Limerick the Leprechaun

LIMERICK THE LEPRECHAUN

by Tamara Compton Hauge
Copyright 1978

Once upon a time, there was a leprechaun named Limerick.  He lived in a very crowded peanut butter jar, and he didn't like it one bit! 

"Oh for the good old days when I used to live in IRELAND," he said.  "But then I had to get caught by UNCLE TODDY, and now here I am at Nana Avon's house in this peanut butter jar!"

"Nothing EVER happens here!" he complained.  "Except when Monica and Mariah and Quin visit. . .then things are interesting!"  But the three hardly ever came,  because they lived 695.4 miles away from Nana--so it was a rather long drive.

"If only I could get out of this bottle," he said.  He scratched his head and played with his hat some.  Suddenly he noticed his magic four leaf clover charm in his hat. 

"Maybe I can make some magic and get out of here!"

"Four leaf clover to begin,
Let me see Monica,
Mariah and Quin," he chanted, and suddenly--it worked--he was there in California with them.

"Now for some FUN!"  said Limerick, that naughty little leprechaun.  He knew all sorts of mischievous tricks.  He started out by turning Monica's hair green.

He cast a spell on Mariah so that every word she said came out backwards!  Meanwhile, flowers were growing in Monica's hair.

Next he turned Quin upside down so that he hung from the ceiling like a bat.

Who should walk in at that moment but their mother, returning from her Relief Society meeting. She took one look at Quin on the ceiling, Monica with green hair and Mariah talking backwards and she RAN!  She thought Relief Society was getting to her.

Limerick the Leprechaun decided he'd better do something quick, or he'd get caught again.   So he turned everything back to normal as fast as he could.  Everyone was relieved.

"Well, I must be going back to Ireland.  But you can be sure I'll come back to visit," said Limerick.  And if you look carefully, you can see him hiding sometimes.

Historical note: When my brother Todd was on his mission in Ireland, in 1975, he wrote a letter to little sister Tina, nine years old at the time, and told her he would send her a leprechaun that he had caught.  He said the leprechaun would be invisible, and to be sure to keep it safe in the bottle he was sending. 

A few days  later, we received an empty peanut butter bottle in the mail all the way from Ireland.  There was a note in the bottle, and when Tina retrieved it, it said, "Ha ha ha....I escaped when you opened the bottle to get this note."  Tina did not believe that the leprechaun had escaped, and she carried around the bottle and talked to it and seemed to enjoy her invisible leprechaun very much.  My mom found a cute, rubber leprechaun figurine somewhere and put it in the peanut butter bottle, where it had a place of honor in her china cabinet for many years.

In 1978,  my sister Terry Ann, her husband  and their three young children were living in California.  I, living in Utah,   missed them dreadfully and had to make do with correspondence and the occasional phone call to keep in touch with them.  I decided to write a St. Patrick's Day story for them, Monica age 4, Mariah age 3 and Quin age one-and-a-half.  This story  is what I created.  It is not my most polished set of illustrations, but I think the story is fun anyway.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY TO ALL,  Love Tammy