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Molly and the Leprechaun, retold by Kate Corkery, a story from Ireland.
Hello, Super Great Kids.
This story is a selection from the best of Super Great Kids stories.
We're releasing one popular tale from our archive in the middle of each month on a Wednesday.
This episode Molly and the Leprechaun was released in October 2021 and it's retold by Kate Corkery.
Stories about leprechauns are very popular in Ireland.
And in this story, Kate sings a little cobbling song, partly in Irish and partly in English.
And she accompanies her song on the Bowron, which is a kind of Irish drum.
This story is also featured in our first Super Great Kids Stories book.
Happy listening and happy reading.
Here's Kate.
Once upon a time...
Long time ago, fatho, fatho, fatho, as we say in Irish, there was a girl called Molly.
Now Molly lived with her very old granny.
It was long ago, it was before anybody had a television or a radio or a computer or a mobile phone.
Sometimes Molly got a little bit bored in the evening times.
Molly would often sit by the fire and look into the flames and dream of being a princess.
Dream of having lots of money and beautiful clothes and shiny shoes.
And her granny, who was now a little bit too old to be, working on her farm, sat for long hours by the fire.
And granny used to tell her stories.
One night, Granny was telling her about the fairies in the woods.
Granny, are there really fairies in our woods?
Of course there are fairies in the woods, said Granny.
But we don't see them all the time.
No, we don't see them and we don't hear them.
But you know what?
The fairies love to dance.
They love music.
They love dancing.
Oh!
The fairies dance so much, you know, they wear away their shoes very quickly.
Ah, and then the poor little leprechaun has to make new shoes for them.
Leprechaun, Granny?
What's a leprechaun?
Oh, well, a leprechaun is a... He's a little...
A little fairy man you'd see all on his own.
He'd often wear a little suit of green.
He'd have a long white beard, a bit like Father Christmas, but a lot smaller.
And he's always very busy.
In fact, he's often quite grumpy because he's one of the very sensible fairies.
The others just love dancing and singing and dropping their jewels all over the place.
But the leprechaun, he picks everything up.
He tidies all the gold into a pot.
Then he tries to bury the pot somewhere safe.
And he spends the rest of his time repairing their shoes.
He gets very annoyed, you know, because sometimes a big rainbow will come out of the sky and point exactly to where he's hidden the pot of gold.
And the poor fella has to dig it up again and find another place to hide it.
But you know...
The leprechaun is one of the fairies you might hear in the woods, because when he's working, you know he likes to sit somewhere quiet, like maybe on a mushroom.
And he'd be sitting under a tree and he'd be tapping away with his tiny hammer making the fairy shoes.
So you know Molly, if you ever went into the woods and you really, really listened, you might hear a leprechaun.
And if you did hear a leprechaun and if you did see a leprechaun, you would be very lucky indeed, because they say that a leprechaun will lead you to where there is the treasure.
Now, Molly, if you ever saw a leprechaun, you'd have to be very quiet.
You'd have to have your hands very still and your eye very steady and you'd have to lift him up and stare at him.
Oh yeah, don't even blink, don't even wink, don't look away for a second.
Look him straight in his little face and ask him where he's hidden the pot of gold.
And then he'll have to tell you.
Because if you keep looking at him, he can't escape, he can't go away and he'll have to tell you.
Wow, said Molly.
Granny, do you mean there's a little man in the woods who could lead me to a pot of gold and I'd have treasure and I'd be able to buy all the dresses that I could ever dream of and loads of shoes and loads of toys.
Ah, yeah, that's what they say.
I said, Granny, but I'm tired now and it's time to go to bed.
Granny did go to bed and Granny did go to sleep.
But Molly couldn't sleep at all.
Oh my goodness, she couldn't sleep at all because, there she knew, behind the house there was a wood.
And if she could go out there very early in the morning and stay very quiet and listen very hard maybe, maybe she might be lucky.
So next morning, as the sun was rising, she tiptoed out of the house on her bare feet.
She just said her little... summer dress on her.
She just quickly tied back her hair in the red ribbon and off she tiptoed while Granny was still snoring in bed.
She tiptoed into the wood and she listened very hard.
She thought she heard a tapping sound.
Was it the tiny cracking sound of furze buds breaking open in the morning sunlight?
She thought she heard another tapping sound.
Could it be a thrush?
Maybe that little bird tapping a snail on a stone to break the shell?
No, that didn't seem to be the sound that she thought she was hearing.
There was definitely a tapping sound.
Maybe, maybe it was just a woodpecker. drumming his beak on the trunk of a tree?
