There lived a man long ago named Harold. He was a nice and gentle man who didn’t have much going his way. Harold's wife and children died in a car crash earlier in the year and he lost his job at the coal mines due to budget cuts. T0 state it plain and simple, it was a bad year for Harold, a very bad year.
On the brink of depression, Harold had sat on his old couch in his lonely home for two whole days without moving. Late one night as Harold sat miserably on his couch, he heard a loud knock on his door. Startled, Harold jumped from his couch. He never received visitors, especially late at night. He walked to the door and looked through a peep hole to see who was at his house. He didn’t see anyone. He opened the door and still no one was there. Baffled, he shut the door and walked back to his couch. Just as he was about to fall back to his couch, there was a banging on the door again. Now a little irritated, Harold ran back to the door to find what he thought would be a mischievous child playing a mean prank. When he opened the door, there was no sign of anyone.
“Hey! Down here!” yelled a voice.
Harold looked down on his porch to find a man standing on his porch no larger than four inches tall. He thought he was dreaming. “What? Who are you?” asked Harold.
“I’m your guardian leprechaun,” promised the mini human on his porch, "And I’m here to give you some luck after your not so lucky events this past year.”
“I don’t need your luck. This is not real. Please, leave me alone!” said Harold.
“Harold, I’m here to help! What can I do for you? Maybe treat you to some fine food and drink? Buy you a new house? Perhaps a new family??” said the leprechaun.
Harold was reluctant to trust this mischievous little guy, but decided to play along with his game. “How about you get me my job back at the mine?” said Harold.
“Deal! But there’s a catch: when you gather your coal, I get to grab as much as I can hold in one trip to cash it in for my own profit.”
“Sounds good to me!” laughed Harold.
Sure enough, the next day the coal miners found a whole new cave of coal and all the miners got their jobs back. Harold ran to the mine to gather as much coal as possible. After almost 12 hours in the mine, he came up with hundreds of pounds of coal in his barrel.
“Wow! Good job Harold. Now, as you promised me, let me take all the coal I can carry,” said the leprechaun. He put one piece after another in his pocket. Soon enough there was no more coal in his barrel.
“You fooled me!” shouted Harold.
“Sorry, it’s what I do,” said the leprechaun as he started to walk away. As he walked away his pants split and he lost all the coal. Harold pushed him out of the way and took it all back. He cashed it in for profit and lived freely and worked hard for the rest of his days.
Author's Note:
In the original
story, the Farmer of
Liddesdale, the farmer has a bad year until a man comes to help his
plow his farm. The worker fools the farmer and takes his corn. The thief ends
of losing all of the corn when his barrel breaks and then he vanishes. I
wanted to create a similar story, but with a couple of twists. As a Celtic
story, I wanted to bring in a leprechaun and make it more interesting, too! I
really felt bad for the farmer throughout the original story, so I wanted to
make sure my farmer came out with a good victory by the time everything was
over.
I liked the original
story because it went from tragedy to triumph. I wanted to bring the same theme
into my story and develop the characters a little more. I thought the leprechaun
would add a simple, mischievous character that I could portray as the
antagonist. This was, readers would want to take Herald’s side. I thought the
title fit the story well; it was a bad year for Herald. Luckily, things work
out for him in the end, but I wouldn’t want to have to go through the same
things he did!
Bibliography:
Title: More Celtic Fairy Tales
Author: Joseph Jacobs
Illustrations: John D. Batten
Year: 1895
No comments:
Post a Comment