This is one of my annual traditions although this year’s class will be held via Zoom.
In recent years St. Patrick’s Day has become controversial because of a maligned and often caricatured minority. I’m referring, of course, to leprechauns. Reviled, mistreated, and still all too frequently portrayed as happy little figures sitting on toadstools smoking pipes even though increasingly they’re switching to e-cigarettes the leprechaun is still the object of prejudice and misconceptions. Many of us, in fact, have passed by or even worked alongside leprechauns, often without realizing it. In the interests of time I’ll just be addressing a few of the most common misconceptions here.
The first is the ancient belief that leprechauns are mischievous, even dangerous creatures. Stories of leprechauns luring travelers into bogs or inflicting injuries on those passing through wooded areas go back as far as the 8th century, but sociologists now agree that such behavior is not characteristic of leprechauns, and is, in fact, quite rare. While there may be some basis in truth for these stories it’s widely accepted that destructive behavior was the act of a minority among leprechauns who, feeling marginalized from the culture as a whole, acted out in anti-social ways. Unfortunately this misconception has been perpetuated and reinforced by stories that are still told to children, as well as in movies, such as the 1993 film Leprechaun, its many sequels including 2000’s Leprechaun in the Hood, and, of course, the 1980 Al Pacino movie Cruising.
There is also a less common misconception of leprechauns as helpful. There are stories of leprechauns discreetly doing farm work, including harvesting, milking cows, and repairing small machinery. Again there may be some basis for these stories, but not all leprechauns enjoy the outdoors or are suited for farm work. Many prefer to work in offices, or seek employment in fields such as shoemaking. This is, of course, not to say that all leprechauns are adept at working with footwear, but many did find this to be an accepted trade. It’s believed this originated from leprechauns making shoes for fairies who, being generally more accepted, would be asked by more common folk where they got such amazing stilettoes. Working as cobblers proved to be profitable even when leprechauns were subject to such fierce discrimination that they were kept out of most cities and towns and had to form their own exclusive villages, commonly known as leprechaulonies.
Stories of farmers rewarding helpful leprechauns with suits of clothes, only to find that the leprechauns considered this an insult and would disappear, may also have some basis in truth, mainly because you can’t expect a leprechaun to wear that coat with those pants, especially after Labor Day.
Finally we come to the most common and persistent belief about leprechauns: that they are hoarders of massive quantities of gold which they keep in pots at the end of rainbows. This belief has been so pervasive that attempts have been made to lure leprechauns with artificial rainbows by everyone from Sir Isaac Newton to the manager of the band Pink Floyd. As a belief it was understandable at a time when people regarded meteorological phenomena as magical, unlike now when it’s understood that rainbows are caused by the refraction of sunlight through water droplets suspended in centaur farts. Because rainbows rarely have ends that reach the ground it’s still not understood how exactly leprechauns could have kept their alleged pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, in spite of several theories advanced by folklorists and experiments attempting to hang pots of gold from rainbows using balloons. A frequently repeated tale is that a leprechaun, when caught, may be forced to give up the location of his pot of gold, but only if the person who caught him keeps his eyes fixed on the leprechaun. In stories of this type the leprechaun often escapes capture by telling the person who caught him that there’s a fierce beast or the Chrysler building just over his shoulder. Folklorists believe that there is some truth in this, but only to the extent that leprechauns seem to have invented the “made you look” joke. Also it’s now known that leprechauns are not inherently wealthy. While there are some who have enjoyed success—the heir to the Lucky Charms fortune, for instance, or Mickey Rooney—leprechauns are no more likely to be wealthy than the general population.That concludes the lecture for today. In preparation for next week read pages 126-153, when we will be discussing genetic mutation and its potential for altering reality. Our lab work will involve real four-leaf clovers, but I’d better not catch any of you wishing for a better grade.
This is a revised version of an essay originally titled “Live And Let Live” I offer each year on the first night of Hanukkah.
The squirrels have stayed out of the attic. At the start of every Hanukkah I think about this because several years ago we had a squirrel infestation. There was at least one family nesting in the insulation. The scrabbling sounds that woke us up in the middle of the night were a minor inconvenience, as was the possibility the squirrels were using whatever we had stored up there for nesting material. A bigger problem was that they might be tearing up the insulation, as was the possibility that they might chew through wiring which could start a fire and burn down the entire house, leaving all of us without a nest, and unlike the squirrels we couldn’t easily move to a clump of leaves in the nook of a tree. So I unfolded the rickety wooden ladder and climbed into the attic through the door in the hallway ceiling. I was able to chase some squirrels out but that was a temporary solution so I also took some traps smeared with peanut butter. I used the spring bar traps, the kind that used to be sold under the slogan, “Build a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Since we were dealing with squirrels, though, I used the size intended for bigger animals. These had the slogan, “These will cut your fingers off,” and could be sprung from ten feet away by a good sneeze. I discovered dexterity I never knew I had and set the traps carefully, hoping they’d serve as a deterrent and convince the squirrels to move out. I wasn’t so lucky. I had to bag a few bodies, their necks broken by the steel bar, and carry them to the garbage then reset the traps, trying not to sneeze. Then one night I found a squirrel still alive in one of the traps. It was struggling to get away but badly injured. I knew I couldn’t let the squirrel go. Even if it survived its injury, which wasn’t likely, even if it avoided being run over by a car, even if it escaped neighborhood dogs, stray cats, coyotes, foxes, owls, hawks, even if it wasn’t attacked by other squirrels, it could get back into the house. And it would spend whatever life it had left in excruciating pain. I’d caused it to suffer and I had a responsibility to end that suffering. I knew all this, but I wasn’t looking forward to what I had to do either. My wife suggested I use a hatchet but that would mean I’d have to look at the squirrel, I’d have to aim carefully, and I wasn’t prepared to do that. A history teacher once told me that Mary Queen of Scots, as she approached the chopping block, turned to her executioner and said, “Be mercifully quick.” Her request apparently made him lose his nerve; it took him three tries to finish the job.I put the trap with the squirrel still in it into a white plastic garbage bag and took it out to the driveway. I got a shovel out of the basement. The squirrel struggled a little in the bag, which I appreciated because it told me exactly where to hit. I wanted, for both of us, to be mercifully quick. After the clang of the shovel faded, I heard a flute playing. Someone a few houses away was in their backyard practicing “Jingle Bells”. For some reason this song always makes me think of people and woodland animals sharing the sleigh ride together, a sort of Eden with snow and blinking lights. The sun had just set, and in the stillness I realized that in some houses and places of worship the first candle of the menorah had either been lit or was about to be lit. I’m not Jewish. I’m not even religious in any traditional sense, but I know Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates hope and perseverance. It’s about a miracle of light and life–one day’s worth of oil burning for eight–coming to people who have just been through darkness and death. It’s a celebration by people who survived an all-out attempt to wipe them off the face of the Earth. It may not be the highest of holy days but it’s usually celebrated around the solstice, and there’s something fitting, even poetic, about candles being lit against the darkness on the darkest nights of the year. I first learned about Hanukkah when I was a Boy Scout and working on a project about religion. I was supposed to learn about a faith other than my own. I was raised in a very relaxed Presbyterian church and because I wasn’t particularly religious then either I could have picked just about any other Christian sect and had friends who were Catholic and Baptist and Methodist, but I didn’t know any Jews. I’d read stories about Jewish families and traditions. The minister of our church had a sign on his office door that said, “Shalom!” I decided I wanted to know Judaism better. I went to a local temple one afternoon when it was empty. First the rabbi took me to his office and started asking me questions. How long had I been a Boy Scout? What was my project about? Why had I chosen Judaism? It was nice to have an adult take an interest in me but also confusing. I knew “rabbi” was the Hebrew word for “teacher” and I was there to learn, not talk about myself. When he asked if I knew anything about Judaism I panicked. I should have done some cursory background reading before coming, I thought, but I hadn’t done anything to prepare. I admitted this and prepared myself for his disappointment. Instead he smiled. “There’s no sin in ignorance.” Suddenly I felt relief. I’m