-:- little vision tricksters -:-
-:- little tricksters - leprechauns and elves -:-
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If the Taotao Mona, by inhabiting the remote places of Guam , represent in some way previous inhabitants of the island, this connection is made even more explicit in Ireland with the leprechauns.
Popularly understood to be small, bearded and playful men (as well as bearded women) found living either alone or in communities near streams and forests, they have their origins as one of the many classes of ‘faerie-folk’ associated in Irish mythology with the Tuatha Dé Danánn, a quasi-historical people who are said to have brought numerous civilising arts and trades to Ireland, and who now reside in the Land of the Ever-Living.
Leprechauns themselves are most famously associated with ‘faerie forts’ and ‘faerie rings’, by which is meant ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic megalithic stone circles and earthworks, such as Newgrange, near the River Boyne north of Dublin. Some beliefs from previous centuries held that the leprechauns actually built these structures, which are found in great numbers in every county in Ireland .
The name of the beings itself, the Irish Gaelic words leith-prachán, meaning ‘half-bodied’, makes it clear that these are magical beings, being only partly existent in the physical. Their connection with the Tuatha Dé Danánn in the Land of the Ever-Living also lends them a powerfully magical air, as the Danánn were once believed to be able to accomplish anything they desired, and regularly picked human beings off to carry them to their paradise to offer them wisdom (*3)
There are still large numbers of people, particularly in the West of Ireland, who believe in the reality of leprechauns, and numerous protected hillocks in the region (as well as closer to Dublin) remain unfarmed and unploughed to protect the leprechaun communities supposedly living there(*4).
In modern times, the image of the leprechaun is quite a friendly one, but this was not necessarily so in days gone by. The Irish were subject to many of the same boundary taboos that were imposed on the Chamorros – avoidance of earthworks and stone circles as well as glades and streams. Leprechauns could also steal away babies if angered or cause illness. Once again we see the magical, boundary guardians at work.
But there is a moral dimension here as well. Many of the stone circles, streams and isolated glades were, in pre-Christian Ireland , sites of great religious ceremonies or of profoundly sanctified presences. It is possible that the incoming Christian Church in Ireland recruited the native beliefs in the power of the ‘faerie-folk’ to ensure that good Catholics stayed close to the community and did not stray to those sites of former significance.
A similar moralistic dimension existed among the Germanic peoples with their beliefs in Elves, but not to further the interests of Christianity. These spooks were recruited for such a purpose in pagan times.
Generally with a reputation much more malevolent than the cheery leprechauns, elves were inhabitants of the dark forests and wellsprings across much of Germany and Scandinavia . Considered to be of a very slight build and of great beauty, they not only had a considerable magical ability, but also a kind of ‘glamour’ which could blind humans as to the true nature of their actions. They brought bad dreams to sleepers (by sitting heavily on the dreamer’s chest), blighted cattle, sheep, crops and people with fatal diseases, and often were implicated in stealing away babies and replacing them with ‘changelings’, malevolent humans with an elfin spirit.
In Norse and pagan times, they were often identified with the Gods themselves – the phrase ‘the Gods and the elves’ appears constantly throughout the Norse Poetic Edda and is presumed to mean ‘all the Gods of the sky and the land’. Thus, elves may well have originally been animistic sacred essences, the presences of the heavenly Gods on Earth. It is here that their moralistic dimension came in, since if they represented the Gods on Earth, they too must be obeyed as if they were Gods.
Thus, given elfish malevolence, life for a conscientiously religious Norseman might well have sometimes been fraught with danger. Like the Irish, the Germanic peoples believed that elves lived in communities and as such they acted as boundary guardians.
Most importantly, however, is a new function for these spooks: the Poetic Edda makes it clear that elves are sacred representatives of the Gods on earth, and may well also signify pre-Norse gods or animistic spirits.
So far, then, in our survey of spooks, we have encountered stories and functions which are relatively modern in origin. These functions of ancestor worship or remembrance, boundary guardianship and moralistic sentinels were not the original functions of these spooks, but have evolved as humans and societies evolved the requirements for such ideas and to a certain extent, they eclipse the deeper meaning of spooks as a phenomenon. To understand this, we need to cast our glance further back, to the time when spooks were exclusively magical, exclusively sacred.
And the most suitable place to enter this period of time is Japan , where the Shinto religion is still at the heart of the culture.
(c) Bruce Rimell, June 2005
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