No doubt she didn’t mean to be so scary. Her voice was coarse and loud. She spoke in an accent so strange they often had to guess what she was saying. Her laugh was bawdy and sounded to their young ears like the braying of a horse. Their Granny Stapleton frightened this writers husband Clayton and his brother so badly as kids their father often had to chase the twin boys out from under their beds with a broom during her visits.

Granny Stapleton left a working class life in Ireland for America before their father was born, but she still spoke with a dialect as curiously foreign to her grandson’s as her wild, graying, red hair. Occasionally her vocabulary slipped around them and their parents would shoo them from the room. But what both boys remember better than anything about their riotous grandmother are the stories she could tell. Superstitious to her core she spoke of dark creatures who roamed the Earth with all the conviction of reality. The boys grew up hearing fairy tales so grim their town librarian would have had nervous fits.

Real fairies are not the creatures depicted in cloyingly sweet pictures or the hip, but helpful characters in big budget blockbusters. According to tradition they’re much like human beings; meaning some are good and some are bad. The difference would be when these beings are bad, they’re capable of being extremely unpleasant.

On one branch of the fairy family tree is the unusual Pooka. Not regularly represented in western literature or media, this is a shape- shifter who enjoys playing the trickster. One movie that was does mention the legend is the 1950 hit “Harvey”. According to the movie, Jimmy Stewart in the role of sweet-natured Elwood P. Dowd befriends a giant six-foot-tall, talking rabbit no one else can see. Mid-way through the movie the fact that the name for such an entity is the Pooka is fleetingly mentioned.

In folk lore Pookas are variously described as a huge eagle, a beautiful but wildly destructive horse or looking like the more tradition concept of a bogeyman. Hens will stop laying eggs around them, and likewise cows will stop producing milk. Real horses will rear up at the sight of them and even the bravest dog will run for cover when a Pooka disguised or not shows up.

Like many of their compatriots these creatures like nothing more than a bit of aimless mischief. They like dunking unwary, late night travelers into lakes and streams, vandalizing homes and lawns, and ‘borrowing’ individuals from their homes to go on late night excursions.

A selkie is a woman or man who’s human on dry land but can turn into a seal in the sea. The stories usually revolve around their human lover’s plots to keep them from returning to their ocean home.

Another of this line is the leprechaun. Cereal commercials notwithstanding, these small creatures look more like crotchety, old men than cute cartoon characters. Leprechauns have full pockets and even pots of gold made ‘off the folly of mankind’. Trying to steal those riches away from this little being might prove more problematic than it’s worth. Some legends have them using only clever trickery to win back their ‘pot o’gold’ while other legends hint the little fellows are willing to employ far more dire measures to stay wealthy.

The Banshee’s reputation has nothing to do with charm or being a good conversationalist. She is a female spirit who warns of imminent death. In Ireland the ‘Bean Si’, a ghostly woman with long, flowing hair haunts certain families appearing either just before the death of a family member or prior to some other calamity.

They’re famous for giving out a bone-chilling, keening wail. Grown men have been driven to their knees at the horrible sound of this grim, weeping howl not only due to the other worldly quality of their voices, but from the sudden uncertainty of fate such a presence foreshadows.

If any story breathed terror into this writers husband’s childhood, it was Rawhead and Blood-Bones. No, really there is such a legend. As Clayton heard the story, Rawhead and Bloody Bones was a sea-faring, murder victim with a mysterious but decisive dislike for children. Rawhead might take the form of a dog, but he’s more frequently described looking much like a modern day movie monster. Covered with burns, his long fangs and sharp claws make him one of the scariest things to imagine being under the bed ever conceived. If this wasn’t enough to cause even the bravest six-year-old to need a night light, Rawhead likes to lure children to lakes and streams to pull them under. If his bait tactic didn’t work, he lurks under sinks to pull unwitting children into the drain. It goes without saying being a plumber was never on Clayton’s desired job list.

For more information on myths and fairies of Ireland you can try Wikipedia.org, leprecon.tribe.net, irelandseye.com, and essortment.com if you can’t get to the Emerald Island to hear the traditions in person. Barring that, on good authority, the next best spot is to be a kindergartner sitting on a front porch drinking lemonade and listening to an old woman’s drawling voice while a hot summer’s day reluctantly gives way to dusk.