sure adults had told me that before, but it was not what I expected, especially from a teacher. I spent most of my youth feeling like I was supposed to know things that I’d never been told; everything seemed to be a test, and I frequently thought I was failing. At that moment I felt assured that it was okay to not know anything as long as I was willing to learn. “Do you know any Jewish holidays?” he asked. Since I’d learned about Passover in Sunday school I didn’t think of it as a Jewish holiday. Instead I said, “Hanukkah,” which I knew sometimes overlapped with Christmas. “Do you know the story of Hanukkah?” I still didn’t feel great about not knowing anything, but he smiled again and told me the story of the Maccabees, and the destruction of the temple, and how the oil that was only supposed to last for one night burned for eight, and Hanukkah is the celebration of this miracle. Then he took me into the main sanctuary and showed me around. It was very much like other churches I’d been in, very much like the Presbyterian sanctuary I went to every Sunday, in fact, with pews and a raised section at the front, but with slightly different decorations. He explained about the Torah, how the ark that holds it is positioned so those who face it are facing toward Jerusalem. Then he pointed upward to the Eternal Light. It was just an electric light, made to look like a flickering flame, but the specifics didn’t concern me. I was captivated by the symbolism. I had only a vague idea of how unkind history, particularly the 20th Century, had been to the Jews but here, I thought, was the central symbol of a belief system built around hope. In college I took a class on Judaism, and attended services at the local synagogue. The first time I went I picked up a prayer book and opened it. On the first page there was a short story about the prophet Isaiah, who stood at the door of the temple and said, “I cannot go in, this temple is full.” The people looked in and said, “There’s no one in the temple. Why do you say it’s full?” And Isaiah said, “The temple is filled with prayers that are not sincere. Only prayers offered from the heart will ascend into Heaven.” Again I felt that deep sense of hope. Faith, the ultimate expression of hope, is worthless if it’s not sincere. I went to services at the temple several more times, and took part in Passover seders in the spring, and, with a friend, lit the menorah candles for Hanukkah. One day while I was doing research for a paper in the synagogue library I sat in on a talk the rabbi gave parents about coping with, and hopefully preventing, teen suicides. He was emphatic that “l’chaim”, “to life”, wasn’t just a toast made at meals but a philosophy, that to be a Jew meant taking joy in life. In my studies of Judaism I kept going back to Hanukkah and its traditions. I read how, over a thousand years ago, two rabbis, Shammai and Hillel, had competing ideas about how Hanukkah should be celebrated. Rabbi Shammai said all candles should be lit on the first night and then one extinguished on each night as a literal representation of the diminishing oil. There’s a strange beauty in Shammai’s literalness, and I assume the growing darkness would end with a grand blaze. Rabbi Hillel said that one candle should be lit each night so on the final night all eight candles would blaze with glory. Instead of increasing darkness there would be growing light and hope. Hillel’s tradition is the one that’s survived. None of this has anything to do with the squirrels, but it all came to me anyway. I was extinguishing a light even as in other houses flames were being offered up against the darkness. It seemed like the universe was conspiring to make me feel bad about what I’d done, but I accepted the responsibility. I’d even say I welcomed it, even if I wished the epiphany had come more easily. I can rationalize until I’m blue in the face. I can say that even though one-fourth of all mammal species are presently in danger of extinction squirrels aren’t one of them. I can say that at least I’m not actually harming another person, and that through history people have done terrible things to other people with less justification than I have for killing the squirrels in the attic. Nothing I can say changes the fact that, hokey as it sounds, I don’t want to be directly responsible for the deaths of squirrels. I don’t think squirrels are a cornerstone species, or that the disappearance of Sciurus griseus would tip the balance and lead to the extinction of Homo sapiens, but being too casual about extermination threatens us all. As long as the traps were killing them I could shirk responsibility. I was just a caretaker; the traps were doing the work. When the trap failed, I had to face what I was doing. I thought about a poem by Maxine Kumin, who was Jewish, called “Woodchucks”, about her efforts to protect her vegetable garden. She opens with a quick description of first using gas, “The knockout bomb from the Feed and Grain Exchange/was featured as merciful, quick at the bone,” but it doesn’t work and over the poem’s thirty lines she quickly escalates to shooting them, “The food from our mouths, I said, righteously thrilling/to the feel of the .22.” One woodchuck evades her and