Continuing from Travels in Ireland...
Leprechauns are not the fun-loving imps we think they are. Originally, the were a group of shorter than average people. The story of these little people lost nothing in the telling until they were billed as "tiny."
The men's wives had trouble birthing children which were more often than not deformed in some way. So the mothers stole baby boys, leaving their misshapen babies behind. Only boys were stolen; they had no use for girls.
For that reason, little boys - as recently as 65 years ago - were dressed up as girls. Dominic showed us a friend's picture of his first grade class and they are all girls, but half of the "girls" are actually boys. At five or six they were (finally) put into boys clothing.
It was believed that a pair of iron fire tongs kept in the baby boy's crib would keep the leprechaun women away. Dominic didn't enlighten us as to how this was supposed to work.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment