a little,
old, withered face. Round his neck is an Elizabethan ruff, and frills of
lace are at his wrists. On the wild west coast, where the Atlantic winds
bring almost constant rains, he dispenses with ruff and frills and wears a
frieze overcoat over his pretty red suit, so that, unless on the lookout
for the cocked hat, "ye might pass a Leprechawn on the road and never know
it's himself that's in it at all."

In Clare and Galway, the favorite amusement of the Leprechawn is riding a
sheep or goat, or even a dog, when the other animals are not available,
and if the sheep look weary in the morning or the dog is muddy and worn
out with fatigue, the peasant understands that the local Leprechawn has
been going on some errand that lay at a greater distance than he cared to
travel on foot. Aside from riding the sheep and dogs almost to death, the
Leprechawn is credited with much small mischief about the house. Sometimes
he will make the pot boil over and put out the fire, then again he will
make it impossible for the pot to boil at all. He will steal the
bacon-flitch, or empty the potato-kish, or fling the baby down on the
floor, or occasionally will throw the few poor articles of furniture about
the room with a strength and vigor altogether disproportioned to his
diminutive size. But his mischievous pranks seldom go further than to
drink up all the milk or despoil the proprietor's bottle of its poteen,
sometimes, in sportiveness, filling the bottle with water, or, when very
angry, leading the fire up to the thatch, and then startling the in-mates
of the cabin with his laugh as they rise, frightened, to put out the
flames.

To offset these troublesome attributes, the Leprechawn is very domestic,
and sometimes attaches himself to a family, always of the "rale owld
shtock," accompanying its representatives from the castle to the cabin and
never deserting them unless driven away by some act of insolence or
negligence, "for, though he likes good atin', he wants phat he gets to
come wid an open hand, an' 'ud laver take the half av a pratee that's
freely given than the whole av a quail that's begrudged him." But what he
eats must be specially intended for him, an instance being cited by a
Clare peasant of a Leprechawn that deserted an Irish family, because, on
one occasion, the dog having left a portion of his food, it was set by for
the Leprechawn. "Jakers, 't was as mad as a little wasp he was, an' all
that night they heard him