in the end she laments, “If only they’d all consented to die unseen/gassed underground the quiet Nazi way.” This is the danger that comes from being too casual about death. She feels herself becoming her own worst enemy. It’s not a perfect metaphor. The only perfect metaphor that I know of in English literature is from Gertrude Stein, also Jewish, who wrote, “a rose is a rose is a rose”. There is no justification for the Nazi concentration camps. The woodchucks, on the other hand, threatened Kumin’s food supply, or at least her rhubarb and brussels sprouts. The Biblical land of milk and honey is called that because, in theory anyway, called that because nothing has to die to provide them, but we can’t live on milk and honey alone. Part of the web of life is death. As a counter to that I also thought of a poem by Gerald Stern, also also Jewish, called “Behaving Like A Jew”, about finding an opossum shot and lying in the road. He says, “I am going to be unappeased at the opossum’s death./I am going to behave like a Jew/and touch his face, and stare into his eyes.” What exactly he does next isn’t clear, other then moving the opossum off the road, but what is clear is that he refuses to let a death pass; he is going to mourn the loss of a life so small and seemingly unconnected to his. I didn’t reset the trap in the attic that night, or again. Something in me had broken, but in another strange coincidence the squirrels left and didn’t come back. There were still a few traps up there at either end of the attic, where I’d balanced carefully on the rafters and tried to avoid stepping through the insulation, but they stayed empty. Maybe the injured squirrel had frightened the others away. Maybe it was just a coincidence. If I were religious I might believe they knew I’d prayed for the killing to stop and that because my prayer was sincere it rose up.
This repost is one of my annual traditions. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone except those in countries that don’t celebrate it and the Canadians who are heathens who have Thanksgiving before Halloween , and this year we could really use it.
It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
It was even worse than last year. I know every time my family gets together we fall into certain patterns, but that never makes it easier. This time it was even worse because just getting to my parents’ house was such a pain. I thought I’d carriagepool with my younger brother and his wife, but they went up early so that fell through. Then I thought I’d beat the traffic by setting out at dawn, which was such a great idea everybody else in Richmond had it at the same time and the horses were nose to tail, stop and trot, for miles. Finally I got there a little after ten in the morning and my older sister came out already holding a glass of blackberry wine and when she hugged me I could tell it wasn’t her first one. She asked me how things were going and then didn’t wait for an answer and ran back into the house to tell everyone I was there.
I should have known I’d be walking into an argument in the foyer, the way my family is. It’s just what it was about that threw me. My kid brother had this crazy idea for a new way to cook a turkey, leaving the feathers still on and roasting it in the coals of a fire. Well, it sounded pretty stupid to me, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that the neighbors tried the same thing last year and burned down their stable. But I didn’t want to side with my father either. So I said it had been a long trip and I needed to visit the outhouse and slipped out. Well, there was a line at the outhouse: two of my nieces, three cousins, all four of my brothers, and my sister was already in there getting rid of some of that blackberry wine. So I went back inside to see what was going on.
In the parlor my mother was putting together some kind of monstrosity with dead leaves and dried berries that she said she was going to put in the middle of the table.
“Where’s the food going to go?” I asked.
“Well, we’ll move it before we eat.”
I was going to ask why she’d bother to put it in the middle of the table if she was just going to move it again but decided against having that discussion, so instead I sat down and leafed through a broadsheet that was handy.
“The other men are organizing a game,” she said. “It’s some new sport called foot-ball. You should go and join them.”
Well, she knows I’ve never been athletic, but when I protested she got put out with me and said, “It’s your Uncle Wilkes’s idea. You know you’ve always been his favorite. You really should go and do it just to please him.”
FINE.
Well, when I came back in my sister just cackled and toasted me with another glass of blackberry wine. All my mother could say was “Don’t get any blood on the carpet,” and my older brother kept telling me to stop being a sissy and just put some salve on it. Then Aunt Gerda said pinch the back of my neck and tilt my head forward and Uncle Wilkes said no, put pressure between the eyes and lean back, and then my cousins got into it so there had to be a family brawl about that. A day later and I’m still bleeding. So much for the salve. I’ll have to make an appointment with Dr. Samuel Mudd when I get back.
