{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat15_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat15_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_celt_flat_flat15_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/celt/flat/flat15.htm","summary":"This is a piece of 19th-century Irish folklore \u2014 specifically a Cluricaune (leprechaun) tale in the oral-story-written-down tradition \u2014 recounting how a young County Cork farmer named Tom Fitzpatrick captures a fairy cobbler, only to be outwitted when the creature marks every ragweed stalk in a field with a red garter identical to Tom's, making the buried treasure impossible to locate. The story is followed by substantial scholarly notes that situate the leprechaun within wider supernatural traditions, citing Lady Morgan's novel *O'Donnell*, classical Latin sources on treasure-guarding spirits (*Incubones*), and Welsh mountain-hag folklore (*Gwr\u00e1ch y Rhibyn*). A notable digression addresses the Irish use of \"boy\" for adult men, marshaling Greek, Roman, Spenser, and Wordsworth as comparative evidence \u2014 treating a minor vocabulary point with conspicuously learned pedantry. The notes also take seriously the folklore claim that ancient Danes brewed beer from heather, quoting Dr. Smith's *History of Kerry* and offering a counter-reading of mountain stone lines in County Cork as heath-cutting boundaries rather than enclosures. The overall package blends a lively, comic vernacular tale with antiquarian annotation that is itself somewhat self-mocking in tone, making it of interest both as folklore specimen and as an example of early 19th-century Irish cultural nationalism through scholarly recovery of native traditions.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Fairy Legends and Traditions: The Field of Boliauns","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":2613}