Little Folk With Big Meanings: The Role of The Leprechaun in Irish
We should perhaps begin with a very basic definition of this characterfrom Irish folklore. The leprechaun, as Rose (1998) defines him, is a sortof fairy who takes the form of a tiny old man who does indeed often wearthe cocked hat that he is represented as wearing in contemporary popularrepresentations. Traditionally - although this is usually not the case anylonger - he was depicted wearing a leather work apron something like thatworn by a cobbler or a farrier - or perhaps a goldsmith since theleprechaun is associated with the most precious of metals rather than baseiron. The leprechaun is a solitary individual who lives in remote places,often making shoes (although exactly for whom is not always clear - he maybe related to other sorts of fairies who leave shoes in the homes of poorfamilies with many barefoot children. His hammering at his trade is oftenthe key to his discovery by humans. If these humans can capture him andthreaten him convincingly then he may tell them where he - like allleprechauns - keeps his secret pot of gold. But if his human capturersglance away - which the leprechaun will tempt them to do in a variety ofways - he will vanish along with any chance that the humans had o
Moreover,within the Judeo-Christian tradition, divine beings are most certainly bothhonest and trustworthy; indeed one of the ways that humans and divineentities may be distinguished from each other is precisely along this axis. While differences can certainlylead to violence, they also can lead to satisfying and productive lives inwhich the world is made meaningful by applying traditional, ancientcategories such as the trickster. Occasionally they feel moved to invite humans to jointhem. By this Saussure was arguing that all of the elements of a languageare related to each other in very specific ways. (It should be noted that the cleverTrickster sometimes fails and the bumbling Trickster sometimes succeeds. Totems are animals that arethe opposite of taboo: They bring good luck to the group or clan that hasadopted this clan as its own. Moreover, Saussure argued that the "competent" speaker of any humanlanguage follows these rules (or is guided by these structures) withoutbeing aware of doing so on a conscious basis. If we follow this model, we see the leprechaun, likeother Tricksters, as a sort of psychological compromise between the humanworld and the world of magic or the gods, a creature who is both likehumans in his weaknesses (and desires) and related to the stronger forcesof the world. To understand why it is that the leprechaun - the word is based on theOld Irish for "little body" - has survived for centuries in Ireland as animportant cultural symbol it is important to understand something of theways in which fairy tales and folklore in general function. The scholar responsible for integrating the linguistic concepts ofStructuralism into the practice of ethnography and the mainstream ofanthropological theory was Claude Levi-Strauss. They love to dance and are attracted to the folk music of their land. We not only define ourselves and our own culture bywhat we categorize as food and not-food (for example) but we also definethose who do not belong to our culture as those who do not share the sametaboos. Thisduality of cleverness and haplessness can be explained by A Jungian (orperhaps Jungian-esque) concatenation of destructive and creative forces. But this distinction between humans as inconstant and fallible andgods and their minions as trustworthy, always good and perfectly honest isa certainly not a universal aspect of human pantheons.
Common topics in this essay:
,
Britain Doing,
Latin Anglo-Saxon,
Jungian Jungian-esque,
Moreover Judeo-Christian,
Structuralist Douglas,
Mary Douglas's,
Taboo Totem,
Rigal-Cellard Krupat,
Disney McDonald's,
human language,
modern world,
underlying structure,
leprechauns people,
totem culture,
binary code,
tricksters exist,
cultural arenas,
trickster figures,
leprechaun solitary,
|
Acceptance Essays
