The Rabbit and the Hare.

The Rabbit and the Hare.

Animism.

The belief of animism was also integral to tribal belief, animism is the understanding that all things in nature possess a spirit and presence of their own, so that rocks trees and the land were things to be learned from - as well as the ancestral spirits, who acted as guides for the future well-being of the tribe (although some beliefs about time were radically different to our own understanding).

Considering a rabbit's foot lucky is actually an ancient tradition in much of the world. At least as far back as the 7th century BCE, the rabbit was a talismanic symbol in Africa, and in Celtic Europe, rabbits were considered lucky as well. Thus keeping a part of the rabbit was considered good fortune, and a rabbit's foot was a handy means by which to benefit from the luck of the rabbit.

These traditions were not marred much by the onset of other more prominent religions like Christianity. Even in the strongly Catholic Ireland of the Middle Ages, there were still superstitious beliefs regarding fairies or the Tuatha De Danaan who resided underground. Gradually, as Christianity spread in Ireland, the old Gods of Celtic belief became associated with hell. Rabbits were thought to have special protective powers needed for residing underground. Thus the rabbit's foot could be protection from evil spirits, and is even considered so today.

Other ancient groups imbued the rabbit's foot with specific forms of luck. To the Chinese, a rabbit's foot may be a symbol of prosperity. Also the known proclivity for rabbits to reproduce quickly and breed often has been noted in numerous cultures past and present. The rabbit’s foot can be carried by women who wish to get pregnant, or who wish to enhance their sexual lives. Sexuality in general is also related to the wish for abundance, fertile crops, and good weather.

Some traditions of how to collect a rabbit's foot state that they're only lucky when taken from cross-eyed rabbits living in graveyards. On the night of a full moon, you must shoot the rabbit with a silver bullet. Further, only the left hind foot is lucky in many traditions. If you can manage all that you don’t need a rabbit’s foot. You must be the luckiest person around.

Hares feature in Irish folklore, and the hare is older than our island’s culture itself. The Irish hare has been immortalised as the animal gracing the Irish pre-decimal three pence piece. Hare mythology exists throughout almost every ancient culture and when the first settlers colonised Ireland, the Irish hare was already an iconic figure. There are many examples in Celtic mythology, and storytellers still relate tales of women who can shape-change into hares. The cry of the Banshee foretelling death might be legend but it may have parallels with the Irish hare of today as it struggles to avoid extinction in modern times.

For ancient communities that had struggled to survive the winter with limited food reserves, eggs were often the first of nature’s bounty to save them from starvation. No wonder then that the hare was revered as a symbol of life and endowed with magical powers.

In some parts of Ireland hares continue to be celebrated. The legendary ‘White Hare of Creggan’ can be seen at the An Creagan Visitor Centre in County Tyrone and its white silhouette still adorns local houses.

The Celts believed that the goddess Eostre's favourite animal and attendant spirit was the hare. It represented love, fertility and growth and was associated with the Moon, dawn and Easter, death, redemption and resurrection. Eostre changed into a hare at the full Moon. The hare was sacred to the White Goddess, the Earth Mother, and as such was considered to be a royal animal. Boudicca was said to have released a hare as a good omen before each battle and to divine the outcome of battle by the hare's movements. She took a hare into battle with her to ensure victory and it was said to have screamed like a woman from beneath her cloak.

The Celtic warrior Oisin hunted a hare and wounded it in the leg, forcing it to seek refuge in a clump of bushes. When Oisin followed it he found a door leading into the ground and he eventually emerged into a huge hall where he found a beautiful young woman sitting on a throne bleeding from a wound in her leg. The transmigration of the soul is clearly seen in Celtic lore such as this, the life of the body is not the end of the spirit, this is understood to take other forms successively.

