezer for too long. Yeah.

It could have been a dream I had, but I think I read it somewhere.

No, this sounds real.

But just as crazy to think about being like, just living in that long time ago, and your walls are exploding.

I like to think people listen to this show and take these little factories out into the world. It may or may not be true. Yeah, they're like, you know, someone told me that log cabins can explode.

They can just explode, man.

They can just explode.

That's why we don't use log cabins anymore.

All right, back to the far derrig. They would come knock on your door in the dead of night and to refuse the request of the far derrig to enter was considered perilous because you might awaken to find your child stolen and a changeling left in its place.

Got your ass.

Or discover that your cattle had been mysteriously sickened.

But get that shit position to be in because you've let him in, he might be doing crazy pranks. And if you don't let him in, there's consequences.

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm not letting Eric Andre in in the middle of a snowstorm. I don't need that in my house.

That energy?

Yeah.

Love Eric, but.

Yeah. Should you ever encounter a far derrig, you would be wise to treat him with the utmost politeness lest you fall victim to one of his cruel practical jokes. A favored trick, a favored trick. Again, this is what was considered a funny, harmless, practical joke, is to persuade an unwitting person to carry a corpse on their back and in a gruesome twist, convince them that it's merely meat, urging them to roast it on a spit.

Okay. A lot going on here.

Yes.

Origin story of Weekend At Bernie's.

Possibly, possibly. Although they don't eat Bernie at the end of the movie.

I mean, that was, maybe they'd cut it, but it is...

Cannibal Bernie cost.

So basically, I don't know if it's, because it's tough. I can see a version where you're already carrying a body, and then they trick you into thinking it's just meat.

Right.

But double trick? You gotta trick them into carrying a dead body.

And whose body is this? Whose throat did they slit and leave them in the middle of the road?

It's your kids. The one that you've already body swapped.

Yeah.

You've made a new one.

Oh my God.

Now you gotta eat your kid.

It's the chilly episode of South Park.

I don't know. I'm not that familiar with all the South Park episodes.

It's a pretty good episode.

It's based on this?

They decide this kid's mean to Cartman. And so his revenge is killing his parents and turning them into a chilly that he makes the kid eat at like a chilly competition.

Cartman's bad news.

Cartman's bad little man. He's a bad boy. The Far Derrick are far worse though.

Okay.

One tale tells of a Far Derrick who disguised himself as a farmer and tricked a group of men into helping him harvest his field. So he's already asking for free work. This is already asking your friends to help you move and being like, I can't really, you know, I can't eat that.

You know what this reminds me of a little bit? Not Christmas horrors, but the second Christmas episode we did where it's like the devil and Santa Claus were like tricking each other into shit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. All the time.

A little bit.

I guess it's like.

You might be misremembering that. It's not exactly that.

Hell, you know what I'm saying, though. I'm trying to think about so much of this stuff and to bring back our old homie Rumpelstiltskin. It's just so much is built on trickery. Yeah. But it all goes south.

I think back in the day, you had to really be on your, you had to mind your P's and Q's when it came to trickery.

I guess you just couldn't trust anyone, though. Do you think all of this is Boogeyman? Like everything is at some point a Boogeyman to survive in the old world or to survive in the new world. Or like everything on some place is like, just make money from an honest day's work. Don't let someone in your house fucking whatever it is. Like so many of these I can see as like life lesson tasks.

Well, I think we've touched on that when we talk about other folklore. Like there was the, I think it was a Japanese spirit that basically was like, yeah, don't wander off in the woods. Because if you walk into the woods, like if you're a kid and you walk in the woods, you're going to fucking die.

But that makes, yeah, so Boogeyman.

Boogeyman, everything is Boogeyman. First of all, great pin, great t-shirt maybe.

Everything is Boogeyman or everything is Boogeymen?

I don't know, we'll have to think about it. I like them both.

I think it's definitely gonna be the button. I have no time for shit this month, so. Nice, simple text based button.

This far, Derrick is getting farmers to tend to his field for the opportunity. They labor diligently.

What the hell, for experience.

Yeah, for experience. They labor diligently only to discover that they've been gathering pebbles rather than grain.

Wait, that's not, who, that's the trick?

That's the trick. The far Derrick, delighted with his deception, vanished into thin air, leaving the men thoroughly bewildered.

I'd be bewildered too. I took on a job I didn't want to do. I was unsuccessful at it because you tricked me, but it didn't ruin a field or create, like, it just sucks.

It just sucks.

You just wasted someone's afternoon.

It's a shitty thing to do. Yeah. Now, I'm imagining Afar Derrick tricking you when you win one of these auctions, like where you got these table and chairs for the set. You go, you pick it all up, you bring the truck back, you open the back and it's just filled with corpses.

