Meet the Clurichaun, the Leprechaun’s Lesser-Known (But Equally Impish) Cousin

Ireland’s most famous folkloric offering is by far the leprechaun: a tiny, green-clad trickster with a pot of gold. But leprechauns aren’t the only ’chaun in town.

There’s also the clurichaun, whose defining characteristics are almost as hard to pin down as the slippery little rascal himself.

1. Clurichauns vs. Leprechauns
2. How Clurichauns Got Their Name
3. 5 of the Best Clurichaun Stories

Clurichauns vs. Leprechauns

Clurichauns (typically pronounced “KLUR-ih-kawn” or “KLUR-ih-kahn”) and leprechauns are both pint-sized, solitary fairies with a penchant for mischief. The most basic differences between the two are as follows:

But it doesn’t actually make sense to impose such stark boundaries between clurichauns and leprechauns, because their traits and behaviors broadly overlap in stories passed down orally and then compiled by 19th-century folklorists. Some early tales have leprechauns clad in red, for example, and many clurichaun tales feature them making shoes and carrying coin purses. It’s also very common for a person who captures a clurichaun to demand to be led to their hidden riches—something we usually associate with leprechauns.

Stories about a diminutive prankster who lives in a wine cellar generally do label him a clurichaun. But folklorists have disagreed on whether that’s a separate creature or just a leprechaun on a bender. Many have simply assumed that clurichaun and all its spelling variations (e.g., Cluricaune, Cluricaun, and Cluricawne) are just alternate names for leprechauns, who have plenty of spelling variations of their own (from lupracán and Luchryman to leithbrágan).

To complicate matters further, clurichauns and leprechauns have yet another fairy cousin: the far darrig. The name derives from the Irish fear dearg, meaning “red man,” inspired by the fairy’s red hat and coat. Far darrigs, the most malevolent of the bunch, are known to kidnap babies and leave sickly, magical lookalikes (changelings) in their places.

“Are these one spirit in different moods and shapes?” W.B. Yeats mused in 1888’s Fairy Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. “Hardly two Irish writers are agreed. In many things these three fairies, if three, resemble each other. They are withered, old, and solitary … They dress with all unfairy homeliness, and are, indeed, most sluttish, slouching, jeering, mischievous phantoms. They are the great practical jokers among the good people.”

How Clurichauns Got Their Name

The origins of the word clurichaun are fairly opaque. In one 1855 work published by the Ossianic Society, a Dublin-based organization committed to preserving the Irish language and literature, clurichaun is rendered as Clobhar-ceann, meaning “clover-head.” (Clóbhar is “clover,” and ceann is “head.”) How the puny cellar-dwellers earned that epithet is a mystery. Clovers’ link to luck seems like a plausible explanation, since catching a clurichaun comes with the chance to shake him for cash. Or maybe people just thought their ruddy, wrinkled visages resembled the scraggly pink flowers of red clover.

But Clobhar-ceann isn’t the only root beneath clurichaun. A 1914 collection of County Waterford tales refers to the character as Clutharacán, or “one who lives in the shade.” According to Waterford locals, Clutharacáns reside in fairy forts, round plots of land bordered by stones and briars. (These circular tracts actually exist—though medieval communities, not fairies, constructed them.)

5 of the Best Clurichaun Stories

In short, what makes a clurichaun a clurichaun varies from story to story, and the best way to get to know them is to read those stories yourself. There are some unifying details and motifs throughout the literature, from what a clurichaun wears (often a red hat, a leather apron, and huge silver buckles on his shoes) to what he does (enjoys a drink, lords over a cellar, rides a plant, and makes shoes). Also, their reputation for mischief might be at least a little undeserved: Much of their trickery serves the purpose of escaping humans trying to rob them.

The selections below are attributed to the folklorists who edited and published them, but of course Ireland’s oral storytellers of yore deserve credit as well.

“The Haunted Cellar” // Thomas Crofton Croker

In “The Haunted Cellar,” Justin MacCarthy can’t keep a butler for long because they’re all too scared to fetch wine from his cellar. He promotes stable boy Jack Leary to the task, and Leary is terrified by menacing laughter and other supernatural happenings during his first trip downstairs. MacCarthy investigates the source of the disturbance and comes face to face with Naggeneen, a twinkly-eyed clurichaun in blue stockings and high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. Naggeneen, who knows MacCarthy has just told his dinner guests that he’s planning to leave town forever to escape these incessant butler troubles, mentions that he wouldn’t likely be left behind. So MacCarthy decides there’s no point in moving—instead, he’ll simply fetch his own wine.

“Master and Man” // Thomas Crofton Croker

“Master and Man” follows Billy MacDaniel, who accepts a drink from a clurichaun and now owes him seven years and a day of servitude. The two ride horses transformed from bog rushes all over the land, shrinking to fit through cellar keyholes and drinking their fill inside. When the clurichuan hatches a scheme to trick a local girl into marriage before she can wed her betrothed, MacDaniel interferes to spare her.

“Mr. Patrick O’Byrne in the Devil’s Glen; Or, Folly Has a Fall” // John O’Hanlon

Patrick O’Byrne is a local farmer whose inflated ego and genteel affectations have earned him the not-so-nice nickname of “Jintleman Paddy.” One night, O’Byrne, tipsy on whisky, walks home alone through the Devil’s Glen, talking aloud about how clever and coveted he is. A clurichaun overhears him, condemns him for being conceited, and contrives to teach him a lesson by dancing a jig on his head, besting him in a wrestling match, and depositing him scraped and dirty at the bottom of a ravine, where his neighbors find him sleeping the next morning. From then on, O’Byrne walks with a limp and never regains “his usual robust vigour and animal spirits.”

“The Field of Boliauns” // Thomas Crofton Croker

Tom Fitzpatrick, the son of a farmer in Cork, comes upon a clurichaun sitting beneath a hedge and fastening the heel on a shoe. Beside him is a pitcher of beer that he says is made from heath—a secret recipe he learned from Danish brewers. Fitzpatrick grabs the little man and demands to be taken to his money stores, and the clurichaun leads him to a certain boliaun (ragweed) in a field full of them. Fitzpatrick ties his red garter to the boliaun and, after dismissing the clurichaun, rushes home to grab a spade. Upon his return, he sees a red garter tied to every last one of the boliauns—covering a good 40 acres of land. (He goes home.)

Oliver Cromwell Gets Knocked // Samuel C. Hall and Anna Maria Hall

A clurichaun named Knock turns all 13 casks of claret in Oliver Cromwell’s cellar into saltwater. When Cromwell marches downstairs to investigate, Knock threatens to “make an honest and a {merciful} man” out of him as his next prank, “and sure then his power would be ended.” Cromwell evidently retreats—but after that era of English reign ends, the claret returns to its previous state (albeit with a little missing, which Knock likely pilfered for his pals).

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