It’s a Longer Ride from Laramie to Cheyenne (Stage Coaches and Leprechauns)

Origin story of Leprechauns, or one man's version.

Day Four:   This was day two of the Stage Coach trip, and I eagerly awaited the return trip to Cheyenne.  It was a longer trip but it was downhill.  Don’t know why that mattered, but the slopes on this side were much steeper than the up slopes on the other side.  It was just a fact of the terrain, nothing else.  The only thing I cared about on this side was that gold mine.  I wanted to see if I could find a pocket full of gold in the nuggets laying around on the ground.  I was just sure that the red-headed rather short guy that I had met the day before at the tour office was a leprechaun.  I knew that there was a chance that I would find his pot of gold out there.  Leprechauns, so the story goes, aren’t particularly deceptive in hiding their pot of gold.  It was difficult to follow them, because they could move in and out of dimensional reality.  And, when they did there was a very bright flash of light.  If you could follow a leprechaun long enough, you would be able to see where he hid his pot of gold. 

In my studies, I have learned much about the Leprechaun.  There are rules under which they function.  If a Leprechaun functions within those rules, they can live for a thousand years or more.  Those rules do not bend and are not forgiving.  They require compliance, and a Leprechaun who thinks to defy the rules will run into serious ailments with no known relief.  For instance, if a Leprechaun wants to blend in with human populations, it morphs into a taller creature with softer facial features.  When this happens the hair on their head becomes an orangy-red color with matching facial hair.  They can return in an instant to their natural state where their hair is a softer color, but their facial features are more stark and angular.  In size, the normal state of an adult Leprechaun is 32.7 inches tall, or 88 centimeters.  That was genetic fact for all Leprechauns.  Leprechauns lived under the Rules of Leprachauna. 

On the morning of the return trip to Cheyenne, I had to walk over to the Laramie office of the Wyoming Stage Coach Tour Company.  My return trip ticket would be waiting for me there.  When I stepped into the office, I was surprised to see that there was another short, very red-headed individual behind the counter.  Who, to me, looked exactly like the agent at the Stage Coach office in Cheyenne.  I walked over to the counter and the agent asked me if he could assist me.  I asked for my ticket to board for today’s trip to Cheyenne.  He asked for my name, and after telling him he checked and then said your ticket is already back in the Boarding Area.  The agent at the gate will have it.   I thanked him, and as I turned to walk to the door, I thought I detected a bright flash of light.  I turned and saw that the man behind the counter was gone. 

I walked back to the counter, and hit the bell to get attention from the staff.  The red-headed man came out and asked me again if he could assist me.  I told him that he looked very much like the man at the other office in Cheyenne.  Then I asked him:  “are you two identical twins?”

He said: “almost everyone says that but we are not directly related.  But, we are both from Ivernia in Ireland.  It is just coincidental that we both ended up here both working in Wyoming and for the same company 55 mile apart.”

I had about thirty minutes before the tour would leave the station, so I asked the red-headed man what his name was.  He said, “My name is Tam McHenry.  I have a cousin in Ivernia named Tam O’Henry.  Crazy, No?”  I am recently removed to this place from Ivernia, Ireland.”

As a traveling man, I was curious about his travels, so I asked him, “did you come here on a ship?” 

Tam then said, “No, but I got here using the waves.”

So, I leaned over the counter, and I said to him: “I know who you are and I know how you got here, and I know what you are!  Here’s the thing, Tam.” And I reached over the counter with both hands and grabbed him by his lapels.  He was squirming like a fish out of water.  And I said, “Tam, reach into your vest pocket and give me your gold coin that you have in there.”  As he squirmed I said you are running out of time, I will start squeezing harder.  “Tam, gold coin, give it to me now, Tam or I’ll lock you up in a little bitty closet back there.”

Tam continued to squirm, but almost without effort the gold coin flipped up and out of his vest pocket and landed on the counter in front of me.  Now, Tam take off your shoes and give me the gold coin in the heel of those shoes.  The shoes fell off and the gold coins dropped onto the counter.  I slowly set the man back down on the floor behind the counter, and pocketed the coins.  I had just made $4,000.  In setting him down, I said:  Tam, where’s you Pot of Gold?”  Where have you hid it?”

Tam straightened his clothes and put his shoes back on.  You know that I will get very sick now that I’ve given up my gold coins!”  He continued, “I might not survive if I can’t get home by sundown tomorrow.”

So, I tell him, “You already flashed over to Ireland, while I was here 30 minutes ago.  You can flash over there any second, can’t you Tam?  Now, if you don’t tell me where your Pot of Gold is at, I might just have to drag you over and put you in a jail cell.  And, just let you sit there until after tomorrow at sundown.  You can’t escape from a jail cell, can you Tam?  I said.

Tam looked at me for about 20 seconds and gave up the location of his Pot of Gold.  It was exactly where I thought it would be out across from the main entrance to the old abandoned mine.  I just needed to know what rock it was under.  When Tam told me the location, he had given title to me and it no longer belonged to the Leprechaun.  I immediately went to the boarding station and got on the ‘Fort Laramie Stagecoach’ for the trip to the gold mine.  I was two and one-half hours from the old abandoned mine.  What would I do with the Pot so that my fellow travelers did not know I had found it under a rock?  The answer to that came in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.  Just needed a strong box with a key, and then I would put it on board the stage coach until we returned to Cheyenne.

Ivernia:  City of Gold: 

So, now I knew.  Tam was a Leprechaun.  And, he had flashed from Ivernia to Wyoming.  The other Leprechaun, Tam had told him, was named Fergus McDonagle.  And they took on the same exact features because Leprechauns have a DNA that has very little room for variation in their appearance genes.  He knew they were not identical twins, but they might as well have been.  And, it also meant that they both had hidden pots of gold somewhere nearby.  Their gold always goes with them.  It has to, because if it didn’t, their bodies would react to the loss of the gold.  And, they would begin to morph back into their natural state.  Then, they would have to immediately go get their pots of gold so they could jump back to Ivernia.  Even if the trip to Ivernia only lasted a few seconds.  If that happened, a human observer might not even realize that they had seen that process happen.  And, I think it had happened just a few minutes ago, when I saw the bright flash of light.  That is the only tale-tell sign.  In that blink of light, that Leprechaun had jumped through time and space exactly back to Ivernian soil in Ireland, and then had jumped back through space and time to Laramie, Wyoming.  I also had begun to think that Leprechauns were under the control of their nature, and that specific rules guided what they could do and how they could do it.  For a Leprechaun, they were free to move around the world as they wanted, they just had to do it in a way that was in accordance with the rules of Leprechaun Life. 

I suspicioned that there was more gold inside this abandoned mine than everyone else thought.  This Leprechaun had come here to relieve this mine of every remaining gram of gold there was left in the mountain.  He wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t gold to be had in this mine.  And, I would just be willing to bet the farm, that there was a Leprechaun at every abandoned gold mine anywhere in the world.  And, I would also bet that all of them were from Ivernia. 

As I thought more about the possibility that Ivernia was intentionally sending its Leprechaun Forces all around the world to relieve abandoned mines of the gold that might remain in them.  Then, it occurred to me right out of the blue.  And, the question came to me:  Why were the Ivernian Leprechauns doing that.  I knew that every Leprechaun had to have a pot of gold, and I knew they had to have one gold coin in the heel of each shoe, and at least one other coin or nugget in their vest pocket, and they could have up to three pockets on their vest.  So, how much gold could the Leprechaun Nation need right now, and in the future?  What would make them send their Forces out into the world to gather grams and ounces of gold from abandoned mines?  And, why would they take such risks for such a small amount of gold.  There could not be a huge unrecovered amount of gold in all these abandoned mines. 

If a Leprechaun needed 3 ounces of gold on their person at all times, and they also had to have a pot of gold.  How much gold was required for each Leprechaun?  It then occurred to me that every Leprechaun needed about fifteen ounces of gold at all times:  3 ounces (85.5 gms) on their person, but up to 5 ounces (142.5 gms).  The question is how much gold does it take to fill a Leprechaun’s Pot of Gold?”  Since Leprechauns are so much into the Number 5, I will guess that there maybe 5,555.5 grams of gold in a Leprechaun’s Pot of Gold.  This would equal to 194.93 ounces of gold.  And, this would equal 12.183 pounds of gold.   At the current price of gold, a Leprechaun’s Pot of Gold would be worth $261,011.59 if full to the brim.  In addition, a Leprechaun could have 5 ounces of gold in their shoes and vest pockets for $6,695 of additional gold.  That would be a total, for each Leprechaun of $267,706.59.  So, now the question I had to answer was: how many Leprechauns are there in Ireland?

It didn’t make sense to me that there was an enormous population of Leprechauns in Ireland because it was a small nation in land mass, but it only had 4.6 million residents.  It would be a stretch to believe that there was an equal population of Leprechauns in Ireland.  Ireland has an area of 32,595 square miles, not quite as large as the state of Indiana, which is 35,910 square miles.  And, Indiana is the 38^th largest state in the United States.  Alaska is largest at 571,951 square miles, and Rhode Island is the smallest state at 1,045 square miles.  The second largest state is Texas at 261,797 square miles.  The next to smallest state is Delaware at 1,954 square miles.  Just for comparison (sq. mi):  Tennessee is 41,217, Georgia is 57,906 and Florida is 53,927.  And, if I had to make a guess, knowing their propensity to do things in fives, I would say the Leprechaun population in Ireland would be no more than 555,555 in average colonies of 111,111.  Therefore, the intention of the Leprechaun village in Ivernia was to have $29,745,146,921.49 in gold.  I would later find out that Ivernia had a population of 127,005 and they all together would have been wanting reserves totaling $33,148,431,290.00.  I was fully prepared to believe that the entire Leprechaun nation would have just over $145 B ($145,006,116,104.85) in gold reserves.

Then, about a year ago, I was reading a discussion about how much gold was left in the Fort Knox area in Kentucky.  One person said, there was more than $290 billion in gold belonging to the United States.  In addition, there was more than $981 billion in gold belonging to other nations.  So, in total there was more than $1.271 trillion of gold in Fort Knox.  Of course, since the value of gold swings daily, it is difficult to determine the true value of the gold in Fort Knox, but it was believed that there was a total of about four million ounces of gold, or 247,400 pounds of gold, or about 125 tons of gold in Fort Knox, of which less than 23% belonged to the United States of America, and therefore by its people.

