Week 12 Story: Stumpy McWobbles

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“Did I ever tell you the story about Stumpy McWobbles?” Sean punctuated his question with a loud, liquid belch.

“Nope, don’t think you ever did. Quit bogarting all the beer, you lush. You didn’t even buy any of it!” Tommy slammed down the lid of the cooler before Sean’s thieving hand could sneak in to grab another bottle. “Who is Stumpy McWobbles and do I even want to hear a story about him?”

“He was a leprechaun. Supposedly, he’s where all my family’s money came from.” Sean settled himself back into his camp chair, making sad eyes at the currently off limits cooler. “It’s a good story. I’ll tell it in exchange for another beer.” He shot what he hoped was a pleading look in Tommy’s direction.

“Did you have a stroke? What’s wrong with your face?” Tommy rolled his eyes and grabbed a bottle out of the cooler. “Here, you get one more beer. Tell us all this fantastical tale, oh great drunken troubadour.” Tommy waved his own beer around wildly. “Dammit, you made me spill it.”

After chugging half of his beer, Sean began his story. “So, I guess my great grandfather was an orphan, living on the street somewhere in Ireland. One day, he found a drunk leprechaun in a hedge of bushes. The tiny little dude was fighting with his shoe. Great grandpappy knew all the stories about leprechauns, that if you caught them they had to give you their gold. But he thought that would be a crappy thing to do to some little dude that kept trying put a shoe on his head.”

“Your family got their money from a drunk leprechaun?” Tommy asked drily.

“This is my story, don’t interrupt!” Sean finished his beer and let out another belch. “Anyway, so pappy, his name was Liam, by the way, so Pappy Liam thought it would be nice to warn the leprechaun that he was putting himself in danger of being captured and having his gold stolen. The leprechaun was so thankful that Liam wasn’t trying to assault him, that he invited the poor orphan to share some of his flower wine. So, there the two were, a kid and leprechaun, getting shitfaced in a bush. Leprechaun told Pappy that his name was Stumpy McWobbles. Of course, it’s possible that little Liam was just so drunk that he heard the name wrong. The two got so drunk that the leprechaun gave Pappy half of his gold, just to be nice.”

“A fairy just gave half of his gold to a drunk orphan, huh?” Tommy asked, even more drily than before.

“I’m starting to get the feeling that you don’t believe my story.” Sean could be a little slow.

“You’re just now starting to get that feeling? How perceptive of you.” Tommy’s sarcastic tendencies always rose in direct proportion to the number of beers that he’d consumed.

“If I’m making it up, then where did this gold coin come from?” Sean triumphantly held out a large, ornate and obviously very old gold coin. “Granpappy kept one coin for good luck. It always gets passed down to the oldest son, along with the story. My dad gave it to me right before I left to come to college. He said this coin is a reminder and a lesson about how to get through life.”

“What exactly is the lesson that it teaches?” Tommy’s curiosity had roused.

“That everybody does dumb shit when they’re drunk. Hey man, can I have another beer?”

Author's Note: The story, The Field of Boliauns, is a leprechaun story. One day, Tom Fitzpatrick comes across a leprechaun as it is fixing it's shoe. He manages to catch him and orders him to take him to its gold. The leprechaun takes Tom to a field full of boliauns. 

It's difficult to find online exactly what a 'boliauns' is. According to some, it refers to leprechauns themselves, but it was obvious in the context of the story that it was a plant of some kind. I found a source that said it's ragweed. 

After leading Tom to the field, he takes him to a place under a tree and the leprechaun says that his gold treasure is buried underneath. Realizing that he doesn't have a spade, Tom ties a red garter around the nearby tree and makes the leprechaun promise not to touch it. Then, he lets the leprechaun go and goes home to get a spade. When Tom returns to the field, he sees that red garters are tied to every tree in it. He realizes that he'll never find the right spot and gives up.

Leprechaun stories are interesting, because they serve as a sort of fairy trickster. Everyone wants something from them, but they are clever and always find a loophole to get out of giving it to them. Fairies are supposedly unable to tell a lie, so they have developed a glibness that allows them to misdirect with language, while never outright lying. I wanted to write a story about a leprechaun that was nice and gave up some its gold willingly to someone that deserved it, or that would be helped by it. I decided to make the leprechaun drunk after I came up with his name, which made me decide that everyone in the story needed to be drunk.

Bibliography: Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. Web Source.