An Chraobh Airgid

Being of the sídhe

The Púca

púca

Say it: POO-kuh

A shape-shifter of Irish folklore: now a horse, now an ass, now a goat.

Open it on the full site There every name opens, and a web shows who is kin to whom.

W. B. Yeats counted it among the solitary fairies, unlike the sociable host of the aos sí, and gave it many shapes: “now a horse, now an ass, now a bull, now a goat, now an eagle.” In a Cork tale printed by Crofton Croker it is a jet-black horse that carries a pilgrim through the night and flings him down a cliff; in Patrick Kennedy’s Kildare tale it is a grey ass that does the washing-up. It is abroad on Samhain night, and after it, Yeats wrote, the blackberries are no longer wholesome, “for the pooka has spoiled them.”

In the tales

  • The Bean Sí The herdsman swore he had not touched a drop. All the way through the glen, a woman with long white hair had kept at his side, keening and calling his master’s name.
  • The Púca Every night, while the servants slept, something came into the kitchen and did all their work for them. Then somebody thanked it.

See also

  • The aos sí The people of the mounds: the Good People.
  • The Bean Sí The woman of the sídhe who keens before a death in the old families.
  • Samhain The start of winter. The night the mounds stand open.

Sources

Collected folklore. Recorded from storytellers and local tradition.

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.