Finding a Leprechaun’s Pot of Gold would make anyone very wealthy.  And, the really wonderful thing about getting a Leprechaun’s Pot of Gold was that he would just go out and find another 195 ounces and he be set to go again.  It seemed to me that Leprechauns were protective of their Pot but they were dispassionate about it.  If a Leprechaun lost his Pot of Gold or had been obligated to give it to a human who had taken him prison, he would gladly give it away to regain his freedom.  He would protect and try to hide it so he didn’t lose it, but if a leprechaun could live a thousand years, why get so upset about trading a Pot of Gold for freedom.  A Leprechaun was extremely efficient in finding gold nuggets, or a vein of gold in an abandoned gold mine, they had a sixth sense about its location.  For a Leprechaun to acquire 194.93 ounces of gold to fill his pot; and, then to replenish his body supply of 3 ounces, a leprechaun would need a total, on average of 197.93 ounces.  A leprechaun need only find one nugget every day for one year, one month and one day.  Because a standard nugget is deemed to be one-half ounce, thus in one year (366 days), plus one month (31 days) plus 1 day equals 398 days.  398 days times 0.5 ounce equals 199 ounces.  So, in that period of time, 13 months and one day, a Leprechaun would count the first and the last day and would have a total of 398 days, and the Leprechaun would then have 198.375 ounces.  And, just so he didn’t ever have more than what he was allowed to, then he would give the 0.445 ounces, which equals 0.001118 ounce per day, or 0.002236 ounces every other day when it would be turned in (since a Leprechaun has to touch Irish soil every other day of his life) to the Leprechaun village’s senior elders during that 398 days.  This may not sound like much, and it isn’t, but that little bit of gold was worth about $2.994 every other day for each of the 1200 Leps that would turn in their excess every day.  That meant that every day 1200 Lep Agents would turn in $3,592.80 (2.6832 ounces) in excess gold to the Village’s Elders.  An excess worth $1,314,965 every year to the Elders.

LaPrau:  Origin of the Leps:      

There was a real reason for the Leprechaun’s Rules of Life.  You see Leprechauns were a non-human species that some say immigrated to Ireland from another Planet called LaPrau.  LaPrau had been flung out of its solar orbit around the star Epsilon V.  Epsilon was a trinary star system in the Vega Constellation.  Epsilon V and Epsilon VI were binary to each other, and as a binary star system they rotated about Epsilon IV.  Once in every billion years, Epsilon V would rapidly approach Epsilon IV from behind while Epsilon V was advancing from Perihelion around Epsilon IV.  As Epsilon V advance from perihelion, on this rare event, LaPrau was thrown out of its orbit as it approached aphelion, an oddity of its orbital mechanics that had actually never happened before or would ever have happened again.  When LaPrau came closest to Epsilon IV, it was clipped gravitationally from around Epsilon V by centrifugal forces.  For more than a 1000 light years, Leprechauns lived with little light and ate buried roots, truffles and shrooms.  At the start of this galactic flight, the populations of Leprechauns dwindle until there were only a few thousand.  As LaPrau approached Planet Earth, Leprechauns used an ability they possessed that was referred to as Kulchon’s Force.  Kulchon was their ancient father, the beginning of their life form, their species.  No Leprechaun knew from where Kulchon (coo-con) had arisen, but he had the ability to change form and every Leprechaun to this day can shift shape.  As planet earth approached, all Leprechaun changed shape, some did as larger units and formed a space vehicle.  They launched together out into space and a few days later landed in Ireland on Planet Earth.

 

 

Leprechauns:  Salvation and Consequences: 

The first thing they recognized was that there were much larger creatures on Planet Earth that were quite diverse from each other but they were bipedal and were more than twice as tall as the Leprachaun.  Their arrival on Planet Earth was unknown to the human populations in the middle ages, circa 1279, and so they decided it was best to keep their presence unknown to the earth people.  For hundreds of years, humans had no knowledge of the existence of the Leprechauns.  They built their lodges deep in the earth under trees and behind rock formations.  They lived much like beavers.  They harvested human gardens at night, absconded with baked goods from window ledges, and sought underground tubers and roots.  They actually lived very well.  It wasn’t until 1742, that a human child wondered into the evening forest and got lost.  The child was just 4 years old, and did not know to fear Leprechauns.  It was not a Leprechaun that first located the wayward child, but it was a Leprechaun that saved the child’s life.  Leprechauns kept the child overnight in their subterranean city even though they could hear the humans calling for the child.  They fed the child and kept the child safe all night.  While the child slept, the city’s elders discussed how they might return the child to its family without uncovering their secretive existence.  They couldn’t just let the child out and point it in the right direction.  It might fall prey again, which is how they had come to have the child in their city anyway. 