Dude, I told you the story of picking up this table, what you can't tell at home watching is this table's a million pounds. I thought I was being fair Derrick or whatever, tricked, because I went to lift it up. I thought it was glued to the floor, bro. I was like, oh my God, I can't lift this. So that would be a trick they would do, where you'd win all these stuff you want for your house, then they nail it to the ground, so you can't take it home.

Another story tells of a far Derrick leading a band of travelers astray in the mountains. He coaxes them into a bog where he entertains them with wild tales and strange songs. As the travelers grew increasingly intoxicated, the far Derrick slipped away, leaving them stranded in the marshy darkness. So once again, just being a giant piece of shit for no reason.

No reason. At least people got drunk there.

Yeah. My favorite far Derrick prank, though, comes from the website nightbringer.se, which tells us that, quote, one of the most well-known far Derrick stories involves a traveler who seeks shelter in a cottage late at night.

Don't say it.

Never do it.

That person's in a tough position. I was rollerblading home once and it got too dark and unpacking every part of that sentence. And I remember I had to knock on someone's door to be like, can I use your phone? Because I was like a kid.

I don't think I ever actually did that growing up. You see that in movies all the time is either something that gets someone into trouble either by answering or asking.

Yeah. And I remember even as a young person being like, this can go either way. Like I don't want to answer the door. I've had enough boogeyman stories in my upbringing to be like, because it was a rural area and it was just the thing. It was it had gotten too dark and I was too far. And I just knew that I was in trouble to get home if I didn't call for a ride. But yeah, I had to knock on someone's door and they were like, hello, can I help you? They were all, and I was like, oh, I'm a child.

Gotcha.

Which made it easier.

So this story goes nowhere. I just sort of thought there was gonna be a punchline there.

No, I'm just saying that. It's a tough position for both people, is all I'm saying. The person knocking and the one answering, it's kind of hard. If you're looking for shelter, it's hard to make that first knock if you're not mischievous.

Well, wouldn't you know it, in this case, the person answering the door turns out to be a Fardarig in disguise.

Oh, no.

He invites the guest to sit, eat, sleep.

Fardarig with a fixed address?

Yeah. At some point, the Fardarig opens a cupboard or box and pulls out what appears to be a lifeless human body, tossing it onto the floor and demanding the guest help him make it laugh. If the guest is frightened or refuses, the Fardarig curses or scares them off. But if the guest plays along laughing or joking with the corpse, the illusion breaks and the Fardarig rewards the guest for their bravery or good humor often with food, safety or gold.

That's wow. There's a lot to like here for me because I definitely want to take part of this for one of the things I'm working on.

This is an Airbnb experience.

But dude, did you ever see Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?

Yeah.

Where like in the opening, they get in like that, they accuse him of cheating, gambling and he's like, ask us to stay and we'll leave. That's kind of that.

Yeah.

How could you have gotten to that conclusion?

I just love the image of a far derrick opening a cupboard and pulling out what appears to be a lifeless human body and saying, make it laugh.

There's also by, I actually just talking to Comic Steve about this earlier today, that a pantry, I guess you would be a walk-in place for your food and a cupboard would be like a cupboard on the wall.

Yeah.

How big is this fucking cupboard or how small is this body?

That's true. It's a leprechaun body.

Yeah, because it's like open the pantry and you grab something. That makes sense. You can walk in. It's a huge thing you can keep in there. But the cupboard, it was like, I don't know how to make this fucking infant body laugh.

I'm not laughing.

Yeah.

Now, the most interesting thing when it comes to leprechauns about the far derrick is that despite their knack for cruel jokes, the evil looking red coat of the far derrick must have been a fashion statement in the world of the she, because it became the primary outfit of the early leprechaun. In fact-

Did he get pants?

Listen, man, we're not going to force a leprechaun to wear pants. I think many of them did.

You know that's a thing in that community too. They were like, if they comment on us not wearing pants, we get to kill them.

Listen to this. Before the 20th century, it was generally held that a leprechaun wore red, not green. A man named Samuel Lover described the leprechaun in 1831 as, quote, quite a bow in his dress, notwithstanding, for he wears a red square cut coat, richly laced with gold, and inexpressible of the same cocked hat, shoes, and buckles.

Sounds like you worked for PT. Barnum.

No mention of pants.

There it is, there it is. They're either smooth down there, or they just have like...

Or maybe if they've got their aprons, they're covered a little bit on the legs.

You think they're wearing a leather apron with that beautiful outfit.

That's true, that's right. You don't want to cover up your richly laced spread coat.

No, I think they're just walking around, little leper dicks swinging.

I think we can assume pants. I think we can assume pants.

Okay, fine.

Again, though, according to famous writer WB. Yates, the solitary fairies, like the leprechaun, he said, wear red jackets, whereas trooping fairies wear green.

Oh, so they're more, they have friends.

I guess.

They're more like, they're people you can have in your friend group who aren't going to, you know, play horrible tricks on you.

