The Púca

Before you read

Rural Ireland, in the folk tradition

The púca (also written pooka) is one of the most famous creatures of Irish folklore. It is a shape-shifter: it can turn into many animals, but its favourite shape is a sleek black horse with glowing yellow eyes and a long, wild mane. It can talk, too, in a human voice. Places all over Ireland are named after it, such as Poulaphouca (“the púca’s hole”) in County Wicklow.

The púca belongs especially to Samhain and the dark days of November. People say that after Samhain night the púca spits on the blackberries, so you mustn’t eat blackberries after the first of November. In some places, farmers left a little of the harvest in the field, the “púca’s share”, to keep it happy. It can be dangerous, but it can also be helpful: in “The Kildare Pooka”, a story in Yeats’s collection, a púca in the shape of a donkey secretly does all the housework in a big house every night.

The púca has travelled far: Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a cousin of the same English and Irish fairy tradition, and in the American film Harvey (1950), a man’s best friend is an invisible six-foot rabbit, which the film calls a pooka.

Not everything that looks frightening is bad, and not everything that looks friendly is good.

The story

Retold for this lesson from Irish folk tradition, with “The Kildare Pooka” from W. B. Yeats’s Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888).

On a cold November night, just after Samhain, a farmer called Pádraig was walking home late from the fair. He was tired, and his feet hurt, and he still had five miles to go. As he came to the crossroads, he saw a beautiful black horse standing alone in the moonlight, with a long, wild mane and eyes that shone like yellow lamps.

“Well, now,” said Pádraig, “aren’t you a fine horse? I could ride you home in no time.” And before he could think, he had climbed onto its back. At once the horse gave a terrible laugh, in a human voice, and set off at a gallop. It jumped over hedges and walls, splashed through rivers, raced up mountains and down the other side, faster than the wind. Pádraig held on to its mane and shouted, but he couldn’t get off. The púca had him.

All night long they galloped across Ireland, until the sky began to grow pale in the east. Then, at the top of a hill, the púca stopped suddenly, threw Pádraig off its back into a ditch full of cold water, and turned into a little brown hare. “That will teach you to climb on strange horses,” it said, and ran away laughing over the fields.

Pádraig climbed out of the ditch, wet and muddy and bruised, and looked around. He was right outside his own front door. His wife opened it and stared at him. “Where have you been all night?” she cried. “You look as if you’ve ridden across the whole country!” “I have,” said Pádraig. And from that day on, he never climbed onto a strange horse again, and he never, ever ate blackberries after Samhain.

Talk and write

Discussion and writing

Shape-shifter game. Think of an animal the púca could turn into. Your partner asks yes / no questions with can: Can it fly? Can it swim? until they guess.

Talk. 1. Which animal would you like to turn into for a day? Why? 2. Are there any tricksters in the stories of your country? 3. Would you ride the púca?

Write (60–80 words). My own púca. Describe a shape-shifting creature: what it looks like, what it can do, and what it can’t do.