40 Fun Facts About Leprechauns

Before the 20th century, Irish tradition generally dressed the leprechaun in a coat of which colour?

Red was the leprechaun's colour in older accounts. An 1831 description by Samuel Lover gives him a square-cut coat richly laced with gold.

Which future sitcom star had her first major film role in the 1993 horror comedy Leprechaun?

Jennifer Aniston played a teenager spending the summer at her father's farmhouse, a year before Friends made her famous.

Which General Mills cereal, the first to include marshmallows, has a cartoon leprechaun as its mascot?

Lucky Charms began when a developer mixed Cheerios with bits of circus peanuts. Its mascot was originally called L.C. Leprechaun.

In Irish folklore, what must a captor never do after seizing a leprechaun, or the creature will escape?

Look away from him for an instant and he is gone. In one classic tale the captor keeps his eyes fixed on his captive across hedges, ditches and bog.

Which US university made a leprechaun its official mascot in 1965, replacing a succession of Irish terrier dogs?

Notre Dame had been represented by terriers usually named Clashmore Mike. The fists-up leprechaun logo was drawn in 1964 for a fee of $50.

Which treat do American parents typically leave in a child's leprechaun trap to show the creature escaped overnight?

Chocolate coins stand in for the leprechaun's treasure. The St. Patrick's Day craft is largely unknown in Ireland itself.

Which future James Bond had an early starring role in the leprechaun film Darby O'Gill and the Little People?

Sean Connery was borrowed from 20th Century Fox, where he was under contract, and Variety's reviewer thought him the film's weakest link.

In Irish folklore, which trade is the leprechaun's main occupation, one said to have made him very rich?

Shoemaker is the leprechaun's calling, and he is usually seen at work on a single shoe rather than a pair.

In the Harry Potter books, what becomes of the gold that leprechaun mascots produce at the Quidditch World Cup?

It vanishes within hours, a trick from creatures that are officially classed as beasts even though they can speak.

In the earliest known leprechaun tale, what do the captured sprites grant King Fergus mac Léti in return for release?

Three wishes bought the sprites their freedom after they tried to carry off the sleeping king. The saga has been dated to the eighth century.

Which NBA team's leprechaun logo was designed by Zang Auerbach, the brother of its head coach?

Boston Celtics branding nods to the city's large Irish population, and the logo stayed green, white and black until 1996.

Which actor, also Wicket the Ewok in Return of the Jedi, played the murderous title role in 1993's Leprechaun?

Warwick Davis pushed for more comedy in a part first written as straight horror, and performed most of his own stunts.

Which producer studied Gaelic folklore in Ireland before making the leprechaun film Darby O'Gill and the Little People?

Walt Disney began planning the film in the 1940s, and more than a decade passed before it reached cinemas in 1959.

Which Irish city has been home since 2010 to the National Leprechaun Museum, which claims to be the world's first?

Dublin's museum on Jervis Street includes a room of oversized furniture that makes visitors feel they have shrunk.

Where does the fourth Leprechaun horror film send its villain, who stalks a platoon of marines to reclaim a princess?

Outer space is the setting of Leprechaun 4, which opens in 2096 with the creature courting an alien princess to become king of her planet.

Which Irish fairy, said by some to be a leprechaun on a drinking spree, haunts wine cellars and breweries?

The clurichaun can slip through keyholes to raid a cellar, and one tale has him turning bog rushes into horses to ride.

In which fantasy book series by Eoin Colfer does Captain Holly Short serve in a fairy police unit called LEPrecon?

Artemis Fowl's LEPrecon is short for Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance, and the series opens with its captain kidnapped for a ton of gold.

Which Irish wooden club, also used as a walking stick, is carried by leprechaun mascots in American sport?

A shillelagh is typically cut from stout, knotty blackthorn, with a large knob at the top.

Leprechaun economics, the freak 2015 jump in Irish GDP, was later traced to which US tech giant's tax restructuring?

Apple was confirmed as the cause only in 2018, because Irish law obliged the statistics office to protect the company's identity.

Which US city is home to Mill Ends Park, long billed as the only leprechaun colony west of Ireland?

Portland, Oregon owes the park to columnist Dick Fagan, who planted flowers in a hole meant for a light pole and claimed a leprechaun lived there.

In the 1993 horror film Leprechaun, which plant suppresses the villain's powers and is finally used to destroy him?