It is sort of, it makes sense that, yeah, the horrible trick loner wears the red jacket and the trooping fairies, you know, it's like-

It's probably started as a punishment, where it's like, we gotta fucking mark these people. We gotta like scarlet letter these motherfuckers, or else they'll be like, hey, what's up, guys? I'm cool and I belong in a group.

You don't want them in your group.

Want to help me make this dead body laugh and then you can eat it? And then it was like, you know what, give him a red jacket the fuck out of here. You're gonzo, bud.

Yates' Leprechaun wore a jacket with seven rows of buttons with seven buttons to each row.

That's too many buttons.

It's a Dr. Seuss style jacket we're working with. Yates describes that on the western coast, the red jacket is covered by a fritza one, which I don't know what that is.

It sounds like a Dragon Ball character.

Some other coat. Whereas in Ulster, the creature wears a cocked hat and when he is up to anything unusually mischievous, he leaps onto a wall and spins, balancing himself on the point of the hat with his heels in the air.

Boston Celtics guy wears a cocked hat.

Yeah. Perhaps though, the most detailed description of a leprechaun's fashion comes to us from folklorist David Russell. Boy, this last name is spelled McAnally, but I don't think that's...

It's probably that.

McAnally. Let's call it McAnally.

He wrote this for Vogue?

M-C-A-N-A-L-L-Y.

I'm letting you try.

David Russell McAnally, he's been dead a long time, so we'll just go with McAnally. He described leprechauns in his 1888 book, Irish Wonders. He describes the le...

It's a wonder why my family named us this.

He describes the leprechaun as being, quote, of low descent, his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy. Oh, wow. Not an honest whore.

So in this case, leprechaun's one person.

Well, no.

And they were born to this.

I guess, yeah.

Because it wasn't saying that's how you make a leprechaun.

He's about three feet high and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings and a hat cocked in the style of a century ago over a little old withered face. Round his neck is an Elizabethan ruff and frills of lace are at his wrists.

Oh, like the Queen War?

Yeah.

That sucks. Get that out of there.

On the wild west coast where the Atlantic winds bring almost constant rains, he dispenses with the ruffles and frills and wears a fritza overcoat over his pretty red suit so that unless on the lookout for the cocked hat, Ye might pass a leprechaun on the road and never know it's himself that's in it at all.

So this guy rules now. The wild west coast where he's hanging out with banshees and windigos, well I think that's in Canada. But I'm saying like he's just hanging out. That's way too loud to add a ruff to this equation.

Yeah, this is, I feel like I don't, have you watched Queer Eye on Netflix?

Never in my life.

Tan France.

For no, nothing wrong with it.

You're a little too fast there, Ed. Not fucking once, dad.

I never even, what the fuck was that? Is it an, oh, it's a Ninja Turtles one where Casey Jones where he's like, oh, are you claustrophobic? And he's like, I never even looked at another guy. Never, never, it's in Ninja Turtles one.

Is it?

Yeah. It's a great joke.

It's a great joke.

But it's weird that it's in Ninja Turtles one.

I was going to say Tan France is the fashion guru on the Netflix Queer Eye, and he's very good at convincing people to try something that's a little bit outside their comfort zone. I think even Tan France would have a hard time selling this red leprechaun outfit to any creature, human or otherwise.

You'd say in the transformation that his job entails, he'd be like, lose the rough, too much. Absolutely.

I mean, Tan would also he'd want to see a pattern on that shirt and a French tuck where you tuck the shirt in the front of your pants.

Well, we know they have patterns, I mean, not this one, but we know they had the gold PT. Barnum pattern and the Celtics mascot has all the little leprechaun, has all the little clovers on his vest.

Yeah, Tan could do a lot with that, I think.

He can work with that. It's a rich area.

I, God, I need, I need, I don't need the other Fab Five, the other Fab Four.

Sure.

I really need Tan. If anyone knows Tan, You're saying you need him to help you out. I need him to help me.

Now that we're on video.

I need him to help me out.

That's become very obvious.

I have no confidence in, I wear the exact, this shirt I got in fourth grade.

Sure.

It was a pajama shirt when I was a kid.

Got you.

But now it's just a regular human T-shirt, but I wear the same thing all the time, just like T-shirt and jeans, because I have no confidence in trying something new.

I do not own a full-length mirror. So, you know, who's not on video now? These are two men on video now.

Who's on video now, huh?

Yeah. You like this?

You like this?

You fucking animals. This is what you demanded of us?

As Ireland moved into the 19th century, the image of the leprechaun softened with newer stories about the creatures, changing them into mischievous and enterprising figures who outsmart greedy humans trying to get their gold. So that's what, when you said at the very beginning of this episode, the thing about wishes, yes, the very earliest mention of leprechauns involves wishes, but over time, and as far as I think most people think of leprechauns, they are more of a, I want to get your gold, you will trick me to try to keep your gold.

So they're victims in the New World. People keep asking for my gold, I can't even...

Look, I wasn't in the creative pitch for the original Lucky Charms advertising, but I would imagine the whole, you want me Lucky Charms, they're magically delicious. All those kids are trying to catch him to get his Lucky Charms.