I was told that their city leaders had come up with this plan:  They would extend two of their tunnels parallel to each other underground toward the child’s city; the two tunnels would come straight up to the surface from twelve feet down; the child and two Leprechauns would come up from one tunnel, and two more Leprechauns would come from the other tunnel; they would open up both tunnels at the same time and put the child where the little human girl could be noticed by the town’s people; they would stay there with the child until humans came to get their little girl; as soon as they could be certain that the town’s people were within a few feet, they would drop back down into their tunnels and would return to their city.  The plan had worked flawlessly, but something unfortunate happened to the tunnel cap for one of the two tunnels.  It had caught on a tree root and the two leprechauns in the tunnel were still trying to cover their tunnel when another little human girl, who appeared to be almost grown, had looked down into their tunnel and had seen them.  The young human child had heard the two Leprechauns arguing about how to get the cover closed.  She had slowly edged forward until she was right above them.  Then, the human girl looked right down at them and said, “Thank you for saving my little sister.  I knew you had her somewhere, and I knew you would give her back to us.”

The Leprechaun named Esam O’Flaherty had looked up at the girl and said, “We had to take her with us, she was about to be taken by the troll that lives under the old wooden bridge just down the river from here.  If we hadn’t jumped in and grabbed her away from the Troll, we would not have had her down here with us.”

The young lady repeated that she was thankful, and said she would tell the town’s people how they had saved her sister from the troll.

“Tam O’Henry begged the young lady not to tell the city folks about them being there.  We prefer our presence here to be kept away from their knowledge.  Please do not tell anyone that we are here for if you tell them they might want to come down and try to get into our city, and that would not be good.   Tam said to her, “If you will keep our presence a secret we will give you a gold nugget every month on this date.”

Now that promise from Tam had peaked her curiosity about them, and so she regularly came down to this same area once each month to talk to them.  After a few months, she had learned a lot about them including the name that they called themselves.  She said, “You are called Lepro cons?”

“No dear” Tam would say, “Le..pra…cons, Le…pra…cons.”

Shellie Law said to them: “what does the word Leprachaun mean?” 

Tam O’Henry  was not sure he wanted to try to explain in great detail but maybe a quick review might satisfy her need for information: “Shellie, we come from a land very far away, and we called that land LaPrau (La Praw).  And, we trace our heritage back five thousand years to a father of our ancestors we know as KulChon (Coo-Con).  Lepra " Chaun simply means Le Prau (our original home) and chon or chaun meaning ‘land of’.  So, if you break down Leprachaun, it simply means Land of LePrau.  When we came to Ireland we were asked by others where we had come from and Kulchon told them we were from Lepra land.”

Shellie Law then wanted to know more about KulChon, “who was KulChon, and why do you call him your father?”

Esam thought he should try to explain this one, but as usual he stumbled all over himself and made a mess of the answer.  So Tam tried to put the answer back together, “KulChon, was our great ancestor because he was the first to look like us, and he set about to organize our communities so that our lives made sense.  To us, KulChon was the name he took when he became our leader.  The first part of his name ‘Kul’ means ‘strongman’ or pertains to a ‘force.’  You know like a powerful one who leads with courage and strength.  That is the meaning we associate with ‘Kul.’  And, of course ‘chaun’ or ‘chon’ means ‘land of.’ Thus, Kulchon means ‘land of the forceful one.’  To all of us, his names says that we came here from a land where he was strong.  You know, he kept us safe.”

“I still don’t know where LaPrau is, or why you came to Ireland,” Shellie had just asked the critical question.  A question he could not tell her the real answer to.

“Shellie, we really don’t know where LaPrau is from here.  None of us know.  That move took place five thousand years ago before any of were around.  Our people just don’t know where that land was or why we came to Ireland instead of any other land.  We just know that we were in dire circumstances there due to the fact that our sun began to dim, until we had little light and could not grow food.  Many of our people died before we found Ireland.  We really don’t know any more than that, Little Girl.”

Shellie Law, The Walking Stick and the Rainbow:

So, Tam and Esam began to ask her questions.  They learned that her first name was Shelly, and that her family name was Law.  And so they learned very quickly that when either of them called her Shelly Law that something magical would happen.  Tam said to Esam one day, “If this Shellie Law comes..., and just as he had repeated her name something nearby would disappear.”  To which Esam said, “Tam, it is like when we do our dance with our shillelagh and just as we raise it over our head and say ‘Shillelagh’ that a rainbow would appear and one end of the rainbow would come down to the ground and would deposit a gold nugget into their pots.  Esam said, yes that is true but we are not allowed to do that but once each day.  That only happened if it was time to do their dance and they had the shillelagh over their head.  So now they had just learned that if they said her name right close together that something would disappear right next to them.  Now Tam had realized something else about when they called her name.  When something would disappear next to them, Tam had noticed that a gold nugget would drop into his pot of gold from the Rainbow.  So, they conspired one with the other, not to ever reveal what they had just learned, because if they kept it to themselves they could amass a fortune in gold even though they were only allowed a ‘pot of gold’ which was by Lep Law limited to 194.93 ounces.  Every time Shellie came down to get her gold nugget as they promised her they would do each month, they would put their pots over in the next field, and they would have her stand with her back to the field and they would do a little dance for her in which they would say her name over and over again.  Fifty times one day, sixty times one day and even a hundred times one day.  And, after she would leave, they would run over to the field and check their pots.  In just a few weeks, these two conniving Leprechauns had amassed a fortune in gold nuggets. And of course, Shellie just adored them for dancing for her and making her laugh.

