The Hidden People, Part 2

Read "The Hidden People, Part 1" here.

Nick quickly hustled his father inside the house and called it a night. Nick spent a restless night puzzling over the weird scene. “I almost convinced myself that it wasn’t real,” Nick remembers. In the morning, Nick didn’t want to tell his father what he had seen or what he thought he had seen, but after a silent breakfast, the old man looked Nick in the eyes and said: “So, you saw the Leprechauns, too?”

Pat told his son that he awoke on the porch just before Nick had dropped the flashlight and in the scattered shadows he saw the six dim shapes march across the yard. Pat had heard the old legends from his mother for many years and knew a bit more about it than Nick. He saw them as visitors from the old country, a band of the Hidden People delivering their mischief and misery to the house. And Pat saw something else, too. In the brief moment between Nick dropping the flashlight and the figures vanishing, Pat saw the lead figure look up and show its face. “Like a piece of old bark or an ancient, twisted root,” Nick tells me, “with eyes like pale gold coins.”

Now Nick was even more unsure of what to do. Nick could deal with a raccoon problem but not with this. Nick wasn’t sure what to believe, but Pat talked some sense into him. He told him about some of the stories Nick’s grandmother knew and Nick remembered some, too. There were lots of stories of the Hidden People – the Leprechauns – that Nick and his father could tell, but none that directly spoke to their predicament. In many legends, however, the Hidden People would demand a tribute or a bribe from humans to end their mischief.

To that end, Nick and his father gathered some fruit and bread and meat and placed it all in a basket to leave on the front porch as an offering to their nighttime visitors. “And I threw in a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey for good measure,” Nick recalls. That night, they tried to get some sleep, hoping that their bribe would earn them some well-deserved rest. It was not to be, however, as both Nick and Pat awoke in the middle of the night to a raucous commotion on the porch. “I don’t know what was happening out there, but it sounded like a barroom brawl,” Nick says. Too afraid to open the door, Nick strained to see through the window at the goings-on, but it was too dark to make anything out.

In the morning, Nick and Pat saw that the basket and its contents were scattered over the porch. It seemed that the food was not eaten and the offering was refused. “We never found the Jameson’s, though,” says Nick. Nick grabbed a broom and began to clean up the porch. As he did he was struck by the cherished memory of his grandmother dong the same on many mornings and finishing up the job by ringing her little bronze bell. When Pat returned to the porch with more cleaning supplies, Nick asked his father about the reason behind the sweeping and the ringing.

“He couldn’t remember ever hearing an explanation for that one,” Nick says. “But there was an old story about a Leprechaun and a bell.” The legend that Pat recalled concerned some newlyweds and the home their relatives had built for them. It turned out that the house was sited over a road, but not a road that just anybody could see. This was a fairy road and troops of the Hidden People used it on their mysterious nighttime forays. The poor newlyweds were harassed from dusk to dawn by the inconvenienced spirits until a travelling friar told them to leave their door open just a crack and ring a bell three times at sunset. The couple did as they were told and soon the trouble stopped.

The Hidden People, Part 1

Nick had heard the stories from his grandmother who heard the stories from her mother. Myths and legends were woven into the fabric of Ireland, but would they survive the long journey to America? When Nick and his father came face to face with things they could not explain, they knew that more than just stories had survived.

Nick writes to tell me about his experience years ago in Massachusetts. Nick’s paternal grandmother had come to America from Ireland when she was a teenager, and Nick’s father, Pat, was her first child. Pat and his brothers and sisters were raised in a little house on a big dairy farm. There they learned what it was like to earn their living from the land, much as their ancestors had done back in Ireland.

The family worked hard and, despite lean years and setbacks, the farm thrived. In addition to providing their livelihood, the farm also kept the family together. Day in and day out, they worked side by side, becoming as close as a family can be.

Nick’s father eventually took over the family business and continued to work the farm. His brothers and sisters worked with him or found their own nearby farms. Nick’s grandmother continued to live on the farm, and Nick grew up hearing her stories of the old country. “She told me about old ghosts and fairies from Ireland,” Nick recalls, “but she mostly talked about what she called the Hidden People.”

As a child, Nick has fond memories of growing up on a farm. Although his chores were more work than children get nowadays, Nick cherished both the freedom and responsibility he had. One memory he often turns to is the sight of his grandmother opening the front door and sweeping away the dust from the spacious front porch. Many mornings in both summer and winter, she would sweep the doorstep and then take from her pocket a small bronze bell. She held the bell out in front of her and gave it a quick ring. “She did it like it was more of a ritual than a chore,” Nick says. “I didn’t even know why she did it, but I always remember her doing it.”

Eventually, Nick went away to school and became a veterinarian. He lived outside of Boston and visited the old family farm when he could. As Nick made a new life in the city, his father was struggling to keep the farm going. Nick’s grandmother was not long for the world, and Pat was dong all he could to make sure she spent her last days on her beloved farm. Nick helped how he could, but all across the country farm families were fading into history.

Nick’s grandmother soon passed away and Pat decided to sell. As the family history seemed to be slipping out of sight, Nick had second thoughts and decided to buy the farm himself. He put many acres of farm land up for sale and his father stayed on with a reduced herd of cows. Now the family homestead would be a showcase organic dairy farm, and Nick made plans to open a veterinary clinic on the grounds. It seemed that things were looking up for the family.

The Goat of the Woods

When Eva and her brothers took off for a walk in the woods, they were looking for a way to kill a boring afternoon. What they found, however, was something they couldn’t explain, something they would never forget, something that didn’t expect to be found.

Eva writes to tell me about growing up in rural Indiana with her two brothers. The boys were two and four years younger than Eva and when she was a teenager, she got stuck babysitting when her mother had to work. “I tried to get out of it everytime,” Eva tells me, “but now, of course, I really miss those days.”

When Eva was fourteen, she and her brothers spent the summer exploring the vast tracks of woods and fields that surrounded their small community. The boys built forts and played hide and seek, all the while being led by their older sister. “I was a real tomboy,” Eva recalls.

Although the trio ranged far and wide through the countryside, there was a particular stretch of woods that they had failed to explore. It was a small, dark valley that lead off from their main stomping grounds. In all their adventures that summer, they had passed it by without any reason they could articulate.

Near the end of that magical summer, the school year’s fast approach had the children feeling anxious. “We were off to hunt for bird’s nests or build a castle or something,” Eva remembers, “but then I stopped and I pointed to the little valley and I said, Follow me.” The brothers eyed their sister nervously, but they quickly regained their courage as she led the way into the growing mist.

“I don’t know why I decided to go that way on that day,” Eva says. “But I know that I should’ve turned back when we found the skull.” As the siblings walked the valley path, they were surprised to see the sun fade as the sky grew dark and overcast. The birds seemed to stay away, too, as there were no sounds to hear except their own footsteps. The trees before them were gnarled from age and stood forlornly in the mist. Then they saw the skull.

Sitting on a pile of small rocks was a bleached-white animal skull, its twisted horns curving skyward. “I knew there were some wild pigs around, so I thought it was just one of those,” recalls Eva. But still the trio pushed on, unhindered by the strange sign. “Now I know to pay attention to road signs,” Eva says.