In Europe there are wide-spread remnants of a cult of a hare goddess and man has for centuries feared the hare because of the supernatural powers with which he has endowed her solitude, her remoteness and her subtle, natural skills. Active at night, symbolic of the intuitive, and the fickleness of the moon, the hare is an emblem of inconstancy. Like the moon which is always changing places in the sky, hares have illogical habits and are full of mystery and contradictions. Certainly it has never been regarded as an ordinary creature in any part of the world, and in ancient Egypt the hare was used as a Hieroglyph for the word denoting existence

Many divergent cultures link the hare with the moon and Buddhists have a saying about the "shadow of the hare in the moon" instead of the man in the moon. They see the hare as a resurrection symbol. The moon is perhaps the most manifest symbol of this universal becoming, birth, growth, reproduction, death and rebirth. The moon disappears, dies and is born again, and this underlies most primitive initiation rites, that a being must die before he can be born again on a higher spiritual level.

The symbol of the hare was used deliberately to transfer old pagan religion into a Christian context, and the Albrecht Durer woodcut of the Holy Family (1471-1 528) clearly depicts three hares at the family’s feet. Later superstition changed the Easter hare into the Easter rabbit or bunny, far less threatening than the ancient pagan symbol and very few people will be aware that the hare ever held such standing.

As the ancient beliefs died, superstitions about the hare were rife and many witches were reported to have hares as their familiars.

Today we talk of a lucky rabbit's foot but for many generations a hare's paw or foot was used as a charm against evil, a throw-back to the long forgotten belief in Eostre the Celtic dawn goddess.

When you next see hares boxing in the fields, remember that they are not simply soft cute animals. They carry millennia of mythology, folklore and tradition with them. Mankind's reverence has helped them to shape the rituals and traditions that we still celebrate across the world.

The Serpent and Saint Patrick.

According to legend, St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. Or to put it more poetically, "charmed them into the sea. Or perhaps the snakes Patrick charmed were sea serpents? However, since the end of the glacial period there were no snakes in Ireland.

St Patrick's famous miracle, the banishment of the snakes, is supposed to have occurred following his Great Fast on Croagh Patrick, outside Westport in County Mayo. St Patrick climbed the mountain where he fasted for 40 days, before expelling all the snakes from Ireland. The fact is that there were never actually any snakes in Ireland to expel, the whole episode is really symbolic of Saint Patrick converting the natives to Christianity and banishing the Druids whose symbol was the serpent and who it is said wore serpent’s eggs as amulets. However, banishing the snakes makes a better story. Serpents and birds, both of which appear in Celtic knotwork, were revered by many people as creatures that could go between the worlds, symbolically and literally.

The snake was a complex Celtic animal symbol calling forth many ideas to the Celts. Representing the process of creation, rebirth, and fertility and healing. Serpents also represented the connection between the rivers and seas as well as the heavens and earth. The snakes protected the entrance to the otherworld as well as being a companion of the gods. Ouroboros the earth serpent represented the coiled energy within the earth and, with her tail in her mouth, infinity. Thanks to the annual shedding of its skin, the snake was the Celtic animal symbolising the cyclical nature of life.

The Christian missionaries would have been disgusted by the folk beliefs of the Irish and would have tried to banish such beliefs from Ireland. The Celts and pre-Celts were animists who believed in many spirits and deities. They believed that spirits dwelled in nature, such as mountains, trees and streams, and had local shrines for worshipping their nature deities. The early Celts of Ireland focused on deities of the local landscapes and while Ireland was an Island, it was not remote from Europe and much trafficking of ideas transpired. Serpent devotion and symbolism was found in the pan-Celtic religion from Britain and Europe, which would have been imported to Ireland. Snakes in this pan-Celtic context were believed to be fertile, destructive, powerful, and self-regenerative, all magical qualities worthy of imitation.

Celtic art is the key evidence of ancient serpent worship and snake symbolism in pre-Christian Ireland. If one looks at the crosses, Celtic knots and designs found in inscriptions, monument details and manuscripts of Ireland, the depiction of snakes abounds.

