What To Expect
At the National Leprechaun Museum, we bring diverse audiences together with our storytellers. Unlike a regular museum, which exists to preserve and display physical artifacts, we focus on Ireland’s intangible cultural heritage. On our guided, storytelling tours, one of our Storytellers will bring you through a series of themed, immersive spaces, telling you traditional folktales, myths and legends in an accessible, engaging way.
Here, our storytellers choose their own stories and decide for themselves how to tell them. In keeping with Irish tradition, our tours are unscripted, but entirely rooted within traditional folklore. Our emphasis is on teaching and developing our storytellers to improve their skills and deepen their repertoire. No tour is exactly the same as any other, and no storyteller tells their stories the exact same way as their peers.
Folklore and Tradition
Ireland has the second largest folklore collection in Europe, and a literary tradition that stretches back some 1500 years. Further back, stories were told for the entertainment of the masses and the guidance of kings. So, we’re not short of source material!
With the Leprechaun as our guide, we can delve into the deepest parts of the tradition or scale the heights of absurdity. