Free Essay Irish Folklore and Superstitions: Leprechaun, Banshee &

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Leprechaun's are short, aged, intoxicated, shoemakers, who are guardians of ancient treasure. Lepricans are normally dressed in pointed, or curled shoes and a green outfit. They avoid human contact for they have riches to offer a human once caught. The leprechaun is split into two distinctive groups - leprechaun and cluricaun. Cluricauns steal or borrow almost anything, creating mayhem in houses during the hours of darkness, raiding wine cellars and larders. They will also harness sheep, goats, dogs and even domestic fowl and ride them throughout the country at night. The Leprechuan is Ireland's national fairy.

The Banshee is an ancestral sprit appointed to forewarn of ancient Irish families of their time of death. The Banshee can only cry for five major Irish families: the O'Neils , the O'Briens, the O'Connors, the O'Gradys and the Kavanaghs. The Banshee normally appears in three different forms: a young woman, a stately matron or a raddled old hag. She may also appear as a washer-woman, and is seen apparently washing the blood stained clothes of those who are about to die. In this form she is known as the bean-nighe (washing woman). The banshee may also appear in a variety of other forms, such as that of a hooded crow, stoat, hare and weasel - animals associated in Ireland with witchcraft.

Dullahan is one of the most spectacular fairies in Irish tradition. He is a stole collector who roams the countryside during midnight on certain Irish festive days. He is a wild, black-robed and headless, who rides the back of his horse. By holding his severed head in the air, the Dullahan can use his supernatural sight where he can see into the houses of dying people. He holds a human spine as a whip. The Dullahan is a fear fairy in Ireland for if he is seen by a moral, they become blind in one eye or if a Dullahan stops nearby a mortal, he or she dies instantly.

An Ancient Tale From Ireland

The dead have always played a central role in rural Irish folklore. Whether as insubstantial ghosts wandering through the countryside or walking corpses returning to torment the living, our former ancestors have always exercised an intense and continuing fascination for those who survive them and have formed the basis for many hair-raising tales. The dead, it appears, will not go away. The belief in returning ghosts, spirits or corpses may have its origin in primitive ancestor worship. It was well known throughout the country that the dead had to be looked after at all times. Not to do so was to invite misfortune upon yourself, your family or your community. Nor has this belief wholly died out. In 1993, I spoke to an old man in north Cavan who claimed that, as a child, he remembered the corpse of his grandfather coming back from the grave on some nights during the winter months to sit at the fire and smoke a pipe of tobacco. He said that he also remembered actually touching the skin of the corpse and finding it very cold. His grandfather never spoke but sat warming himself by the fire. The rest of the family ignored this and went off to bed, leaving the corpse sitting in front of a good blaze. When they got up in the morning, I was told, the corpse was gone - presumably back to its grave. This story was borne out, without prompting, by one of the old gentleman's sisters. A returning corpse also features in the following story, which comes from the Dublin mountains.

Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the individual or the group; (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
In Ireland, a distinction is made between 'traditional' and 'folk' music, 'folk' music having a wider and sometimes pejorative interpretation; it can refer to 'contemporary' songs with guitar accompaniment, for example. Since traditional musicians call the music traditional music, we might as well call it that too.
Traditional music comprises two broad categories; instrumental music, which is mostly dance music (reels, jigs, hornpipes, polkas and the like), and the song tradition, which is mostly unaccompanied solo singing.