One day, as they were dancing for Shellie, she stopped their dance, and asked them why they were laughing all the time while they were dancing.  They told her that they just were so happy about being able to dance for her.  Shellie told them that they were so cute dancing with their walking sticks and their leather tams, and their high stockings and short pants.  They looked at her and decided to start dancing again.  And, just as they lifted their Shillelagh over their heads and began saying her name, they could see that gold nuggets were coming out of the rainbow and falling into their pots.  The more nuggets that came out, the happier they were.  So, they just kept dancing, and kept laughing.  They could do that forever.  Within a few years, they had more gold nuggets than all the other Leprechauns put together.  As far as they were concerned they had every bit of the “Luck of the Irish”.  It had been their luck to have found this girl’s sister.  It had been their luck that this Shellie Law had seen them.  It was their luck that they had contracted with her to give her a gold nugget every month when she would come down to their village.  Indeed, their luck was that they realized that when they called her name, that one thing would disappear, but a gold nugget would appear from a rainbow in each of their pots. 

They were therefore five times lucky over one thing.  And, if there was one thing all Leprechauns knew, it was that their lucky number collectively was five.    Leprechauns spelled things differently than humans.  The letter ‘I’ was only used to refer to an individual, but any other usage of the letter required that it be ‘ie.  So the number five was actually spelled ‘fieve’.  And, it was pronounce ‘fi-ev.’  Just like the word humans used to indicate they were active.  They did not say a person was ‘a-live,’ but Leprechauns pronounced the word ‘a-li-ev.’  Similarly, the letter ‘a’ was not used by itself unless it referred to an individual or was personal.  But, when used for something everyone had the letter was used like ‘ae’ like in the word ‘face,’ since everyone had one.  So, a leprechaun always referred to someone having a beautiful ‘face,’ but it was pronounce ‘fay-ess,’ and they would spell the word ‘faece.’

But, as the years went by Shellie stopped coming down to their village, and after a time, it no longer mattered if they repeated her name because no rainbow would appear, and no gold nuggets would fall into their pots.  They realized that the magic was not just in her name but was in Shellie.  So, they knew that her name sounded just like what they called their walking sticks.  It was Shillelagh, and her name was ShellieLaw.  The sound was so close that the Angel would deliver the gold nuggets right down to their pots through the length of any rainbows. 

They decided they would have to go into the human’s village and find her, and get her to come back down to their forest village.  So, every night for a year and a half they would come up out of one of their tunnels and hurriedly approach the human village.  They systematically checked every house, and after nearly 500 days they found her.  And, after finally getting her attention, they asked her why she had stopped coming to see them.  She told them that she had gotten married and had a son, and she no longer had time to come to see them.  They begged her to start coming back to watch them dance. 

The Move to Ivernia:

She told them that she would try to come, but that they should not ever come back to her village, because the people had realized finally that their harvests were getting worse and worse each year, and the men in her village were going to go looking in the forest for the thieves who were stealing their produce and their baked goods.  They looked at her and asked her if she had told the towns people about them living in the forests.  She said she had not had to tell them that the Leprechauns lived nearby because she said your people have been getting bolder and bolder and several people had seen them in their produce fields and had seen them taking baked items from the window ledges.  She said it would be best if Leprechauns moved away because they were going to come down to their villages and harass them until they left the area.

Tam and Esam were quickly headed back toward their underground city.  Once they reached their home under the ground, they asked to see the elders at once.  The Elders, or the Elder 5 as they were called, were seniors who had held office within their communities, and they were wise and very knowledgeable about government and city management.  But they were also required to be at least 100 years old, and have lived in their community for 50 years.  Thus, when Tam and Esam rushed in to the Elder’s Office, The Chief Elder came running out into the outer office wanting to know what was going on.  Their Chief Elder Kennet O’Flannagan, brought them into his office and asked them to tell him what was going on.  Tam O’Hoolihan explained the situation to the Chief Elder.  The Chief Elder was shocked that these two young Leps had kept such a secret and had done such a selfish thing. 

The Chief Elder called his assistant in and asked for a meeting of the Elders immediately.  Five minutes later, the Chief Elder forced Tam and Esam to tell the other Elders what they had been doing with the female human, and what they had learned in regard to her name, and what the human leaders were going to do.  Esam told them: “Honorable Elders, we admit to our youthful errors in this matter, but we did not cause this situation.  It is, according to the human female, due to other Leps who boldly went to the human city and took the baked goods, and plundered the human’s gardens for produce.  They were the ones who had betrayed the population of Leps in the city by their reckless behavior.”  Then Tam added: “This all started when we rescued the human female baby some two years before.  If we had stayed out of that, although it wouldn’t have been the moral thing to do, we would now not be threatened by those in the human city.”

The Elders continued their meeting for another hour before they came out of the inner offices and told everyone that tonight they would have to vacate the city and move to another location.  A General Order of Emergency was issued for Evacuation of the current Lep city:  the GOE was issued for tonight.  The Chief Elder then called for the General of his Protection Forces to develop a plan to relocate the city immediately. 