Irish Catholic Celtic monks, ca. 800 C.E., also famously used Celtic art with decorative serpents to embellish the detailed illuminated Latin New Testament manuscripts such as the Book of Kells. Irish Christian art and architecture is filled with drawings of serpents and snakes.

If, as some have speculated, the Tuatha De Danann, the Irish mythological pre-Christian kingly race, were descended from the Israelite Tribe of Dan, then the serpent would have been associated with the people of Danann. The Israelite Tribe of Dan, also Dann, used the serpent to symbolize their tribe from ancient times. It has been said that in the Book of David, Serpent in Old Arabic means Wise Ones and this would account for Patrick’s attempted banishment of the druid class.

In Ireland the snake symbol was associated with some Celtic goddesses and also with the cult of Crom Cruaich. It has been suggested that Crom Cruaich followers demanded human sacrifice to a serpent deity but there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate this claim. This could have been another invention of either Patrick or Julius Ceasar or both? Crom Cruaich (Lord of The Mound) was the most ancient and venerated god of all the various tribes of Ireland.

Corchen. Irish and Manx.

She was a very old snake goddess about who little is known. However, because of her linkage to the serpent image she was probably a mother earth goddess, or a goddess of rebirth. There is speculation that her lost legends were once part of long forgotten creation myths.

Carravogue. (Also known as Garbhog, Gheareagain,) Ireland and Britain.

Description: Local Crone Goddess from County Meath who was transformed into a huge snake for eating forbidden berries. Her original purpose is basically lost in modern times because her stories became so absorbed by Christian legends which attempt to make her a Celtic Eve. It is believed St. Patrick tampered with her legends, which show that St. Patrick killed her with holy water that melted her, but from which she will arise from again. One of the many legends St. Patrick tampered with was that she was originally a virgin Goddess of spring who banished each year the crone she would eventually become in order to further his own aims.

An Leanan Sidhe.

The Leanan Sidhe.

She is a fairy mistress of dreadful power, for she seeks the love and dominion of mortal men, if they refuse her, she is their slave and if they consent they are hers. Most men find that they cannot refuse her. Only one lianhan shee exists and she is more a force than a woman. Each fairy woman who loves ('An Leanan Sidhe' means the love fairy) becomes one with her; and for the mortal man who longs for her she is the one and only. She does not play with emotions; all who love her live for her and their desire for her frequently destroys them.

The more suffering she inflicts the dearer she becomes to them. The more they desire her the more she eludes them. Her absence is like a chain pulling them towards her. An impatient mistress, the lianhan shee creates such desire in her lovers that they will overcome all obstacles to embrace her. She never yields to them in mortal lands, but insists on their meeting in Tir-na-n-Og, so that men must pass through death to enjoy her. All the great poets and musicians loved her; almost all died young. The more they sang the more their bodies withered; until they sang for her forever.

No one has ever described the Leanan Sidhe. Perhaps each stricken man jealously guards his love and fears the worlds knowledge of her. But more likely no mortal can describe her; for she is desire itself and she wishes to elude all attempts to limit her glory. She may select her lovers from our realm, but she never allows her story to remain long on their mortal lips.

Leanan Sidhe is often quoted as meaning "the fairy mistress" or the "fairy sweetheart". She is the famous Celtic muse with such a dark and unearthly beauty that her lover was often distraught with longing and suffering for her absence. In legend, the Leanan Sidhe often takes an artist for a lover, hence the title "the fairy sweetheart". It is said that her lover gives her the vital depth of emotion that she craves and she in turn inspires his genius.

He is the artist, who lost without his inspiration, unable to create his works of art and compositions of song, suffers in a deep depression and sometimes commits suicide or gives up his creative work in despair. Yet an artist who has lost the connection to his muse has failed to honour and nurture the gift he has been given. The role of the artist in the loss of his muse is not often considered or understood.