And you know, think about it, cereal was fucked up too, because the tricks bunny, they were just so awful to him, they never let him have any tricks. You know what he's like, I'd like some tricks, I am a mascot and everything, and they're like, fuck off, you idiot. And then this other one was like, give us all your gold, you piece of shit. Kids were monstrous. Every one of the story lines of the cereal we ate were monstrous.

It's funny that you point out, because you're right, the advertising for children's cereal was like a little power trip for kids.

Also, Apple Jacks, where it was like, parents don't get it. And it was like, oh, you guys having some apples? Shut up, you idiot, you'll never understand.

Cookie Crisp, they threw those two little motherfuckers in jail. Cookie Crisp was breaking out. Oh yeah, they're burglars.

Shit, yeah, and then also, I loved, I don't know if they still make it, I loved Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, and they had like the stick, the cinnamon stick, and like the rotten apple, and they were like, they had a hard go of it too.

Oh, I sort of remember those. I guess the Honey Nut Cheerios Bee really gets off Scott free with all this. No one's ever harassing him.

No one's ever harassed, and Honeycombs didn't really dive too hard into his territory. The old women who made the tiny waffles for Waffle Crisp, which is no longer a product, I don't know. I think they were done dirty just...

They were chained to the machinery.

Yeah, they were working in a sweatshop.

Yeah. So, yes, most of the time, starting in the mid 1800s, up through now, the image of the Leprechaun softened, and it really was more about humans trying to get their gold and Leprechauns tricking them to keep them from getting the gold. Thomas Crofton Crocker's 1825 collection, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, includes the story, The Little Shoe, where a man encounters a little fellow, cobbling shoes, complete with, his little bit of an apron on him, and a hammer in his hand, and a little red nightcap on his head.

I will say this, interesting that the shoe thing maybe is the one that survived every iteration.

Yes, although...

I don't know if Red Boys or whatever had any job, discernible job, the Red Tricksters.

The Rat Boys?

No, Rat Boys, they were rats. They couldn't do anything.

Their job was to spread disease.

Yeah, yeah.

The man sneaks up on this little red-hatted leprechaun, whistling as he works, and the man demands the leprechaun's purse, but the leprechaun cleverly tricks the man into letting him go and escapes, leaving behind-

Why do we keep referring to him as the man and not robber? This man is a criminal who's approached a guy who's just working.

A little shoe man.

It was like, give me your fucking money. He was like, I can do shoe stuff for you, for money.

Well, the good news is the leprechaun escapes and leaves behind only, quote, the prettiest little shoe, which is not what this thief wanted.

Unless the thief's daughter fell in love and that's the way they're going to Cinderella situation. I don't know the story of Cinderella. I think that's got a really dark history way more than the movie, but continue.

For sure. In the 1887 book, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms and Superstitions of Ireland, Jane Francesca Agnes or also known as Oscar Wilde's mother.

Oh wow, really?

Yeah. She describes leprechauns as merry, industrious, tricksy little sprites, but she also calls them vengeful and bitterly malicious if they are offended.

Okay.

Yates also had more to say about more modern leprechauns in his 1888 book, Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, describing them as withered, old and solitary cobblers known for their practical jokes and hidden gold.

Isn't he a poet?

Yes.

A famous poet?

He's a famous poet.

But he also wrote like weird cryptic books?

Well, yeah, he wrote books on Irish folklore.

Interesting.

The leprechaun, Yates writes, is seen sitting under a hedge, mending a shoe and one who catches him can make him deliver up his crocks of gold.

Crocks?

For he is a miser.

Is that the shoe now?

It is a shoe now. He is a miser of great wealth, but if you take your eyes off him, the creature vanishes like smoke.

Okay, so your eyes gotta go dry in a staring contest.

From what I could tell, even this more tame evolution of the leprechaun was-

The sanding down of the edges of the leprechaun.

Yes, these leprechauns are a far cry from their predecessors who were playing with corpses and bogs and putting changelings in your bed.

Yeah, they were fucking saw villains.

Yeah, exactly.

Eat this body or die in a bog. It's like, what? And you have 80 minutes.

But even these tame leprechauns was primarily a fan of the red cap and coat combo until the late 1700s when the Society of United Irishmen, an underground nationalist group-

Oh boy, I don't like where that's going.

That sought to emulate the American Revolution and overthrow English rule used the color green as a symbol of their cause.

Which is to say, we're the opposite of red coats.

I don't know if they were specifically thinking that, but it's a good point. They saw what we did and went-

And the British Army's got red coats.

Yes. Oh.

Very famously, they wear red coats.

To avoid being spotted by the English, a nationalist revolutionary might wear a subtle hint of green, such as a green feather in his cap, according to Robert Key's book, The Green Flag, A History of Irish Nationalism. Though the poorly armed rebels were crushed by the British, the idea of wearing shamrocks attached to hats and the color green as nationalist symbols persisted despite English attempts to suppress them.