As soon as it was sufficiently dark, General Seamus O’Connor, directed that a small Unit of Lep Forces be sent to find a new place.  This Detachment was directed to follow the Northern Boundary of the Inland Irish Sea until a sufficiently large outcropping adjacent to the Forest that would be deemed an appropriate location for their habitation.  A second Detachment was then be sent to follow the first Detachment to provide cover and to make the habitation site secure until they could send the Engineering Corp to begin the Operation that would open the subterrainian cavern for immediate expansion.  They were told they had to find that new location, and send back for the Engineers and that must be done before the second watch began.  Each night contained three 3 hour watches.  Thus, the Engineers would have to begin their work by mid-night.  At the beginning of the last third of the second watch, the Engineers had to send notice to the city to begin sending Lep citizens for occupation investure into the new city boundaries.  The first wave of citizens had to arrive at the beginning of the third watch of the night which would begin at 3:00 a.m.  Every 12 minutes during the third watch, 10 percent of the residents would be sent to the new city.  All Leps should be relocated within the new city one hour before daybreak.  The night was lit by the Harvest Moon, a beautifully, seemingly larger face of the Full Moon.  It would be a better night with the landscape so well lit, but if they were being pursued by the humans it could mean that this movement to a new city would be fraught with peril.  They had encountered no peril, and the movement was a complete success.

It was fortunate that the movement to a new location had taken place without distress or duress.  The new city was opened by the Engineers in a timely manner, and more than 127,000 Lep had moved their city to a new location more than 25 kilometers away to the north.  The Lep Forces would return to the old city three nights later to remove its strategic supporting structures so that the interior of the old city would slowly collapse without major surface defects becoming immediately obvious.

The new city was named Ivernia, and over the next few nights, the Lep Forces would spread out over the area to find new food sources and materials they could use for building Ivernia into a home for its many citizens.  Over the next few weeks and months, Lep Forces would be unable to locate any additional Lep cities.  Lep Forces over the next few months were able to locate multiple sources for truffles, tubers and wild growing fruit.  They would cultivate these sources to increase production so that it would not be necessary to forage inside other human habitations.  But one thing they would need to survive in a new city after a total relocation was Gold.

The Great Gold Search:

The new city demanded gold, and lots of it.  The Elder Kennet O’Flannagan ordered the General Seamus O’Conor of the Lep to send Lep Forces out in force.  Every able body was sent out in search of gold.  Lep Forces were now being recruited by the hundreds and trained to go out into the world to find gold in any quantity they could.  The Lep Force was a small security force that was deployed in shifts every hour of every day to be lookouts.  The Lep Force was generally maintained at a level of one percent of the population, or 1,270 units.  In this emergency, nearly two thousand new units would be needed.  It would take 32 days to adequately train the new recruits to find and recover gold in abandoned mines.  Each Lep was tasked to return home with an extra Pot of Gold.  That meant that each Lep Force recruit had to go out, as commanded to a specific location in the entire world, and return as quickly as possible with 12.183 pounds (194.93 ounces) of gold.  The General had calculated that the city’s residents would require 23,394,526 ounces of gold.  That meant that 2400 Lep Forces had to be trained and sent into the gold mines of the world to recover this gold.  Many of the newly trained Lep Forces would have to work anywhere from five to eighteen abandoned mines each in order to fulfill their order.  Although they were not told, each Lep Miner would be watched on a daily basis to ensure that the Lep Units would be honorable and return every nugget they found.  If they were found to have been honest in their every finding, they would be greatly rewarded at the end of the gold recovery emergency period. 

They did not want to steal this gold so the Chief Elder had tasked them to remove the gold only from abandoned mines.  Ivernia had to have gold that would be worth $31,325,267,569.05.  Just to maintain the health of the residents living in the new city.  Their bodies required gold so that its elements could support the very weak DNA structure of the Leprachaun.   The Lep Forces were to return every other day as usual, but to bring every nugget they found.  That meant that every other day, the Lep Forces would return with one ounce each, or 58,800 ounces would be returned home every day.  At that rate it would take 390 days to find enough gold to support the physical health of all Leprachaun.  One ounce of gold was required every 100 years for each Leprachaun.  Unfortunately, there had been very little gold left after the move to Ivernia.  For that reason, Elder Kennet had ordered a one hundred percent reserve replacement.

When the news was reported to the Elder Kennet that one of their Lep Units had lost his entire Pot of Gold, he was ordered to return to Ivernia immediately.  Tam O’Henry was brought before the Elder Commission with the Chief of the Lep Forces, General Seamus O’Conor.  Tam had to explain how this tourist had figured out who and what he was and had threatened to imprison him the day he was to return home to Ireland.  Knowing he could be imprisoned, he was forced to give over his Pot of Gold to the human.  Elder Kennet ordered a squad of one hundred Lep Forces to be selected from the security detail and sent to the Americas to find this robber, and to punish him for his cruelty to a Leprachaun and for his threats of violence against a member of the Lep.  They were ordered to find this human, find the Pot of Gold, and return it immediately to Ivernia.  And, if they had to use force they were authorized to do whatever was necessary to obtain possession of that gold. 