The self destructive nature of many inspired artists probably lent itself to the misconception that she was evil and dangerous. Evil is not darkness, for darkness she is, and she can also be dangerous and destructive. When her gift is honoured and nurtured, she shines as a luminous light in the darkness. For those who understand her true nature, who do not idolise or fear her, she is a sliver of moonlight in the blackest night.

The most common and widespread myth attached to Leanan Sidhe is that she is a vampire spirit who attaches herself to one man. To this man, an artist or poet, she appears irresistibly beautiful, and if he is seduced by her, he is ruined body and soul. This misunderstanding is not in keeping with her original purpose and is only as recent as Medieval Scotland when she was associated with the Christian superstition of the succubae. It was popularised in print by the poet W.B. Yeats who claimed that she was a "blood sucking vampire" This was a dramatic touch, but is more likely a symptom of the Victorian obsession with succubi along with a bit of poetic license.

Unfortunately, most research on the subject of Leanan Sidhe goes back no farther than the account Yeats held of her. There is a rich and enduring history and deeper meaning to the name Leanan Sidhe that is much more interesting than the popular vampire fantasies.

The translation of her name holds the first clue to whom and what she is. The words are Gaelic and refer to a faery muse. "Leanan" means the love of my soul or spirit...my inspiration. "Sidhe" is the word for a faery. In Irish poetic tradition, she was the muse who appeared to the bard as the "Aisling" or vision. In his vision he meets her on a hillside and she then inspires music or poetry that has an otherworldly sadness and regret for the glorious past of the Irish.

For those who settled the Celtic Countries, this could be a later translation of contact with the women of the Sidhe. The Sidhe are an ancient race (Tuath De Dannan) who once made their home on the Green Islands long before the coming of the Irish. A race that remains to this day, an unannounced yet vital influence upon the imagination.

Leanan Sidhe is a powerful muse who bestows a gift; the ability to create a work of art, music, or poetry with great depth of feeling. The price of her dark and delicate gift is often a sorrow or heartbreak that is born of obsession. An artist may be spent as furiously as he draws from his source, hence the mythos of the artist who when possessed of the Leanan Sidhe lives a brilliant but brief life. Her true purpose is revealed in the creative works she inspires in poets, painters, and musicians. She is an empath who is compelled to inspire love and despair, longing and desire. She teaches the beauty and power of such emotion and that all such feeling is vital to creation with many dark nights of the soul required to convey the sorrow of her history.

She is intelligence and creativity, art and magic. In this earthly realm, so embraced with fear of the erotic and the sensual, it is no wonder she who is the embodiment of these very qualities, has been considered dangerous and evil, as many woman have been considered evil who revel in their mystery, power and dark exotic beauty

She is the Leanan Sidhe, or the love fairy. A powerful creature who seeks the love and domination of mortal men, you might think of her as the femme fatale of the fae realm. She is desire incarnate. If a man falls for her, he becomes hers forever, body and soul. Once she’s ensnared him, he will live only for her and his all consuming passion will often destroy him. She’s a fairy dominatrix, because the more suffering she inflicts on the man, the more he wants her. She’s a tease, and the more he hungers for her, the more she eludes him. The Leanan Sidhe creates such passion in a man that he will do anything; sacrifice everything, to have her.

Caer. The Swan Maiden of Aengus.

Caer Ibormeith.
Location: Ireland.
Description: A daughter of Prince Ethal Anbuail of Sid Uamuin in Connacht. Usually thought of as a Goddess of sleep and dreams and a less violent version of Mare.

She usually took the form of a swan that lived on a lake called Dragon's Mouth and she wore a golden chain with one hundred and thirty golden balls on a silver chain worn around her neck.

She is connected to the horse and the moon. Caer (pronounced Keer) had many names, often very flowery such as "shapely yew berry."