That's fun.

So while there isn't a specific moment in folklore that seems to have triggered the change in the color of Leprechaun's clothing, it seems that Ireland's association with the color green led to a gradual shift to portraying the little critters in their green jackets that Yates described as previously the domain of trooping fairies.

And you can see how they could, for their cause, in this new version of Leprechauns, where they're like, you know who else is put upon and treated like shit and they want to trick you out of the money and the land we have? Like Leprechauns, that should be our mascot because they're always just doing their job, cobbling, minding their own business, hanging out in the hedges. And then some jerk comes around and is like, give me your shoes, give me your money, you piece of shit. And if you can't slyly get your way out of it because we're so small and they're so big, we can't physically fight them. We have to be cunning and survive the encounter. I can see how they were like, with this new narrative, that's a great mascot for us.

I'd like to say if you haven't listened to any of our NFUs lately, absolutely keep an ear out and an eye out for one of our episodes that involves the ability to look back into the past. Because in that episode, Ed says he has no use for looking back into the past. And I would say, this sounds like a great use for it to look back and see if these Irish rebels thought this deeply about the connection between their situation and the life of a leprechaun.

I think if you would listen to every episode of our show, you would use that same machine to find any evidence where I would have even remotely that good of an idea I just had that they'd be like, surely someone must have written that for him. That was an off the cuff ed.

Wherever the thought process came from when red coats turned to green, that is pretty much where the legend of the leprechaun froze in time. The closer we get to the present day, the less and less menacing leprechauns become. As we know, they are now fully in the realm of cartoons and serial mascots and parade balloons and just sort of a thing that you put up when St. Patrick's Day comes around.

Which I'm not sure there's any connection whatsoever between them and the St. Patrick themselves.

No, I think it's more just the general celebration of Irish.

Of all things Irish, got you.

So I kind of, when I started researching this episode, I leaned really heavily into the folklore because I was like, outside of the film Leprechaun, I don't know that there's going to be much in the way of frightening Leprechaun tales from the present day. I was wrong. I found a few modern day Leprechaun stories. The first I found, well, both, the first two actually.

Was that Sony Pictures after they installed that giant rainbow?

The first two come from Reddit and the first of those two stories posted by the user BlueSilkTree has the headline, possible Leprechaun sighting? And the story goes like this. I haven't shared this story with many people as skeptics are quick to write off experiences like-

Let me take to the internet to share with the most people.

Yeah, skeptics are quick to write off experiences like mine. Around seven years ago, I was staying at my dad's house and I woke up in the middle of the night to see what I now believe was a Leprechaun. I know this sounds absolutely ridiculous but this experience was so creepy, it still gives me chills to this day. I grew up in my dad's house and it's always felt like home. It doesn't have any creepy vibes or a history of paranormal activity. It's just a normal house. I was sleeping in my bedroom and I woke up facing the left side of the room. In the space about one and a half meters in front of me, I saw this small man, maybe three feet tall, dancing in a circle. Since I'd just woken up, my eyes weren't fully adjusted so I could only make out the outline of this thing and I couldn't see any facial features. I hope this makes sense but it wasn't a shadowy being. It was a solid mask, as real as a person standing in the room. He was wearing a top hat and the dancing was really strange. The dancing is hard to describe. The only way I can think of explaining it is that he was hunched over doing an exaggerated tiptoeing motion. Anyway, I'm watching it dance for around 10 seconds, which doesn't sound like a long time, but it was enough time for me to properly wake up and wonder what on earth I was looking at. I was shocked and frozen thinking this can't be real. After watching it dance in this short space of time, it suddenly stops dead in its tracks, seems to turn around towards me and begins coming at me with speed. I screamed and flipped to the other side of the bed to turn the light on. When I looked back to the side of the room where it had been, it was gone.

You can't take your eyes off of them.

Needless to say, I kept the light on and didn't go to sleep again until it was light outside and my dad was awake.

I wouldn't go to sleep again. I would go to my dad, I'd wake my father up. I'd be like, it was a little man doing something from...

The hunched over exaggerated tip toe dancing in a circle is extremely unnerving to me.

But I think Michael Jackson, he did that thing where he would flip forward on his toes and he would bend over and do his little hat thing. I'm not saying he did it all the time, I'm saying that man's body could do it. So other bodies can do it.

I imagine, I think I know the Michael Jackson movie you're talking about.

Yeah, but he wasn't doing it at length.

Or in a circle in your room at the height of a child. Like there's something, I could see this being something that's like a glimpse that you get in like an Ari Aster movie or something.

Yeah, or even before him.

Just horrifying. GUMMO or something. Yeah, so this Leprechaun story actually really gets under my skin because the imagery is just so inexplicable and weird and could be seen as funny, but I could absolutely see that dancing be very scary.

