Clurichaun
mischevious fairy from Irish folklore
The clurichaun () or clúrachán (from Irish: clobhair-ceann) is a mischievous fairy in Irish folklore known for his great love of drinking and a tendency to haunt breweries, pubs and wine cellars. He is related to the leprechaun and has sometimes been conflated with him as a shoemaker and a guardian of hidden treasure. This has led some folklorists to suppose that the clurichaun is merely a leprechaun on a drinking spree, while others regard them as regional variations of the same being. Like the leprechaun, the clurichaun is a solitary fairy, encountered alone rather than in groups, as distinct from the trooping fairies.
Folklore
In the folktale "The Haunted Cellar", recorded by Thomas Crofton Croker in 1825, a clurichaun named Naggeneen haunts the wine cellar of an Irish lord, drinking everything in sight and playing frightening pranks on the servants. He is described as a little man measuring 6 in (150 mm) tall, with a face like a withered apple. He has twinkling eyes and a nose that is red and purple from heavy drinking. He wears a red nightcap, a short leather apron, light blue stockings, and shoes with large silver buckles. When he is discovered by the master of the house, Naggeneen talks him out of moving elsewhere by implying that he would simply move with him.
Other descriptions have him wearing red like other solitary fairies.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clurichaun” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.