Caer was in fact a pan-Celtic goddess, worshiped in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. All three countries have claimed her as theirs. Her name is everywhere in the languages of these three countries; in Scottish perhaps the most well-known usage is "Caer Edin," which is the translation for the Scottish capital Edinburgh. In Welsh the town Caernarfon means "Caer Arfon." To the Irish, Caer is only used for the homes of kings, such as "Caer Arianhrod," home of the goddess of that name.

Caer rules Over: Dreams, prophetic dreams, falling asleep, music and magic.

In Celtic tradition the Swan is associated with deities of healing waters and the sun. They are associated with music, love, purity and the soul. They are shape-shifters, can take human form, and have mastered the elements of water, earth and air. They can always be recognized by the gold or silver chain that hangs around their neck.

Among Druids, the Swan represents the soul, and is associated with the Festival of Samhain. The swan aids us in travelling to the Otherworld. Swans are also sacred to Bards and their skin and feathers were used to make the tugen, the ceremonial Bardic Cloak.

Irish tales.

Swans appear throughout Irish folklore. An Otherworldly bird, they are often the disguise of Fairy Women. At certain times of year, a swan maiden can transform herself back into a human, such as Summer Solstice, Beltaine or Samhain, when the veils between the worlds are thin.

The White Swans of the Wilderness were children of the Tuatha de Danaan, who settled Ireland, and became the sidhe after the invasion of the Milesians.

The night Cuchulainn was born, a pair of swans wearing Otherworldly silver chains attacked Emain Macha. In a later tale, the Princess Derbforgaill fell in love with Cuchulainn, and transformed herself and her maidens into swans to be near him. A hunter by nature, he threw a stone at one, none other than Derbforgaill herself, and brought her down. She transformed back into a woman, and lay bleeding at his feet. Cuchulainn restored her, sucking some of her blood, which rendered him unable to take her as his bride. She subsequently married his son.

In The Dream of Angus Og, the young God fell in love with a woman he saw in his dream, named Caer. So great is his longing for her, that he grew ill. He set out to search for her, and discovered that she is no dream, but a mortal woman under enchantment. She and her sisters are transformed into swans at Samhain, and must remain so for six months, until Beltaine.

Angus found her at Loch Gel Dracon, where the transformation took place. When he arrived, there were 150 swans, all with Otherworldly silver chains around their necks, and he could not distinguish Caer from the others. Aengus then called out to her, changing into a swan himself. In that shape, he recognized his beloved, and they flew off together, chanting such ethereal music that all who heard it fell into unconsciousness for three days and nights. He brought her home to Brugh Na Boinne (Newgrange).

The Children of Lir is the most marvellous swan tale of all. An Irish princess’s four brothers were condemned to live as swans for eternity by their jealous step mother, Aoifa, the wife of King Lir. The princess’s only hope is to remain mute for seven years while she wove four shirts of flax for her brothers, which will break the enchantment. There are several variations of this tale. In another variation, they were swans for 900 years, but when they were transformed back to humans, after being baptised by St. Kernoc, the priest of the new religion, they fell to the earth dead.

The Changeling.

The Changeling.

It appears that fairy women all over Ireland find birth a difficult experience. Many fairy children die before birth and those that do survive are often stunted or deformed creatures.

The adult fairies, which are aesthetic beings, are repelled by these infants and have no wish to keep them. They will try to swap them with healthy children who they steal from the mortal world. The wizened, ill tempered creature left in place of the human child is generally known as a changeling and possesses the power to work evil in a household. Any child who is overly admired is especially at risk of being exchanged. I must have been awful lucky????

It is their temperament, however, which most marks the changeling. Babies are generally joyful and pleasant, but the fairy substitute is never happy, except when some calamity befalls the household. For the most part, it howls and screeches throughout the waking hours and the sound and frequency of its yells often transcend the bounds of mortal endurance. I think we have all experienced that feeling.