It's not funny. You would have to have like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam bam music over it. If it was just like the dead of night, all you hear is the like tip tap tip tap of little feet. And then that shit's going on. And it's established that under that little hat of theirs is like a wrinkly old face. And so you just like, and then it comes at you all fast. It's truly nightmarish.

I don't like it.

Without a soundtrack to make it not nightmarish, you're never sleeping again. I would go to my room and be like, someone was in my room, we're installing cameras tonight.

So that, I was like, wow, that's a good one.

It feels like a, who's that person who I can't, like rubber Johnny and stuff, I can't, I hate their material.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who's that as a director? Not Romanek, is it Romanek? Romanek? No, it's, something they would make.

Chris something.

Either way, that seems like one of their music videos.

Yeah, yeah, I know who you're talking about, the rubber Johnny.

Yeah, it'd be like an Apex Twin video or something. I like Apex Twin more than we should.

But anyway, this particular Leprechaun story led me to two other Leprechaun stories, both posted by the user ExistentialDread14, and they were two Leprechaun stories from Western PA. The first is really the worthwhile entertaining one, and it goes like this. My ex-boyfriend's dad was the chief of police of a small town located directly outside of a city. He had several police officers who worked for him, and one was a young rookie cop whom I'll call Mike. The police officers in that jurisdiction often assisted the city police with their calls. Mike was going to such a call one cold day in the beginning of March. He was driving down a road that on either side was a field of tall, dead, brown grass. All of a sudden, Mike saw what he thought was an animal coming out of the grass on the left side. He said he saw the next sequence of events in slow motion. He tried to slow his cruiser down and saw that it was not an animal, but a small, bald, dirty man dressed in ragged clothes approximately two feet tall running out from the grass. He slammed on the brakes, the cruiser did not stop fast enough, and he hit the small man with the front of his car. The man flew up in the air. Mike jumped out and ran to the front. He said he looked right down at the small man, who he then noticed had reddish brown hair. The little man began a screaming evil laugh and hopped up running into the grass on the right side of the road. Mike ran after him, but all he heard was the sound of his evil, mocking laugh.

I mean, that's the best case scenario. No paperwork on that one. Otherwise, you're like, I hit a kid.

No body cam, I guess, no car footage.

I don't think you need to reveal, I don't think you hand in your body cam unless something happens.

Well, he hit somebody, so.

Yeah, yeah, but I'm saying that nobody knew. And they ran away.

Well, they know now, because when Mike got back to the station, he was visibly shaken. Because he killed somebody, I think.

No, they ran away, they were loud.

My ex's father said he was pale white and could barely choke out the story. When he finished telling them what happened, everyone except my ex's dad began howling with laughter. So that's cops for you. I hit a man with my car. I don't know what happened. They start laughing.

Yeah, they're laughing because like I said, they're just like, this could not have gone better for you.

The other cops teased him relentlessly about the Leprechaun story. Since it was about three weeks before St. Patrick's Day, one of the cops went to the dollar store and bought a Leprechaun hat. He left it on Mike's doorstep with a note stuck in the brim saying, I'm coming for you, Mikey. The next morning, Mike came in crying and told my ex's father he was quitting the police. My ex's father believed Mike and said-

So he's the only one that didn't think it was funny. The chief of police or whatever.

Mike didn't think it was funny.

No, no, Mike, whoever the ex's father was the chief of police or the head of-

Oh yes, the ex boyfriend's father was the chief of police, yes.

And so he's the one who didn't find it funny. All of his subordinates were fucking with him.

Yes. Well, I don't know if he didn't find it funny or not. He may have found it funny, but he did believe Mike and said that he could tell that Mike was extremely sincere in his belief that he had hit a leprechaun. He told the other cops to leave him alone about it. And Mike worked with him for years to come. I first heard this story from my ex's father. I could tell he really believed Mike and blah, blah, blah. Later that year, Mike was over at my ex's house and I asked Mike about the story. He grew pale and quiet. He told me exactly the same story that I'd heard from my ex's father. He insists and has always insisted that he hit a leprechaun with his car that day in Western Pennsylvania.

He hit something.

He hit something.

He probably hit a hobo.

He probably hit.

He hit like a wino drunk.

Yeah.

But the best news is that the person was too drunk to remember or scampered off and died promptly. No formal complaints were made.

At two feet tall, if this man fell into a river, he was washed away.

Washed away.

You never had to hear from him again. And the police force is probably thrilled that he didn't show up at their door being like, hey, one of your officers hit me with his car.

That's what I'm saying.

Because if that ever happened to me, brother, you know. I'd be telling somebody. Yeah. Both of these stories pale in comparison, at least in terms of scale and notoriety, to the tale that we will end this episode on, the tale of the Carling Ford Leprechauns, one of the most documented Leprechaun sightings of all time.

Also Pennsylvania?

No.

Oh.

This is from Ireland.

Okay.

I'm reading here from ancientorigins.net, and they tell us that the story all began in 1989 with a man with the very Irish name of PJ. O'Hare.

