THE LEPRECHAUN COMPANION
DESPITE THEIR WORLD WIDE FAME, few people now know much about leprechauns beyond their fondness for rainbows, crocks of gold and shoemaking. Few people still believe they even exist, or ever did. But only a hundred or two years ago they were taken very seriously indeed in the Irish countryside and there were rumours of them everywhere.
The Leprechaun Companion aims to refresh everyone's memories by gathering as much as has ever been recorded about these sprightly elfs, and then a bit more. We also throw in a board game that leprechauns have played for hundreds or even thousands of years.
PERSONALLY I CONTINUED TO believe in leprechauns as a child till well after I realised it was only my Dad who filled the Christmas stockings (and wasn't he cross when we caught him at it!). I think it was our mother's Irish conviction in telling us about the Little Folk that made them so real. We'd lost Santa but she was going to let us keep leprechauns, elves and gnomes a bit longer.
So for a long time as a child I really believed that if only you could pinpoint the tricky end of a rainbow, you really would find a crock of gold there. And coming across a toadstool with a ring of little ones around it, I really did believe the fairy people had been feasting there under the moon the night before.
That was the viewpoint I chose for this book, and very rewarding it proved too because it was no problem at all finding out everything we wished to know about the faery shoemakers. Click on the thumbnails below for more.
