Legend Of The Irish Pooka

The Irish Pooka has struck the imagination of many artists and writers. Flann O'Brien, in his deliberately bog-Irish novel "At Swim-Two-Birds", gives one of the best descriptions of a Pooka. An English equivalent is found in Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" as Puck, or Robin Goodfellow. In English folklore this ties in with the history of The Green Man. In Ireland the Pooka is classed among The Little People, although most reports say that a Pooka in human form is just as big as a normal person. Pookas are also known to take animal form, in particular as horses or cattle. W.B. Yeats in "Fairy and Folk Tales" writes along these lines.

A web search for "Pooka" will produce fascinating references to artists, poets and writers. Also dogs.

Many small mountain lakes and springs in Ireland are known as The Pooka's Pool, or Pollaphuca. Some of these are at the source of major Irish rivers such as the Liffey and the River Bann. Pollaphuca in The Mountains of Mourne is home to a Pooka of noteriety in Co Down. In recent times, the last thousand years or so, some of these places have been renamed as St Patrick's Well.

An interesting interpretation of a Pooka appeared in September 1991 in Sargfabrik, Matznergaße, Vienna, Austria, as "Der Pooka MacPhellimey, ein Angehöriger der teuflischen Zunft" (acted by Jonannes Friesinger) in the dramatisation "In Schwimmen-Zwei-Vögel" by Sparverein. The disused coffin factory was a fitting place for the production. But I thought teuflischen would hardly describe any such apparition in modern Ireland, they seem friendlier here.

In rural Co Down it remains a custom to make the right side of your front door and gate comfortable, with the top of the gatepost smooth, and a with a bench. The left side gatepost is built with jagged rocks. The good friendly pooka will sit for a chat outside a house on the right of the door. The more malicious little fairies would be on the left if they were given a chance.

A Pooka will stop and talk for perhaps an hour or two. A favourite opening gambit is "You are new here, I think. Many years ago I used to live in this house, "¦" followed by interesting tales, often of where the family fortune disappeared. It sometimes seems that conspiracy theories started with Irish Pookas. Fortunes swindled away from families are one of the main topics of the tales told by these visitors. The odd thing about these visits is that the person seems so real, until they go. They just disappear, without warning, and with the listener hardly noticing they have gone. And they never leave any sign behind, or do any harm.

In May 1977, three of us on a SCUBA diving expedition met a Pooka on the shores of Killary Harbour in Connemara. In the 19th century, at the time of The Irish Famine, the Reconstruction Board organised the building of infrastructure, some of it fairly useless. One such example is the small harbour at Bundorragha in Connemara. It was there that a wizened old man on the quay told us long and ghostly tales of many deaths and much intrigue in that townland. At the end of the hour or so of his monologue, the tide had come in sufficiently for his curragh to float. It seemed that, as he rowed away, there was no splash from his oars, or ripples from the boat. But we did not notice that until we pondered the matter some time later.

An Irish townland is a rural district, often with only a few houses or cottages. The townland where I live is called Carricknadarriff, in Co Down. You are unlikely to find it on a map. I have heard only one recent report of a Pooka here.

T.C. Croker in his "Fairy Legends" says that the "Phooka" appears as real flesh and blood, although I have never heard of a modern Pooka being touched or offering to shake hands.

In modern times, there remains much interest in the Irish Pooka. The Ireland of The Celtic Tiger and a rapidly expanding economy remains the home of the Pooka. Other Irish little people or fairies are much less believable. They seem to appear only to people under stress, or perhaps to those who have taken too much alcohol. The fascination of the Pookas is that they are encountered by people going about their normal affairs. A engineer out on field work or a person spending a busy day at home might meet one. Such people do not even realise that that anything unusual has taken place until perhaps an hour or so after the Pooka has left. The Pooka does not say "Goodbye".

Legend Of The Irish Pooka