Okay.

O'Hare was tending his garden when he heard a scream coming from the nearby Foy Mountain in Moore Mountain Range. He rushed up the mountain, wildy athletic man.

Yeah, I guess so.

To find something that astonished him. Scorched earth and charred bones surrounded by a green suit, a hat and several other items. These were all of very small size, including the skeletal remains.

Wait, so a dragon enters the story? What burned them?

We don't know. He also found four gold coins.

That's four too many, three too many.

He became convinced that these items belonged to a genuine, albeit now deceased, leprechaun.

This seems like an easy trick to pull on someone.

He placed all the items inside of a glass box at his pub, where they remain to this day. And I have a photo linked in the show notes if you would like to see the leprechaun's bones. Some of the people of Carlingford believed him, while others did not. One of his friends who didn't believe, a man named McCoylett, not McToylett, McCoylett, wanted to find out whether there really were leprechauns in the area. So he arranged a leprechaun hunt, in which he hid five ceramic leprechauns and 1,000 Irish pounds of prize money under each for anyone who could find them.

What?

McCoylett reasoned that in looking for the ceramic leprechauns, one of the hunters might accidentally come across a real leprechaun.

The logic is sound, everything else isn't. So how many bones? How many sets of bones?

Well, there was one set of bones.

No, that he laid out for people to find.

Five ceramic leprechauns.

So 5,000 bucks.

5,000 Irish pounds, yeah.

To maybe catch a, that's less money than they give Quint to find the fucking, trying to find draws.

I know, I feel like if you just said, I'll give you 5,000 pounds if you bring me a leprechaun.

The head of a leprechaun.

You'd get the whole town out there.

Same results.

His plan didn't work.

Oh yeah.

There were no sightings, but the hunt is now done every year in March on a Sunday beginning at 2 p.m. And so far no genuine little folk have turned up from these annual hunts.

But they're not leaving money on the ground anymore, right?

I don't know if the money is included or not at this point. I don't know. It seems like a great motivator, but if it's become a tradition, tradition is its own motivation. So after PJ O'Hare died, the man who found the original burn to death Leprechaun, which by the way, yeah, there was no witnesses and this guy's like, I don't know if this guy apparently someone burst into flames and left his money in his clothing behind. I'm the only person who saw it.

I found it, you can see I'm out of breath from running up the mountain.

It really happened. Sounds like PJ O'Hare set the man on fire.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. And if you do find anything like I described up there, it was a Leprechaun.

Yeah, after PJ died, the remains of the Leprechaun.

Having never paid for his crimes.

The remains of the Leprechaun and the items purportedly belonging to said Leprechaun remained in the pub, which was sold, except for the four gold coins which went missing.

Oh, that person's cursed.

However, these coins were found a few years later in a purse discovered inside of a stone wall near the home of PJ O'Hare's disbelieving friend, Mr. McCullot.

So you think he took them and then he...

I think McCullot wanted a little bit of this Leprechaun shine for himself. And so he took the coins, hid them in the wall. He says he was repairing the wall when he came across the coin purse.

Oh, so it's him.

Yeah.

The guy who was disbelieving is also the one who was like, Oh, Leprechaun Blue streaked me.

Basically. Yeah. Yeah.

So yeah. OK. So he's behind the narrative of this.

Yes. Got you. And apparently, after finding these coins, now the disbelieving Mr. McCullot began to have encounters with leprechauns, too. His first Leprechaun encounter happened one day when he was walking his dog through the nearby mountains. While walking, he saw three leprechauns sitting on a rock. They did not take notice of McCullot, who, along with his dog, were paralyzed and could not move for several minutes until the leprechauns disappeared under the rock. When McCullot returned home, he was interrogated by his wife as to where he'd been.

You smell like three other women. They were leprechauns.

He insisted that he had only been gone. I was too slow on that. When you said they were leprechauns, I was going to say, and his wife was like, do you think I live under a rock? And he was going to be like, no, but I know three people who do. He insisted he had only been gone for about an hour and a half, and his wife informed him he had been gone for over seven hours. It was midday when he had gone out, and it was now eight o'clock in the evening.

This guy is able to use his, all of his improprieties now have leprechaun excuses.

Well, this does sound a lot like...

An alien abduction.

An alien abduction or the stories of stepping into a fairy circle that we covered in the fairy portion.

Yes, but in this very specific example, it sounds like excuses to gaslight somebody in a relationship with.

Yes, yes.

While also using the, you know, I'm known as the leprechaun guy. So if I can kill two birds with one stone.

After this, he did become a firm believer in leprechauns. He claims...

Yes, you have to. You can't ever waver from this excuse.

Yes.

After you've just... Whatever the fuck he got into, you can't waver.

He had several other encounters with leprechauns, including one with a leprechaun who called himself Carriage? C-A-R-R-I-A-G?

Sure.

