Leprechauns, Fairies and Wishing Wells

By Sinead Hultman

I recently got an e-mail from the scholarship coordinator of the College of Communication at The University of Texas at Austin saying I was to receive two scholarships. My first thought was, “Awesome, now I can spend more money while I’m in Ireland.” My second thought was, “How am I going to turn in all the paperwork while I’m abroad?”

I only had a few weeks to make the deadline, so I decided to use the scanner at the University College Dublin international student lounge. While I was locked in a battle of wits with the printer, one of the students working in the lounge, Jessica, started talking to me.

“Are you with the group of students from Texas?” she asked. I replied in the affirmative.

“I was hoping you all would have left by now. I didn’t want you to think that the weather was always like this,” she said, noting that I trudged through rain and puddles to reach the office.

After surprising her by saying I actually liked the weather, we got to talking about ourselves. I came to discover that she was majoring in Irish folklore, and that she would have great job security in the future.

As I finished up what I needed to do, thanked her and left. I still found it odd that folklore was a legitimate major offered at a legitimate university. You certainly can’t major in American folklore at UT.

However, after a three-day trip to southern Ireland, I realized maybe it wasn’t so odd. On our tour we passed a fairy tree, threw coins into a leprechaun wishing well, trotted by a leprechaun castle in a horse-drawn carriage, and kissed the Blarney Stone.

The history and legend behind all these mystical spots run deep through the Irish culture. If you tie something to the fairy tree and make an unselfish wish, your wish will come true when whatever you tied to the tree falls off. If you threw a coin over your left should with your right hand and it landed in the water of the well, your wish would be granted. If you kissed the Blarney Stone, you would receive the gift of gab.

So maybe the Irish find it odd we don’t offer folklore as a major. Now that I have been exposed to all this tradition and mysticism, it feels like America’s culture is missing out on something grand. I suppose I will just have to return to the land of my ancestors once again so I can fill in that missing piece.