A changeling can be one of three types: actual fairy children; senile fairies who are disguised as children or, inanimate objects, such as pieces of wood which take on the appearance of a child through fairy magic. This latter type is known as a stock. I’ve met a few in adult life??

Puckered and wizened features coupled with yellow, parchment-like skin are all generic changeling attributes. This fairy will also exhibit very dark eyes, which betray wisdom far older than its apparent years. Changelings display other characteristics, usually physical deformities, among which a crooked back or lame hand are common. About two weeks after their arrival in the human household, changelings will also exhibit a full set of teeth, legs as thin as chicken bones, and hands which are curved and crooked as birds' talons and covered with a light, downy hair.

No luck will come to a family in which there is a changeling because the creature drains away all the good fortune which would normally attend the household. Thus, those who are cursed with it tend to be very poor and struggle desperately to maintain the ravenous monster in their midst.

One positive feature which this fairy may demonstrate is an aptitude for music. As it begins to grow, the changeling may take up an instrument, often the fiddle or the Irish pipes, and plays with such skill that all who hear it will be entranced. This report is from near Boho in County Fermanagh.

"I saw a changeling one time. He lived with two oul' brothers away beyond the Dog's Well and looked like a wee wizened monkey. He was about ten or eleven but he couldn't really walk, just bobbed about. But he could play the whistle the best that you ever heard. Old tunes that the people has long forgotten, that was all he played. Then one day, he was gone and I don't know what happened to him at all."

Prevention being better than cure, a number of protections may be placed around an infant's cradle to ward off a changeling. Iron tongs placed across the cradle will usually be effective, because fairies fear these. An article of the father's clothing laid across the child as it sleeps will have the same effect.

Changelings have prodigious appetites and will eat all that is set before them. The changeling has teeth and claws and does not take the breast like a human infant, but eats food from the pantry or nowadays the fridge. When the creature is finished each meal, it will demand more. Changelings have been known to eat the cupboard bare and still not be satisfied. Yet no matter how much it devours, the changeling remains as scrawny as ever.

Changelings do not live long in the mortal world. They usually shrivel up and die within the first two or three years of their human existence. The changeling is mourned and buried, but if its grave is ever disturbed all that will be found is a blackened twig or a piece of bog oak where the body of the infant should be. Some live longer but rarely into their teens.

There can also be adult changelings. These fairy doubles will exactly resemble the person taken but will have a sour disposition. The double will be cold and aloof and take no interest in friends or family. It will also be argumentative and scolding. As with an infant, a marked personality change is a strong indication of an adult changeling.

Changelings may be driven from a house. When this is achieved, the human child or adult will invariably be returned unharmed. The least severe method of expulsion is to trick the fairy into revealing its true age. Another method is to force tea made from lusmore (foxglove) down the throat of a suspected changeling, burning out its human entrails and forcing it to flee back to the fairy realm. Heat and fire are anathema to the changeling and it will fly away.

The Merrow.

Merrow's.

The word merrow or moruadh comes from the Irish muir (meaning sea) and oigh (meaning maid) and refers specifically to the female of the species.

Mermen - the merrows male counterparts - have been rarely seen. They have been described as exceptionally ugly and scaled, with pig-like features and long, pointed teeth. Merrows themselves are extremely beautiful and are promiscuous in their relations with mortals.

Sometimes the females prefer, good-looking fishermen to their sea lovers, when you consider the above description of the male merrow you can’t blame them. Near Bantry in the last century, there is said to have been a woman covered all over with scales like a fish, which was descended from such a marriage. Sometimes they come out of the sea, and wander about the shore in the shape of little hornless cows.

The Irish merrow differs physically from humans in that her feet are flatter than those of a mortal and her hands have thin webbing between the fingers. It should not be assumed that merrows are kindly and well-disposed towards mortals. As members of the sidhe, or Irish fairy world, the inhabitants of Tir fo Thoinn (the Land beneath the Waves) have a natural antipathy towards humans. In some parts of Ireland, they are regarded as messengers of doom & death.