The jump was made immediately to Laramie and to Cheyenne Wyoming.  Tam O’Henry was back at work.  He had located my payment records in the business files of the Overland Stagecoach Company.  My address was located on certain records of the business, and a force of 100 was sent to my residence in Southeast Tennessee.  They waited and watched for days at the residence to determine any kind of pattern to their residents.  There was none detected, so after one week of watching, the force began to move in and surround the home.  They were able to invade the home by stealth.  The Lep Force, found me in bed asleep and ten of them went in and rendered me secure to the bed frame.  The main Lep Force Units spread out through the home and searched it from top to bottom.  The pot was located but it was empty. 

They began to interrogate me, and then to force me to reveal the location of the gold.  I refused their questions for seven hours that day.  At the end of that period they began to inflict serious physical stress upon me.  Their first stressor was to remove any covering of my feet and tickle the bottoms of the my feet with a feather until I surrendered the information they sought.  After more than an hour, they gave up and began to induce me to sneeze by blowing pepper into my nose.  I sneezed for two hours before they decided to inflict an even more serious stressor.  For the third and final attempt to stress me into revealing the location of the gold, they removed my shirt and began plucking the my chest hairs one at a time at first, then after thirty minutes, they begin to pluck two or three at a time, then after an hour, they would pluck five or more at a time, and finally after an hour and a half they began to pluck the hair ten or more at a time.  After another hour of this, they determined that they would surround me by shape shifting their bodies into a carrier vessel.  When they had me inside the vessel, those surrounding me simultaneously used the forces of Kulchon and made the jump to Ivernia.  Seventy of the Lep Forces remained behind to search the residence for the Gold.  In a period of twenty-four hours, the house had been searched several times and no trace of the gold had been found. 

They took me to Ivernia in chains. I was unable to move.  The jump had been swift taking only a few seconds.  But, what they did to me in Ivernia was actual cruelty.  They tortured me in several ways, and for more than 38 hours.  They had plucked every hair from my chest.  Still, I refused to talk.  Then, they threaten to pluck out my eye brows.  I demanded to speak with the Chief Elder.  I told them I had a valid grievance against the Leprechauna, and they could not, under their law, take the gold back.  After nearly two days, I told them where I had secreted the gold.  And after a day and a half, in walks the Chief Elder Kennet O’Flannagan.  He was a wicked looking little creature.  He demanded to know what Law of the Leprechauna they were violating by forcing me to give up the pot of gold. 

I told him these things: “Elder Kennet, I have studied the lore and the history of the Leprechauna for many years and I know what your laws say.  I know why each Leprechaun carries up to three pieces of gold in his vest pocket, and why he must have a gold coin under each heel inside his shoe.  I know how you must need a lot of gold, and I know why Tam O’Henry was working in Wyoming so that he had access to several abandoned gold mines in the area.  I know he was reclaiming gold out of those mines.  Am I right so far Elder Kennet?”

Elder Kennet confirmed that I was, and bade me go on.

“Elder Kennet, let me guess.  Ivernia is the name of your new city.  I know this because of what I have seen.  Your walls are unfinished everywhere you have taken me.  Let me also guess you have around 125,000 residents here in Ivernia.  Which means that you need a place that goes back about 5200 feet and it is basically a square.  So, you have about 7,000,000 square feet in here.  And, because you had to move everyone to this new facility you had to find new gold reserves of about 24 to 25 million ounces of gold.  The stresses of the movement of that many demanded it, did it not Elder Kennet?  So, to get that reserve back soon as possible you’ve sent probably about 2500 to 3000 Leprechaun out searching for unclaimed gold in abandoned mines all around the planet.  The reason for that is because you didn’t want to steal it, and that was good until you found out about Tam O’Henry losing his pot of gold to me.

Elder Kennet, you have done the honorable thing until now, and I applaud what you have done, but under your Law you cannot relieve me of Tam O’Henry’s gold because I earned it accordance with your Law.  I discovered him because of his own greed in that he was working out of two offices in Wyoming.  And, when I saw him in both places and he told me the two of them were not identical twins, then I knew what he was.  I knew he was a Leprechaun.  Elder Kennet, if you take the gold from me, you have violated your own laws.  When I discovered Tam O’Henry, and identified him, I followed him and captured him in his natural state.  And so to return here to Ireland, he had to give me his Pot of Gold to earn his release so he could get back to Ivernia and Ireland and be renewed.  So, he would not lose his health.” 

“Elder Kennet, that gold rightfully now belongs to me, and if you take it back you bring down on you and your people disastrous diseases, loss of health, loss of crops.  That gold is no longer a valuable asset, it is now tainted as far as you are concerned.  If you bring it back here, Elder Kennet, you will bring tainted gold into Ivernia and instead of renewing the residents of Ivernia, it will bring them pain and disease and worst.  And, you Elder Kennet will be responsible because you knew the truth and allowed it back inside Ivernia anyway.  Elder Kennet, I claimed that gold under your laws, and you cannot reclaim it under your law.”

Elder Kennet stared at me for several minutes before he spoke, “I have no choice sir, but to return you home.  You are completely correct and I was willing to accept the risk in order to quickly acquire the needed gold.  I will recall my forces from your residence.   I trust that you will not speak of this to anyone and compromise our world here.”

“Elder Kennet, had you come to me and asked me if you could borrow it from me for a few months I would have loaned it to you until you could have offset its loss.  And, if I could, I would still do that if you only would ask.”

Elder Kennet, thought for a short time and said, “what will you want in return?”