Then Uncle Aloysius had to start in Daniel about supporting the Whigs and Elizabeth about Suffragettes, just trying to start an argument. Fortunately they didn’t rise to the bait.
Then I tried to head off another argument about who’d have to chaperone the kids’ table by volunteering, but my father cut that off.
“No, no, I want John seated here on my left. After I sent him to that fancy and very expensive school so he could waste his time studying the dramatic arts and oratory he should be well-equipped to deliver the traditional Booth family prayer of thanks.”
Traditional since last year, he means. Then my kid brother kicked me in the shins which I know was his way of saying “Don’t start anything”. I kicked him twice as hard in the shins which was my way of saying, “I wasn’t going to,” and then kicked him again to say, “Hurts, don’t it?”
All this might have been a little more bearable if my sister had let me have some of the blackberry wine.
I swear I’m going to get that Lincoln for making us do this.
Daylight Savings Time always throws me off. Setting the clocks back in the fall isn’t so bad even if in other years it means it’s dark when I get home from work and eventually dark when I leave for work too. It’s worse in the spring when we lose an hour, and that always brings back memories of one evening in my childhood when I went down the street to ask if some kids I knew could come out and play and she said it was too late for them to be out, adding, “Maybe after Daylight Savings Time starts…” It was May and I realized that was a bogus excuse and the kids didn’t want to play with me but were too cowardly to tell me themselves so they sent their mother out to do it.
At least in the fall we get to sleep an extra hour even if it does mean that Halloween–the most wonderful time of the year–is over and the days which have already been getting shorter are about to start getting even shorter, which is going to happen regardless of what the clocks say. That inspired me to write this poetic tribute to falling back several years ago, and I’m not too cowardly to say it’s not funny but I hope you enjoy it anyway.
Daylight Savings Time
It’s over. Time to crank the clocks back an hour
And face the fresh week with a little more
Sleep. An hour to live over, to wince in the light out
Earlier than before. I have to wait
A few days until morning’s dark again wraps the house.
I have a handful of Halloween poems. Here’s one that was inspired by a program I watched one night about haunted hotels. An owner of a B&B claimed there was a ghost named Ed that she’d see walking up and down the halls and sometimes she’d say “Good night Ed!” and he’d turn and look at her. What do ghosts think of us?
Ghost Of The Watertown Bed & Breakfast
Touch sparks to wet bones. Watch them dance. That’s how this feels.
All night Ed walks up and down the hall. In recent years
He’s become an anomaly, an attraction, a circle of cold.
For hours he concentrates on the frozen candles that hold the night
Away. There’s a place he’s supposed to be, but both ends of the hall
Are blocked. Not even his feet sound the floor. The well-fed guests
Sleep in their rooms, except for one who, unaware of the presence
Outside the door, watches a star move across the sky.
Ed is in his shirtsleeves always now. It was evening when
He closed his book and came up here. He wasn’t going to bed
Just yet. It was a quiet evening in the spring. The house
Had guests in it then too. He’s forgotten which room was his,
And thinks that’s what’s wrong, but can’t remember. The rooms
All seem occupied now, and no one speaks to him in a way
That makes him think he knows them. The ones who come through
Drag trails of themselves along, and are so fast
They slip away when he tries to speak. Their voices too
Are murky, but sometimes when the air is thick and he moves
Through it less easily he can hear them. A woman screamed
One night that someone was in her room standing over
Her. It’s said now that Ed enters the rooms. He’s heard
This, and it baffles him. All the doors are locked
To him, and he never stands still, not until the sun
Rolls in through the East window and fills the hall
With blood and fire. What’s after that he can’t remember.
September 2014 feels like a long time ago, probably because it was a long time ago.
The conventional wisdom regarding cancer, if there is such a thing as conventional wisdom with a subject so broad and diverse, is that the five year mark is a big one. Some say five years cancer-free is as good as cured. So what am I supposed to think now that I’m about to reach year six?