Merrows have special clothing to enable them to travel through ocean currents. In Kerry, Cork and Wexford, they wear a small red cap made from feathers, called a cohullen druith. However, in more northerly waters they travel through the sea wrapped in sealskin cloaks, taking on the appearance and attributes of seals. In order to come ashore, the merrow abandons her cap or cloak, so any mortal who finds these has power over her, as she cannot return to the sea until they are retrieved.

Hiding the cloak in the thatches of his house, a fisherman may persuade the merrow to marry them. Such brides are often extremely wealthy, with fortunes of gold plundered from shipwrecks. Eventually the merrow will recover the cloak, and find her urge to return to the sea so strong that she leaves her human husband and children behind. Very similar to the Selkie.

Many coastal dwellers have taken merrows as lovers and a number of famous Irish families claim their descent from such unions, notably the O'Flaherty and O'Sullivan families of Kerry and the McNamara’s of Clare. The Irish poet W B Yeats reported a further case in his Irish Fairy and Folk Tales: "Near Bantry in the last century, there is said to have been a woman, covered in scales like a fish, who was descended from such a marriage".

Despite her wealth and beauty, you should be particularly wary about encountering this marine fairy.

There are other names pertaining to them in Gaelic - Muir-gheilt, Samhghubha, Muidhuachán, and Suire. They would seem to have been around for millenia because according to the bardic chroniclers, when the Milesians first landed on Irish shores the Suire, or sea-nymphs, played around them on their passage.

An old tract found in the Book of Lecain states that a king of the Fomorians, when sailing over the Ictean sea, had been enchanted by the music of mermaids until he came within reach of these sirens, then they tore his limbs asunder and scattered them on the sea.

From Dr. O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters - Entered in the year 887 ad. there is a curious tale of a mermaid cast on the Scottish coast - Alba - She was 195 feet in length and had hair 18 feet long, her fingers were 7 feet long as was her nose, while she was as white as a swan.

Most of the stories are about female beings however there are some about mer-men who capture sailors and keep them in cages under the sea. In some stories though, fishermen leave part of their catch as a thank you to the merrow for guiding them to good fishing grounds.

Source: O'Hanlon, John - Irish folklore: Traditions and Superstitions of the Country. first published 1870. Republished by EP Publishing Ltd., 1973.
. Image by MirrorCradle.

The Grogoch.

The Grogoch.

The Grogoch was originally a half human, half-spirit entity who originated in Scotland and settled in Ireland. Well-known throughout north Antrim, Rathlin Island and parts of Donegal, he may also be found on the Isle of Man where they are called Phynnodderee.

He has the power of invisibility but will often allow certain trusted people to observe him. A very sociable being, he may even attach himself to certain individuals and help them with their planting and harvesting or with domestic chores, all for no payment other than a jug of cream.

The Grogoch, for those unfamiliar with Irish folklore, is a dwarf 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall, who sleeps in caves or hollow trees but can be induced to do household chores in peasants’ cottages.

Resembling a very small elderly man, though covered in coarse, dense reddish hair or fur, he wears no clothes, but sports a variety of twigs and dirt from his travels. Grogochs are not noted for their personal hygiene: there are no records of any female grogochs. The grogoch is impervious to searing heat or freezing cold.

His home may be a cave, hollow or cleft in the landscape. In numerous parts of the northern countryside are large leaning stones which are known as 'grogochs' houses'.

He will scuttle about the kitchen looking for odd jobs to do and will invariably get under people's feet. Like many other fairies, the grogoch has a great fear of the clergy and will not enter a house if a priest or minister is there. If the grogoch is becoming a nuisance, it is advisable to get a clergyman into the house and drive the creature away to inadvertently torment someone else.

In a lot of ways the Grogoch could have been the inspiration behind Dobby the House Elf in Harry potter. Of course minus the hair, who knows?