No.
She looked around.
She couldn't see a thrush or a woodpecker, but she still heard a tapping.
She walked along further.
There, at the foot of a tree, she saw a little man dressed in green, and there he was with a silver hammer in one hand and a tiny shoe in the other, and the little man was so busy working and singing to himself he didn't notice her at all.
Let it go.
Molly couldn't believe it.
She stayed very still, just as her granny said.
She held her hands out steady.
And she went up behind that little man and she grabbed him.
She grabbed him in the palms of her hands and she held him up right in front of her face and she looked at him.
She stared at him with her big brown eyes and she said, I caught you.
I caught you.
You're a leprechaun.
Now you must tell me where you've hidden your pot of gold.
Oh, I'm not a leprechaun at all, little man.
You made a mistake.
I'm not a leprechaun.
I'm just a piece of grass.
You're not a piece of grass.
A piece of grass doesn't sing like that.
You're a leprechaun.
Stop trying to trick me leprechaun, because I'm going to hold you in my hands and I'm going to keep looking at you until you tell me where you've hidden the pot of gold.
Oh, pot of gold.
I know nothing about pots of gold, sir.
I'm only a frog.
You're not a frog.
You might be wearing a suit of green, but you're not a frog.
Frogs don't mend shoes.
You're a leprechaun.
Stop trying to trick me.
Just tell me, were you hidden?
The pot of gold.
Molly put on a really ugly face.
She was like a pirate snarling at him.
And she was squeezing him very tight around his little waist.
Oh, he said, I can hardly breathe.
Please let me down, let me down.
And then he said, oh, look, look, you're going to trip over.
Your shoelace is open.
I'm not wearing shoes, said Molly.
You can't fool me, little leprechaun.
I'm not going to look left or right or anywhere else.
I'm going to keep looking at you and I'm going to hold you very tight until you tell me where you've hidden the pot of gold.
Oh, my Goodness, she was so determined.
Oh, she really glared at him.
The little man was frightened.
His little heart was beating in his chest.
All right, all right, all right.
I'll tell you, I'll tell you.
Well, what you have to do is to walk right through the woods out to the other side.
I will walk through the woods, but I will carry you with me.
So she walked right through the woods.
Now you have to go down the lane past the bog.
Well, she walked down the lane past the bog.
She didn't look left or right.
And now you have to turn around the boring and you have to go over the bridge.
She went over the bridge, but she didn't look at the water.
She just kept looking at the leprechaun.
And now you turn right down the lane and keep walking down the lane until you get to the rusty gate that opens into the big field.
And Molly walked all the way to the rusty gate.
And she opened it.
And they walked into the big field.
Oh my goodness, the field was full of weeds.
Big, yellow, rag-worth weeds.
They were almost as high as her own nose.
Now walk into the field, said the leprechaun.
And she walked into the field.
It was hard to make her way through all those weeds.
Turn right a bit, turn left a bit, turn around, stop.
She stopped.
There, he said.
Where, she said.
By your elbow, he said.
By my elbow, she said.
That's where I buried the pot of gold, under that weed.
Under what weed?
The weed that your elbow was touching.
Well, straight away, Molly looked at her elbow.
And as soon as she looked at her elbow, you know what happened?
The little man vanished out of her hand.
He was gone.
But there she was in the big field and her elbow was touching a weed and he told her that under that weed was buried a big of cold.
Oh, I can't wait to dig it up, she said.
And she went and she started scratching at the earth with her bare hands.
Oh, but the earth was all hard and the stones were sharp and they were cutting into her little fingers.
Oh, I can't dig it up with my hands, she thought.
I need a spade.
I'll have to go home for a shovel.
Oh, but hang on now.
When I come back to the field, how am I going to remember this weed?
Sure, this yellow weed looks the same as all the other hundreds and thousands of yellow weeds in this big, big field.
Oh, I'll have to do something to help me remember it.
I know.
And she put her hand up to her hair.
She took off the red ribbon that was tying it back.
And she tied the red ribbon.
Around the weed.
And she made a lovely bow.
Oh, aren't I clever, she said.
I'll know exactly which weed to dig up when I come back.
Yes.
And Molly ran out of that field.
She ran past the old creaky gate.
She ran up the lane.
She ran over the bridge.
She ran past the bog.
She ran through the woods.
And she tiptoed to the shed outside the house.
Have this shovel now, as soon as i dig up the wheat, i'm gonna have fortune and i'm gonna be richer than anybody and i'm gonna have loads and loads of things and i can't wait.