Technically, the doctors will say, I wasn’t really confirmed as cancer-free until December 2014 when I had surgery to remove all lymph nodes that might have been harboring aberrant cells but which turned out to be completely clear. And technically, I’ll say, when I finished chemotherapy in late September 2014 I started my recovery, and I get to have some say in this because whose cancer is it anyway?
Anyway, for one thing I can’t say it’s completely behind me. Yes, I had a form of cancer that was easily treatable, and literally within a day of my diagnosis at least one doctor was telling me I had a good chance of being cured. If I hadn’t been so careless in the months leading up to that diagnosis, if I’d been paying attention to the obvious signs, “being cured” could have meant one surgery instead of three and I could have skipped chemotherapy. I made things worse by being lackadaisical about my health when I should have had a daisical, but that’s another story. Sure, there were some fun parts of chemotherapy, like the guy who came around every day with a cart full of candy bars and chocolate milk, and then there was the guy with a guitar who came to my room and sang “Edelweiss” and I asked him if he could play something a little more upbeat and he played “Surrey With The Fringe On Top”, and the best part of that is that he only came by once. Still I’d prefer to have skipped all of it.
The idea of being cured is also misleading. Even after five years cancer can come back. Or it can pop up somewhere else. When I wasn’t getting chemotherapy I sometimes went to the local Gilda’s Club, a place for people who’ve had cancer, who have cancer, or who know someone with cancer—in short, for everyone. I met people there who’d been cancer free for decades. Like them I’ll be a cancer survivor for the rest of my life. It helps keep things in perspective. There was a time when a little thing, like the grocery store being out of that coffee I like, could ruin my day, but now I can say, “But at least I don’t have cancer!” and I feel better, and as an added bonus when I yell about cancer in the middle of the grocery store people clear the aisle and no one comes around singing Rodgers and Hammerstein songs to me.
Sometimes I do wish I could go back and do it all again, although differently. I’d be more aware, I’d be more organized, I’d ask, “Hey, do you know any Sondheim?” I’ve even thought about how I would handle it if I have cancer again. That may sound like a morbid thought but the universe is a morbid place. Everything that lives eventually dies. That’s why we’re lucky to be alive, and if you don’t feel lucky to be alive try yelling, “I’m lucky to be alive!” Even if it doesn’t make you feel better it’ll clear the coffee aisle.
What cancer did for me was leave me with a deeper understanding of how the future matters. The past matters too, and so does the present—they’re all part of the same thing—because everything builds on what came before it. Every decision is a plus one.
Still I’ve wondered if I should say anything. Back in January of 2017 I attended a solidarity march that called for unity among minorities: people of color, LGBT people, and others who, understandably, felt threatened. Many worried that the gains they’d made in recent years would be rolled back.
As a white guy I was, for once, a minority in that group. I don’t mean I know what it feels like to be a minority, or even to be oppressed. I don’t. I was, however, conscious of my background. And I thought that perhaps just by being there I didn’t need to say anything. Still I wondered if I should say something. There was a stage and another white guy, a minister, got up and said something close to what I was thinking I should say. “I know people like me have spent a lot of time telling people like you what to do and how to be,” he said, “so I’m going to keep this short. I just want you to know I stand with you.”
Then he got down.
I worry too about saying the wrong thing. Many years ago, back when the internet was still fairly new, I was on an online discussion board where someone shared a list of insulting things women engineers hear regularly from their male coworkers. I was clueless enough to be surprised and I said, “I can’t believe women still have to put up with this.”
Someone replied, “Congratulations on your white penis.”
It stung but it was deserved. It was exactly what I needed to hear. I started to get defensive, to say that “I can’t believe” is just an expression, that I didn’t really mean it, but then I thought about how it sounded. It was, I think, my first lesson in privilege, and how it makes some of us ignorant and even dismissive of what others are going through. I realized that what I was really saying was, “I don’t believe you.” And there was no reason for me to say that.
It’s too late for me to keep this short but I’ll try to conclude now by saying that I realize how lucky I am to have a voice and to have a voice that’s often magnified by my gender, race, and even economic status. I hope I can be smart about how I use it. I hope that when I do speak I can do a better job of speaking up for other voices, voices who, for too long, have been silenced.
