seekingmygreaterperhaps

On my last day in Dublin, I decided to check out the National Leprechaun Museum. After all, while I am on the Emerald Isle, I might as well learn about their most famous mythical creature. However, I did also learn about banshees and fairies, who aren’t actually sparkly, but rather scary.

Upon entering the museum, you learn about the real leprechauns. They are about 1/3 the size of humans, and are normally dressed in red pants, a brown tweed jacket, and a red hat. Wait a second, you may be thinking, leprechauns are definitely always wearing all green. WRONG. According to Irish folklore, this is how they dressed. It was Walt Disney and Kelloggs who actually made this dress code change. For hundreds of years leprechauns looked how I just described them, but now they are known for being dressed in all green.

See- this is their dress.

Once your tour actually starts, your tour guide takes you out of Dublin and into the mystical realm where leprechauns, fairies, and banshees exist. I don’t really want to ruin the experience in case anyone actually goes to this museum. But it is really quite fun. I was worried because it is kind of interactive, and I would be alone. But God was smiling on me (again) today, because there was someone else there who was alone! We took each others pictures, it was a nice symbiosis.

In this mystical world, you get to play as a leprechaun and sit on some “people” sized furniture. I climbed up where you probably aren’t supposed to, because I hit my head on the ceiling. But hey, I was really getting into the spirit of being a witty leprechaun.

This is leprechaun Michaella.

Something cool about this museum is that all the doors are hidden. So you knock and then a door appears. Or you end up walking through a door through the fireplace (to take you to the woodlands, where you learn about fairies). Our guide did a really great job of helping all of us as adults act kind of like kids and get into it. Also, they do a great job of lighting things, so you feel like you are actually listening to stories by moonlight in your families tiny Irish cottage.

I said I wasn’t going to give you any Irish folklore, but I will treat you, my loyal readers, to one tale that I remember. (I’m not the best story teller, so if you’re interested in real Irish tales… you should probably just google them.) Fairies are not known for being sparkly. In fact most of Irish mythology is really dark. Leprechauns are the tricksters, and have pots of gold at the end of rainbows, so they are the ones people liked to talk about, because they were happy creatures. So fairies. They used to come up into the human world and steal baby boys and trade them for cranky fairy babies in order to keep their bloodline strong. So there were 3 ways to try and not have a fairy steal your baby. 1) dress him up as a girl until he was too big to be carried away in the night. 2) wear an iron pendant, or have iron in your home. Fairies do not have iron in their blood, and if it touches their skin it burns them, and they don’t like that. This is how a horseshoe came to be known as a lucky symbol- Irish families would put horseshoes nailed onto their doors or walls to ward off fairies. 3) throw your dirty dish or bathwater over your front step to ward off fairies. They like cleanliness and will not cross into your home if they have to step on dirt.

Irish folklore is really quite interesting.

Me and all my friends… hahaha.

My life is literally a storybook right now- this picture is just perfect. Haha.

Also- I noticed last night that the Shamrock Shake is back!!!! One of my mom’s favorites. Well, since I am in the land of shamrocks for one more day, I thought I just had to have one. So that I did. It was really minty, which is different than the Shamrock Shakes back home, and way more delicious. When in Dublin in March… right?

They may be after my lucky charms, but they will never get me… off to the mainland tomorrow.