Carriage without the E? Car-reg? He called himself Car-reg, who claimed to be an elder of 236 leprechauns who lived in the nearby mountain.

He's a stud.

Car-reg told Macaulay that he and the other leprechauns with him were the last of their kind and that there used to be millions of them on the island. When asked where they had all gone, the aged fairy responded that they'd all died out because people had stopped believing in them.

Oh yeah, but how are you born? What are you just like, do you come out of gold coins? Like, there's no lady leprechauns I've found.

This is perhaps-

No mother of leprechauns, no alien queen of leprechauns.

There's only the honest whore.

I mean, and she's tried to tell us all I'm the mother of leprechauns.

Macaulay, not an honest whore. Macaulay is making up stories about leprechauns.

This guy I think was, yeah, he was certainly doing that.

This is maybe the craziest part of the story though. After he met the Genghis Khan of leprechauns.

The Genghis leprechaun. That kind of works, right? Genghis Khan, leprechaun. You put leper in parentheses, and then on paper it works better.

After this encounter, Macaulay and like-minded individuals, every other man who said, I don't know where I was for eight hours.

Yeah, you're saying this excuse just works?

Get this, they began to campaign for the mountain that was home to the leprechauns to be made into a protected area by the European Union. Macaulay's wish was finally granted in 2009 when it was made into a preserve under the EU Habitats Directive. The EU officials agreed to add the leprechauns as a protected species because they could not prove nor disprove their existence.

Wow.

Today, Carling Ford has a folklore park and other attractions to celebrate the leprechauns who are believed to live in their mountains.

Wow, wow, wow. All started because of a lie about where he was that day.

All started because of a lie about why there was a burned circle and mysterious bones up on a hill somewhere.

This is one of those invention of lying situations. Where it was like, on this day, MacDougall realized.

And it ended with official protections from the EU for leprechauns. So who's to say it didn't work? This scheme had.

This mountain is more protected than Ukraine.

But yeah, I found that fascinating. Leprechauns are officially protected.

We gotta go.

By the EU.

We gotta get over there.

I knew the Loch Ness Monster at one point was added to.

Different country.

No, I know, but it was in terms of protected species that are mythical creatures.

Sure.

But I did not know that about leprechauns. So, and so recently in 2009. So Ed, that brings us to the end of this very special St. Patrick's Day episode. And it means that we have to place leprechauns on the fear tier. Where are you placing leprechauns on your fear tier?

I guess it depends on which one I encounter. If I get like an OG leprechaun, I'm pretty nervous. If I get a leprechaun who just wants to be left alone, then I'm not worried at all because I'm not going to try and take his money.

That's true.

So one on the fear tier of modern leprechauns, like an eight or a seven.

The circle dancing leprechaun.

That's also modern turns out. But in terms of the knock knock who's there eat this body or else.

Yeah.

That's like a seven, I would say a seven.

Yeah.

So let's split the difference for.

I'm going to go one beneath you. I'm going to put leprechauns at a three. I'm not particularly afraid. I also am in no mood to try to theft a magical lucky coin from their reappearing bottomless coin purse.

I'm not trying to.

But it does seem like.

But if someone does make that leprechaun, give us a few.

Please. Absolutely. We're in at the beginning.

Yeah.

And then we will hodl to the moon, as they say on Reddit.

What is hodl?

I don't know, but it's the acronym they use for like when you have to hold on to the.

I don't want to be part of whatever that is. Just make the coin, give us two and we'll forget about it.

We ever said anything. What does concern me about leprechauns is that there is a long lineage of borderline, if not outright dangerous mischief. And so I do, though I'm not particularly afraid of them, it's there. The red flags are there.

Yeah, I mean, they're out there though. Spoon liquor and fucking bread sniffer.

Exactly.

There's like a lot of, every country you get into.

Listen to our Christmas Horrors episode if you've never heard the tale of the spoon liquor.

Every, and then buy a spoon liquor shirt, there's like three left. Yeah, there's a lot of mischief boys out there, and there's a lot of mischief girls too. We have the other shirt that we did, we've sold out more, faster. Phrow Prekta, the goose. Old goose babe. She was also out to trick.

Right. I think we know Leprechaun's low on the fear tier, St. Patrick's Day, high on the list of fun holidays.

Although I didn't know this was gonna be that episode, I would have had some Guinness here or something.

That's all good. We'll crack a Guinness on the day, we'll cheers to all of our fans, we'll cheers to all of the listeners if you've made it this far, you probably already subscribed to our Patreon and you've probably already left us the five star review on Spotify or Apple.

We'll be on there drinking live that day.

But if you have not, please go to patreon.com/scared all the time, check out what we've got. We've got some great rewards at all of the levels. Leave us a five star review, we might read it on the show. Other than that, until next time, I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And the show is Scared All The Time and we will see you next time.

Bye bye.

Bye bye.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Vifel.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is ****.

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Good night.

We are in this together. Together. Together.

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