BEWARE OF THE POOKA!

As you may know, it is dangerous to annoy the fairies or disturb a fairy fort or rath.

Look at the fields of Ireland and you will see that the farmers plough around the fairy raths (little fairy forts or hills), never touching them. Engineers divert roads around them.

When the villagers of Allen forgot to do something the fairies had asked them to do (i.e. to replace the lid of a well near a fairy rath), there was a great flood which submerged the village and which is now Lough Allen, a lake on the river Shannon. (In Ireland, we say Lough for lake; in Scotland it's Loch, as in Loch Ness). 

But it is also dangerous to annoy the Pooka, an evil spirit which inhabits the bogs of Ireland. The word comes from the Scandanavian, pook, meaning 'nature spirit'. The Pooka is a shape-shifter. Some people have seen the Pooka look like a shaggy-haired, foul-smelling pony; others have seen it look like a goat. It lies in the traveller's path near the bog and charges between his legs, lifting him up and carrying him at hair-raising speed through the bogs.

The mere sight of the Pooka prevents hens from laying and cows from giving milk. It has the power of speech and if you don't answer when it calls out your name, it will come and vandalise your property, but if you treat it with respect, it can give prophesies or warnings.

It is said that the Pooka can run around all night, laughing an evil laugh, with the traveller on its back, across the bogs, through thorny ditches, up the mountains and down along the tracks and cliff edges, with nothing but the sea below, terrifying the traveller, and finally dumping him onto a smelly part of the bog before the cock crows at dawn!

This is what happened to a man by the name of Tom Dorney, whose farm was near the bog. Tom decided to take revenge on the Pooka and the next time he approached the bog, he was wearing sharp spurs on his boots. 

Sure enough, the Pooka caught him and lifted him away through the bog. But Tom used his spurs on him and beat the Pooka with his stick until the Pooka had to throw him, with an angry curse, off his back.

From that day on, the Pooka never bothered Tom again.

Years later, however, when Tom had become a successful farmer, the Pooka took revenge on him by lifting his cattle and mules and throwing them over the cliffs into the sea. Tom lost everything, couldn't pay his rent to the landlord and was eventually evicted, so that he and his family were forced to become poor travelling people for the rest of their lives.  

P.S.  In Ireland, we have a minority group of c. 40,000 people called the Travellers. They are not gypsies, but Traveller families mostly prefer to stay mobile and generally marry into their own community. Some people say they originated at the time of the Famine (1845) when they were thrown out of their homes because they were too hungry to work and pay the rent. However, the Travelling community may be much older than that. The name they give to the rest of the population is the 'settled' people. Sadly, for generations,Travellers have developed a bad reputation for anti-social behaviour and often become the victims of prejudice and discrimination throughout the country.                                                                            
After many years of campaigning, the Travelling community was formally recognised as an indigenous ethnic minority in Ireland in March, 2017.