I've been doing a lot of
holiday-themed Fun Friday Facts posts since around Halloween. I've
been feeling some pressure to do this week's Fun Friday Facts on
St. Patrick's Day, which is tomorrow, but I didn't want to, because
St. Patrick wasn't even Irish, the f*cker. Besides, it's occurred to
me that I'm going to have to think of actual ideas next year, since I
will have used up all the good holidays. So you can wait another 12
months for your St. Patrick's Day FFF. Patience is a virtue.
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| As is sobriety. |
I picked leprechauns at the
insistence of Christina Majaski, who insists that they are real. I
guess I can't prove they're not real, so there's that.
Additionally, a follower I
shan't name hears they're great in the sack, which just goes to show
that some truly crazy sh*t does indeed go down on Twitter.
1) Leprechauns are a protected species under European law. Ok, so I guess they are real. In
March 2011, the European Union extended the protection of the
European Habitats Directive to the Cooley Mountain region of
Carlingford, County Louth. According to locals, the area is home to
236 leprechauns, the only leprechauns surviving in all of Ireland.
2) In 1989, local pub owner
P.J. O'Hare was on the mountain, showing some property to a
prospective buyer, when he heard a distressing scream. O'Hare hurried
to the rescue, and found a suit of leprechaun clothes, complete with
four gold coins, near a patch of scorched earth. He also discovered
the mortal remains of the unfortunate and inexplicably nude
leprechaun, which he (very respectfully) put on display in his pub, along with a small fiddle and a teeny tiny bottle of Guinness.
3) There are, apparently, no female leprechauns. Folklore is silent about their reproductive
habits, although my followers on Twitter are certainly not.
4) Portland, Oregan, also has a
leprechaun colony, at Mill Ends Park, billed as the smallest park in
the world.
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| I can't see why. ~ atul666 |
Mill Ends Park was dedicated
on 17 March 1948 as the “only leprechaun colony west of Ireland.”
The city of Portland had planned to erect a light pole in the
two-foot circle of median on SW Naito Parkway, but when they did not,
Fagan planted flowers in the hole and called it Mill Ends Park after
his column in the Oregon Journal. Fagan's office at the
Journal offered an enviable view of the park.
Fagan claimed he had looked
out the window one day and spied a leprechaun. He supposedly ran down
to the street and captured it, whereupon it granted him a wish. Fagan
wished for his very own park, and the leprechaun, granted him the very hole in which he made his home. The
leprechaun then started making regular appearances in
Fagan's column, for no reason at all.
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| "I'm not out of ideas, what makes you say that?" |
Fagan passed away in 1969,
but others stepped in to maintain his little park, which became an
official Portland city park in 1976.
5) Fagan must have maintained
eye contact with that leprechaun all the way down the stairwell,
because, according to this website, the only way to catch a
leprechaun is to look him right in the eyes. I guess it's hard to
make eye contact with a two-foot-tall creature who's constantly
dancing. They're believed to avoid humans, and some say only elderly
leprechauns are ever captured, since they're not as quick as they
once were.
6) Today's leprechauns dress in
green and have red hair, because gingers have no souls. Samuel
Lover's 1831 book “Legends and Stories of Ireland” describes leprechauns as small, elderly men who wear red suits and tri-corner
hats.
According to Yeats, some
leprechauns – those who loners who prefer solitude – wear red,
while those who prefer the company of other leprechauns wear green.
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| I don't need anybody, just my gold. |
