Irish Folklore: The Púca

The púca is a rural being. Many traditions associate the púca with agriculture and the Celtic harvest calendar. The púca is generally thought to inhabit Ireland’s most remote places – hills, mountains, and bogs. It is a creature of grey autumn days, of misty dawns and murky dusks. Most tales of humans interacting with them happen during the night, particularly after the unlucky person is leaving the warmth and cosiness of the pub for the chilly, inky blackness of an October night.

Stories of the devious púca are not unique to any one part of Ireland. Folk tales and oral stories place this creature across the island from County Down to Waterford and Wexford and everything in between. Versions of the púca also exist throughout the folklore of other Celtic cultures.

The púca have made their way from oral tradition into Irish stories. Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s mother, was a renowned folklorist and she recorded a number of stories surrounding these mischievous little beings. Irish national poet W.B. Yeats penned a poem about an eagle-shaped púca.

Gothic horror writer Sheridan Le Fanu, a contemporary of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, included the púca in multiple stories, including one in which a púca appears in the shape of a cat. 20th-century novelist Flann O’Brien’s award-winning novel, At Swim-Two-Birds, has a character called Pooka who can shapeshift when smoking a magic pipe. Even the modern children’s Spiderwick series by Holly Black includes a phooka amongst the various supernatural characters (also in the form of a cat).

Though English, the most famous version of the púca is the trickster character Puck from Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Video games feature such creatures too. From well-known games like The Witcher 3 to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, video games also sport iterations of púca, proving that the reach of Irish folklore is far and wide.