And she ran all the way back and she was laughing to herself and making all the plans of all the wonderful things that she was going to get.
And when she finally got back to the rusty gate, she looked in the field and she stopped.
Her eyes nearly popped out of her head.
Her mouth dropped open.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
What do you think she saw?
Oh no, I heard you say she saw that the ribbon was gone.
No, it wasn't that the ribbon was gone.
Every single weed in that field had a red ribbon tied round it.
And they all looked exactly the same.
And then she heard a little laugh.
It's not easy to fool a leprechaun, you know.
She looked around and she couldn't see the little man.
He had tricked her, hadn't he?
Well, he had tried to trick her, but Molly wasn't going to go home just yet.
Oh no, she was going to find this gold.
And with that shovel, she started to dig and dig and dig, and dig, and dig and dig, and dig, and dig, and dig and dig and dig, and she kept digging, and she kept digging, and she kept digging, and she kept digging, all day long.
Her back was sore.
She had blisters on her hands.
She was sweating.
She was covered in muck and dirt and turning over worms and soil.
By the end of the day she had dug up every weed in that field. but didn't find the pot of gold.
Oh, Molly was sore and sorry.
She made her way back home to Granny.
Granny said, Molly, where have you been all day?
I didn't see you for the whole day.
Oh Granny, she said I met a leprechaun and he brought me to the field and he told me that he'd buried a pot of gold there.
But he tricked me, Granny.
He tricked me really bad.
And I was digging and digging and digging all day and I never found it.
Oh, said Granny, you were digging up that big field all day.
Aren't you a great girl altogether?
Well, you know what?
I've been wanting that field to be dug up, but I'm too old to do it now.
Oh, Molly, that's great work.
And you know now, we can plant potatoes in that field, and we can plant carrots and cabbages and anything you like, Molly.
Sure, if you're a big, strong girl now and you have the determination to do all that, aren't you great?
You're a great worker.
And Molly, you know...
We'll have some vegetables plenty for ourselves.
And we can sell more.
And with whatever we sell, Molly, we'll buy you some nice things.
Because you deserve it.
And you know what?
Don't be cross with the leprechaun.
You know, they say that he'll lead you to the fortune.
But it's not always the fortune you expect.
It's maybe some treasure.
That you had there all along.
But you didn't know much about it.
So Molly.
Thank that little leprechaun.
And be happy when you've seen those rainbows.
Snip.
Snap.
Snout.
The story is out.
Thanks for that Kate.
Well, Molly wasn't very kind to the leprechaun, was she?
Do you think if she'd been a little bit nicer to him, he might not have tricked her?
Quite often, if you're kind to people and creatures, they're kind back to you.
Do you remember all the animals in the Baba Yaga story saying to Natasha As you have helped me, so I will help you?
Still, Molly and her granny got their vegetable field and maybe that was even better than gold.
Time now to dig into our bag of happies and say some thank yous for all the pictures and messages you've been sending in.
Thanks to Hazel, who is six, from Chelmsford in Massachusetts, for two beautiful pictures of how the rainbow got into the sky.
A big thank you to Ezra, who is three from Hastings in the UK, for a characterful drawing of the crab king.
I love El Cangrejo's smile Ezra.
And thanks to Delphine, who is five and lives in Burgundy in France.
Delphine has drawn a beautiful multi-coloured picture of the super great kids owl.
Very imaginative.
And I hear Delphine, that you like making up and telling your own stories when out walking with your family.
Hooray!
And thanks to Zelene, who is seven, who drew a very moving picture of the magic orange tree.
I wonder if you'll be an illustrator of children's stories one day, Zelene.
And Hannah on the Isle of Man sent in a brilliant story map of Mrs Rabbit and the Fox.
Hannah remembered the story from hearing it over a month ago.
Welcome to a lifetime of storytelling, Hannah.
And finally, thanks to Ruby from Arkansas, who is five this week and has sent us lots of pictures, including the mouse bridegroom.
Hope you have a happy day, Ruby.
And if you'd like to see these inspiring pictures, have a look on our Facebook page at facebookcom.
Forward slash super great kids stories.
Lots more thanks to come next week.
You've all been reviewing and drawing up a storm.
Thank you.
And thanks to all our loyal listeners in Vancouver.
We're trying out how to sell Super Great Kids Stories T-shirts.
They are now available to pre-order.
You have until October 27th to place your order and they'll be mailed out in early November, so it will require patience.
Go to our website at supergreatkidstories.com for more details.
That's it for this week.
Bye for now and keep sharing those stories.
