St. Patrick's Day 1986

I have just been watching The Fairy Faith on Sundance channel. It was not about gays, but rather, it is a documentary about people in Ireland and Nova Scotia who’d seen fairies and little people and the like. It was pretty good.

It reminded me of my kindergarten St. Patrick’s Day experience, an anecdote Halifax already knows.

I had a really great kindergarten teacher named Mrs. Wiser. At several holidays she seemed to bring out some kind of magic – like on Halloween she dressed as a gypsy and brought in a real crystal ball. She pretended to look inside of it and see stuff and make a prediction. As a kindergartener, I thought it was somewhat unlikely she was doing real magic, but nevertheless very cool.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Mrs. Wiser lead the class out into the woods behind the school to look for Leprechauns. We searched the woods for a little while, and then someone found a tiny top hat! Then, after some more looking, we found a tiny green felt coat. Eventually we found some chocolate gold coins, or fool’s gold – I don’t remember which.

As a kindergartener I vacillated back and forth as to whether or not we were being set up – sure, Mrs. Wiser could have planted the jacket in the woods for us to find, but it still seemed real and somehow magical. Either way it was terrific and fun!

I recommend The Fairy Faith (2000) for getting this kind of feeling as an adult.

Comments Individual Archive Index

March 20, 2003 12:31 AM, Halifax said:

Very few die at all, most are taken.
When a man dies, he does not die at all, but the daoine maithe take him away.
No-one dies, but the daoine maithe take him away, and leave something else in his place.
Not one in twenty dies a true death, they all pass into another life.
-statements by C 20 (Irish) Gaelic speakers. Quoted from the Irish Folklore Commission, Dublin in Dorena Allen, “Orpheus and Orfeo: The Dead and the Taken.” Medium Ævum, vol. XXXIII, #2, 1964 (Oxford: Study of Mediæval Languages and Literature). p104.

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