The Leprechaun’s Paw

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We celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by building a fire and telling this story to the kids before bed. How do you celebrate?


Pat and Mike had eaten their fill of corned beef and cabbage, more than their fill, in fact, and had enjoyed more dark, glossy Guinness and warm amber whiskey than was sensible on such a dark night and on their way back to their cozy cottage from a trip to their outhouse, or the “bog” as it was their quaint manner to refer to it they got quite lost and wandered until the morning when Pat said, “Mike, would you look at that rainbow.” And Mike said, “Christ, Pat, got any more of that whiskey or a fag at least that’d be yer man,” and Pat replied, “a pot of gold, now that’d be yer man indeed.” And they followed the rainbow to its end where they found not a pot of gold but a leprechaun busily checking his treasures behind various trees and under elderberry bushes and hidden in fairy forts and the like and they nabbed the wee bastard quick as a wink and tied the fucker snugly with the lengths of white nylon rope they always carried with them being highly sought-after riggers for the surprisingly active western Irish B&D scene, or at least the bit stretching from Kilkee and Limerick in the south northwards past Galway to Clifden in the west and Athlone and Roscommon. They tied him up because neither trusted him alone with the other and left him there whilst they sprinted home for their spades. Upon returning with their digging utensils they found not a leprechaun, but something nearly as good: the little wanker had chewed through the ropes to free himself and it had nearly worked, but they had bound him so well that he had been forced to chew off his own left hand to get away and so that’s what they found.
Detached from his body it looked forlorn and was beginning to wizen but still retained a bit of his magic.
Neither trusting the other to be the first to make a wish with the object, since each knew that, given the opportunity, he would wish to have the item for himself in one way or another, either by wishing calamity on the other or some equally effective misfortune, they found themselves of necessity forced to make their wishes jointly. The novelty of this practice quickly wore off, due in no small part to the fact that it was only a chewed-off left hand and not a full leprechaun, so any wishes it granted them (as it was forced to, being in their possession) it only sort of granted, besides which any wishes they made were compromises and that opened the door for a bit of alienation, a certain degree of estrangement from the wishes they made, which they thought may have also diluted the magicalness of the results, likewise the fact that two people were doing the wishing simultaneously. At any rate, their first wish, for example, was for a pot of gold, but all they finally received (after a week) was a pot.
In a like manner, they got not a new house, but a coat of whitewash on their cottage at least, and new shoes but the wrong size, and cases and cases of empty beer bottles they were at least able to return for the deposit. They decided to sell the object after the tank of their automobile (not new, but without all too many miles on it for the age, and not free, but purchased at a fair price) was filled, magically, with diesel fuel, which they had to pump back out seeing as how the car took super. They figured an American tourist was their best bet and hung out at Galway shops that dealt in bulky woolen sweaters and Claddagh rings until they finally unloaded the thing, now as dark, tough and fragrant as a rasher rind to a sales representative from somewhere in the eastern half of the United States to be frank they weren’t paying attention that closely they just wanted to pass it on to someone else and they did and good riddance to it.
The end.

6 responses to “The Leprechaun’s Paw

  1. i liked this. i hope you pause for breath more often when you tell it out loud.

  2. Not being an Irish Catholic, I do not celebrate St Patrick’s Day at all. However, I do celebrate March 16th, which happens to be Jerry Lewis’s birthday, although I celebrate for a different reason.

  3. mig

    …but only slightly different.

  4. Fun and somehow deeply Irish.

  5. Obviously you are Irish.

  6. Tambopaxi

    Hee, hee, and fun story! I agree, this is the sort of story that should be read out loud, and at rapid fire pace.