I said, “Elder Kennet, I will loan you the 194.93 ounces of gold, if you will return 200 ounces of gold to me in exactly six months.”

Elder Kennet, again assumed a thoughtful pose, “I will do that, sir.”

“Elder Kennet,” I said to him face to face, “I would gladly offer you my assistance because I feel I know you and your people so well.  Someday, I would like to learn the origin of Kulchon, and where the Leprechauns came from.  When you want to talk to me, let me know Elder Kennet, and I will enjoy talking to you about the beginnings of the Leprechaun.”  And, I ended my time at Ivernia by saying, “Elder Kennet, I bid you peace, long lives and health, to you and to all your people.”

 

Well, that’s all for now, my dear granddaughters.   I hope you learned something about the Leprechaun.  People have always associated incredible luck with the Leprechaun.  It is at the very basis of the phrase:  “Luck of the Irish.”  It is also the foundation of the phrase, “the Fighting Irish.” 

The Moral of the Story: 

If everyone played by the rules of society, there would be no need to lie, no need to steal, no need to hurt another.  If everyone lived by the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you), and not the Rule of Gold (He who has the gold, has the power of gold and doesn’t care at all about the others), everyone would share equally in all that Planet Earth offers.  The moral of the story is this:  No one should be honored in life above that which was earned, but the Law of Honor and Integrity says that, “if you see a person that is sick, try to bring healing to them; if you see a person that is hungry, try to feed them; and if you find a person that is homeless, try hard to find them shelter.  We are not alone, but if we fail our fellow human beings, then we have violated the Law of Honor and had rather be ruled by Greed and Avarice, rather than by Love and Integrity.   

The Rules of Leprachauna:

1.      A Leprechaun must have a permanent tie to Ireland. Reason: All families must be represented in Ireland: If an only relative in Ireland returns to Kulchon, the traveling Lep must return home instantly.

2.      A Leprechaun must place both feet on Ireland’s soil every other day. Reason:  Irish soil has elements found no other place in the world, a Lep’s body must contact this soil one time every 49.49 hours.

3.      A Leprechaun must always wear a vest over a green or red shirt which vest must have at least 1 pocket, but may have no more than 3 pockets. Reason: a vest gives appearance of class to a Lep and it provides a place for him to keep his gold coins to pay to someone who sees him.

4.      A Leprechaun must always have an ounce of gold in a vest pocket.  Reason: If a Lep is seen, he must give the human a gold coin, and if he doesn’t have a gold coin he must go and get his pot of gold and give it to the human.  If the Lep runs out of gold, the Lep must return to Ireland immediately if he is in another land.  The Lep must always be in contact with Gold, its absence can cause disease or worse.

5.      A Leprechaun must always have a gold coin under each heel in each shoe. Reason:  the weight of the Lep on his heels allows the beneficial element in Gold to better help the Lep maintain his health especially while he travels to foreign lands.

6.      A Leprechaun must do their Irish Dance in the morning and in the evening when the sun transits across the horizon. Reason:  Sunlight is refracted through the atmosphere differently from the morning horizon to the evening horizon.  Both refractions provide needed ultra-violet wave radiation to the Lep’s body.  Its beneficial rays warding off specific kinds of disease.

7.      A Leprechaun must always maintain and carry their Shillelagh. Reason:  A Shillelagh is a finely crafted walking stick or club.  Its construction, according to Kulchon’s direction gives the Shillelagh a special force or power, making it possible to defeat the much larger Troll with ease and efficiency.

8.      When not in Ireland, a Leprechaun must, every other day of his life, and at local high noon, raise their Shillelagh over their heads three times in rapid succession. Reason:  The Shillelagh when raised over their heads three times in rapid succession reminds the Lep that he must return home the next day, before dusk, to Ireland so that the Irish Soil can invigorate his body.

9.      A Leprechaun must never be caught and imprisoned on any day they must return to Ireland’s soil. Reason:  If a Lep is caught by a human or other superior sized alien creature, and the Lep would be prevented from retuning to Ireland’s soil.  It is the soil whose chemical elements renew and invigorate the Lep’s body and keep him spry well into his 300s.

10.  A Leprechaun must never be seen by any superior, knowing species in any ‘state,’ natural or shifted. Reason:  A fully grown natural adult Lep is always exactly 83 cm tall, or 32.68 inches tall.  Lep height being controlled by his alien DNA which is unerring in limiting growth above 32.68 inches.  If a human being sees a Lep in his normal state, the Lep is required to instantly reacquire its pot of gold for transfer to the human who saw him in his natural state. 

11.  A Leprechaun must reside in his natural, normal state any time when he is experiencing extreme pressure or duress.  Until these conditions are abated, and normal stasis of the body is returned, the Lep is forbidden from shape shifting to any other form.  Reason:  A Leprechaun is an alien being to Earth’s creatures.  Shape shifting is allowed only when the Lep is in stasis and may engage any of its natural Kulchon derived powers.

12.  A Leprechaun must audibly repeat the Tenets of the Royal Order of Kulchon.  Reason:  The Lep knows how to live and knows what the Lep is allowed to do in the real world, and will quote them every 7^th day of his adult life from the age of 12 to have full knowledge of the ways and powers of a Leprachaun.