In recent years St. Patrick’s Day has become controversial because of a maligned and often caricatured minority. I’m referring, of course, to leprechauns. Reviled, mistreated, and still all too frequently portrayed as happy little figures sitting on toadstools smoking pipes even though increasingly they’re switching to e-cigarettes the leprechaun is still the object of prejudice and misconceptions. Many of us, in fact, have passed by or even worked alongside leprechauns, often without realizing it. In the interests of time I’ll just be addressing a few of the most common misconceptions here.
The first is the ancient belief that leprechauns are mischievous, even dangerous creatures. Stories of leprechauns luring travelers into bogs or inflicting injuries on those passing through wooded areas go back as far as the 8th century, but sociologists now agree that such behavior is not characteristic of leprechauns, and is, in fact, quite rare. While there may be some basis in truth for these stories it’s widely accepted that destructive behavior was the act of a minority among leprechauns who, feeling marginalized from the culture as a whole, acted out in anti-social ways. Unfortunately this misconception has been perpetuated and reinforced by stories that are still told to children, as well as in movies, such as the 1993 film Leprechaun, its many sequels including 2000’s Leprechaun in the Hood, and, of course, the 1980 Al Pacino movie Cruising.
There is also a less common misconception of leprechauns as helpful. There are stories of leprechauns discreetly doing farm work, including harvesting, milking cows, and repairing small machinery. Again there may be some basis for these stories, but not all leprechauns enjoy the outdoors or are suited for farm work. Many prefer to work in offices, or seek employment in fields such as shoemaking. This is, of course, not to say that all leprechauns are adept at working with footwear, but many did find this to be an accepted trade. It’s believed this originated from leprechauns making shoes for fairies who, being generally more accepted, would be asked by more common folk where they got such amazing stilettoes. Working as cobblers proved to be profitable even when leprechauns were subject to such fierce discrimination that they were kept out of most cities and towns and had to form their own exclusive villages, commonly known as leprechaulonies.
Stories of farmers rewarding helpful leprechauns with suits of clothes, only to find that the leprechauns considered this an insult and would disappear, may also have some basis in truth, mainly because you can’t expect a leprechaun to wear that coat with those pants, especially after Labor Day.
Finally we come to the most common and persistent belief about leprechauns: that they are hoarders of massive quantities of gold which they keep in pots at the end of rainbows. This belief has been so pervasive that attempts have been made to lure leprechauns with artificial rainbows by everyone from Sir Isaac Newton to the manager of the band Pink Floyd. As a belief it was understandable at a time when people regarded meteorological phenomena as magical, unlike now when it’s understood that rainbows are caused by the refraction of sunlight through water droplets suspended in centaur farts. Because rainbows rarely have ends that reach the ground it’s still not understood how exactly leprechauns could have kept their alleged pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, in spite of several theories advanced by folklorists and experiments attempting to hang pots of gold from rainbows using balloons. A frequently repeated tale is that a leprechaun, when caught, may be forced to give up the location of his pot of gold, but only if the person who caught him keeps his eyes fixed on the leprechaun. In stories of this type the leprechaun often escapes capture by telling the person who caught him that there’s a fierce beast or the Chrysler building just over his shoulder. Folklorists believe that there is some truth in this, but only to the extent that leprechauns seem to have invented the “made you look” joke. Also it’s now known that leprechauns are not inherently wealthy. While there are some who have enjoyed success—the heir to the Lucky Charms fortune, for instance, or Mickey Rooney—leprechauns are no more likely to be wealthy than the general population.That concludes the lecture for today. In preparation for next week read pages 126-153, when we will be discussing genetic mutation and its potential for altering reality. Our lab work will involve real four-leaf clovers, but I’d better not catch any of you wishing for a better grade.
Yes, it’s that time again, and may the team with the most points as determined by the rules at the end of the arbitrarily set period of time be declared the title holder!
This is one of my annual traditions although this year’s class will be held via Zoom.
This is a revised version of an essay originally titled 
