Disney Was Offered Ireland's Folklore Archive, and Took the Leprechaun! (Ireland 2/2)

The brood of Embir.

Medieval Irish manuscripts contain texts that wrestle with a question that sounds strange to us now.

Where do monsters come from? The answer Irish scholars gave was biblical.

Cain killed his brother Abel, and a curse lies on his descendants.

From that cursed line, according to a world chronicle called Sex Aetates Mundi, The Six Ages of the World, come every misshapen creature.

The giants known as the Fomorians, men with the heads of horses, and the lu corpin.

The flood ought to have wiped them all out, but the text knows a second route.

Ham, one of Noah's sons, was cursed by his father after the flood, and from him, it says, come the monsters that still live among humankind today.

And once again, the lu corpin are named in that company.

Another middle Irish text re-edited in 2010 by the Celticist Simon Rodway goes further still.

It tells of Embir, a daughter of Cain.

She's a siren, and she takes a trout as her mate.

From that union came 22 children.

One of them is Fomoir, ancestor of the giants.

Another is a gold called Bech-na-naid, a name that probably means something like the little one.

And Bech-na-naid, the text says, is the mother of the leprechauns.

The same brood turns up again in the life of St. Brendan the Navigator.

On their voyage, Brendan and his monks reached an island, the Isle of Dwarves, and as they sail into the harbor, it fills with demons, black-faced in the shape of dwarves and leprechauns rising up against them.

And a medieval glossary, a sort of dictionary for scholars, explains the word lu corpin three words, heir of the lake.

That's the leprechaun before anyone put a shoe in his hand.

A water creature from a cursed bloodline, grandchild of a siren and a fish, waiting as a demon in the harbor for anyone who lands on his island.

A word that doesn't fit.

Which brings me back to my confession.

Last week, I told you that lu corpin means the small body ones, little bodies.

I didn't make that up.

The brood of Embir.

Medieval Irish manuscripts contain texts that wrestle with a question that sounds strange to us now.

Where do monsters come from? The answer Irish scholars gave was biblical.

Cain killed his brother Abel, and a curse lies on his descendants.

From that cursed line, according to a world chronicle called Sex Aetates Mundi, The Six Ages of the World, come every misshapen creature.

The giants known as the Fomorians, men with the heads of horses, and the lu corpin.

The flood ought to have wiped them all out, but the text knows a second route.

Ham, one of Noah's sons, was cursed by his father after the flood, and from him, it says, come the monsters that still live among humankind today.

And once again, the lu corpin are named in that company.

Another middle Irish text re-edited in 2010 by the Celticist Simon Rodway goes further still.

It tells of Embir, a daughter of Cain.

She's a siren, and she takes a trout as her mate.

From that union came 22 children.

One of them is Fomoir, ancestor of the giants.

Another is a gold called Bech-na-naid, a name that probably means something like the little one.

And Bech-na-naid, the text says, is the mother of the leprechauns.

The same brood turns up again in the life of St. Brendan the Navigator.

On their voyage, Brendan and his monks reached an island, the Isle of Dwarves, and as they sail into the harbor, it fills with demons, black-faced in the shape of dwarves and leprechauns rising up against them.

And a medieval glossary, a sort of dictionary for scholars, explains the word lu corpin three words, heir of the lake.

That's the leprechaun before anyone put a shoe in his hand.

A water creature from a cursed bloodline, grandchild of a siren and a fish, waiting as a demon in the harbor for anyone who lands on his island.

A word that doesn't fit.

Which brings me back to my confession.

Last week, I told you that lu corpin means the small body ones, little bodies.

I didn't make that up.