A four-leaf clover first pins him inside a crate. At the climax another is stuck to chewing gum and fired into his mouth.

Which Nobel-winning economist invented the phrase 'leprechaun economics' in a 2016 tweet about Irish GDP figures?

Paul Krugman was mocking a reported 26.3 percent jump in Ireland's output for 2015, a figure later revised only slightly, to 24.6 percent.

Irish folklore divides fairies into trooping fairies and which other class, the one that includes the leprechaun?

Solitary fairies such as the leprechaun are met alone rather than in groups, and their pranks were thought milder than the child-stealing of the fairy mounds.

Which future Nobel laureate edited Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, with its chapter on the leprechaun?

W. B. Yeats pictured the leprechaun there as a withered old practical joker grown rich on buried treasure crocks.

The Old Irish word luchorpán, ancestor of the word leprechaun, is traditionally explained as meaning what?

Small body is the long-standing reading, from lu, meaning little, and corpan, a diminutive of corp, a word borrowed from Latin corpus.

Which city does the villain rampage through in Leprechaun 3, the first film of the horror series to skip cinemas?

Las Vegas is where the creature, turned to a statue by a magic medallion, is sold to a pawn shop and freed when the owner removes it.

In the TV movie The Luck of the Irish, teenager Kyle Johnson learns he is half leprechaun while starring in which sport?

Basketball is Kyle's game, and his fortunes turn when a family heirloom is stolen and he begins to shrink and grow pointed ears.

A 2006 TV news report of a leprechaun in a tree, an early viral YouTube hit, came from which Alabama city?

Mobile's Crichton neighbourhood drew crowds to the tree, and a resident's crude sketch of the creature helped make it a local icon.

Whose Habitats Directive was invoked in 2009 to protect the leprechauns said to live on Ireland's Slieve Foye?

The European Union directive normally shields plants and wildlife. In Carlingford a sign warns that hunters and fortune seekers will be prosecuted.

Which 1968 Francis Ford Coppola musical has Fred Astaire steal a crock of gold from a leprechaun named Og?

Finian's Rainbow follows the thief to the American South, where he plans to bury the crock near Fort Knox in the belief that it will multiply.

Which power does King Fergus mac Léti win from the leprechauns he seizes in an eighth-century Irish saga?

Breathing underwater worked in every lake and sea but one, where Fergus met a monster so frightful that his face was left twisted in terror.

Which rapper plays Mack Daddy, a producer who steals the villain's magic flute, in Leprechaun in the Hood?

Ice-T's character uses the flute's mind-controlling music to become a successful producer before a trio of would-be rappers rob him.

Which WWE wrestler, who performed as a leprechaun, played the creature in the 2014 reboot Leprechaun: Origins?

Hornswoggle, the ring name of Dylan Postl, made his televised debut in 2006 by scurrying out from under the ring in a leprechaun costume.

In Joseph Jacobs's retelling of The Field of Boliauns, what does Tom tie round a plant to mark a leprechaun's treasure?

A garter marked the spot, but when Tom came back with a spade every plant in the field wore an identical one.

Which Oscar-winning actress plays the Grand Banshee in the 1999 miniseries The Magical Legend of the Leprechauns?

Whoopi Goldberg joined a cast led by Randy Quaid in a story that borrows from Romeo and Juliet, with a leprechaun and a fairy as the lovers.

In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which hard drinker calls himself a leprechaun despite being nearly seven feet tall?

Mad Sweeney is Gaiman's version of Suibhne, a king from an old Irish story who is no leprechaun in the original.

Fergus mac Léti, the king in the oldest known leprechaun tale, ruled which province of Ireland?

Ulster's people banned every mirror from the king's presence after a monster left his face disfigured, since a blemished king could not rule.

Which jazz pianist, then leading the fusion band Return to Forever, won a Grammy for his 1976 album The Leprechaun?

Chick Corea's album adds strings, horns and vocals by his wife Gayle Moran, and one track won a second Grammy for its arrangement.

Which Roman festival, held each February, did a 2019 study propose as the true root of the word leprechaun?

Lupercalia's runners, the Luperci, were mistaken by medieval Irish scholars for a non-human race that survived Noah's Flood by swimming.

In John O'Donovan's Irish dictionary supplement, the leprechaun is a sprite who always carries a purse containing what?

A shilling is all the purse holds, though in related tales it returns to its owner however often it is spent.