The Field of Boliauns

One fine day at harvest time, on Lady Day in harvest, described by the storyteller as a great holiday, Tom Fitzpatrick was out for a stroll and walking along the sunny side of a hedge when suddenly he heard a clacking sort of noise in the hedge just ahead of him.

“Well, now,” said Tom, “isn’t it surprising to hear the stonechats singing so late in the year?” He crept forward on tiptoe to get a look at what was making the noise and see if he had guessed right. The noise stopped, but when Tom peered sharply through the bushes, what should he see in a nook of the hedge but a brown jug that might hold about a gallon and a half, and a little wee teeny tiny old man with a scrap of a cocked hat perched on top of his head and a little leather apron hanging in front of him. The little man pulled out a tiny wooden stool, stood on it, dipped a small wooden cup into the jug, filled it, set it beside the stool, then sat down beneath the jug and got to work putting a heel on a little shoe just his own size.

“Well, by the powers,” Tom said to himself, “I often heard tell of the leprechauns, and to tell the truth, I never really believed in them, but here’s one of them for certain. If I go about this cleverly, I’m a made man. They say you must never take your eyes off them, or they’ll get away.”

Tom crept a little closer, with his eye fixed on the little man the way a cat watches a mouse, and when he was right beside him he said, “God bless your work, neighbour.”

The little man looked up. “Thank you kindly,” he said.

“I wonder you’d be working on the holiday!” said Tom.

“That’s my business, not yours,” said the little man.

“Well, maybe you’d be civil enough to tell us what you’ve got in the jug there?”

“That I will, with pleasure. It’s good beer.”

“Beer!” said Tom. “Thunder and fire! Where did you get it?”

“Where did I get it, is it? Why, I made it. And what do you think I made it from?”

“Not a notion,” said Tom, “but malt, I suppose. What else?”

“There you’re wrong. I made it from heather.”

“From heather!” said Tom, bursting out laughing. “Sure you don’t think I’m fool enough to believe that?”

“Believe what you like,” said the little man, “but it’s the truth. Did you never hear tell of the Danes?”

“Well, what about them?”

“Only this: when they were here, they taught us to make beer out of heather, and the secret has been in my family ever since.”

“Will you give a fellow a taste of your beer?” said Tom.

“I’ll tell you what, young man, you’d do better looking after your father’s property than bothering quiet, decent people with your foolish questions. There now, while you’re idling your time away here, the cows have broken into the oats and are trampling the corn all over the place.”

Tom was so taken by surprise that he very nearly turned round to look, but he caught himself just in time. Afraid that the little man might try the same trick again, he made a grab for him and caught him up in his hand. In his hurry he knocked over the jug and spilled all the beer, so he never got a taste of it to know what it was like. Then he swore he would kill the leprechaun if he did not show him where his money was hidden. Tom looked so fierce and wicked that the little man was quite frightened.

“Come along with me a couple of fields off,” he said, “and I’ll show you a crock of gold.”

So off they went, Tom holding the leprechaun tight in his fist and never once taking his eyes off him, though they had to scramble over hedges and ditches and a crooked bit of bog, until at last they came to a big field full of boliauns. The leprechaun pointed at one big boliaun. “Dig under that boliaun,” he said, “and you’ll find the great crock full of gold coins.”

In his hurry Tom had never thought to bring a spade, so he decided to run home for one. So that he would know the place, he took off one of his red garters and tied it round the boliaun. Then he said to the leprechaun, “Swear you won’t take that garter off that boliaun.” And the leprechaun swore straight away not to touch it.

“I suppose,” said the leprechaun very politely, “you’ve no more need of me?”

“No,” said Tom. “You may go now, if you please, and God speed you, and good luck go with you wherever you go.”

“Well, goodbye to you, Tom Fitzpatrick,” said the leprechaun, “and much good may it do you when you get it.”

Tom ran for his life all the way home, got a spade, and raced back to the field of boliauns as fast as he could go. But when he got there, lo and behold, every single boliaun in the field had a red garter tied round it, the exact copy of his own. As for digging up the whole field, that was nonsense, for there were more than forty good Irish acres of it. So Tom went home with his spade on his shoulder, a little cooler than when he set out, and many a hearty curse he gave the leprechaun every time he thought of the neat trick the little man had played on him.

About this story

Joseph Jacobs took this tale for Celtic Fairy Tales from T. Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland. In Croker the little man is a cluricaune, but Jacobs used the better-known leprechaun because a friend of John D. Batten, the book’s illustrator, had lately heard the story told about one.

Jacobs notes that, according to Dr. Hyde, leprechaun comes from the Irish for “the one-shoemaker,” since he is usually seen working on a single shoe; a writer in the Revue Celtique, and Dr. Joyce, derive it instead from words meaning “little man.”

Read the original: Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg #7885, The Field of Boliauns)

Best for ages 9–12 — a quick, funny Irish tale of a greedy man outwitted by a leprechaun.

The mark remains, but its meaning disappears

The leprechaun does not need to remove Tom’s garter. He makes it useless by giving every plant the same mark. Tom protects the object but forgets its purpose: to distinguish one place from all the others. The trick also follows Tom’s threat to kill him, so the little man’s evasion is a response to force, not simply a broken promise.

Test a marker

Draw six similar plants and mark one. Then copy the mark onto all six. Explain why the original mark is still present but no longer helps. What did Tom’s requested promise fail to protect?

Think about it

• What trick did the leprechaun first try to make Tom look away?
• Why did Tom tie his red garter round the boliaun?
• How did the leprechaun keep his promise and still keep his gold?

You may also like

• The Farmer of Liddesdale — another short trickster-flavoured tale from Jacobs’ Celtic books
• King O’Toole and His Goose — another lively Irish tale from Celtic Fairy Tales
• The Fairy Tree of Dooros — an Irish fairy tale that mentions the leprechaun shoemakers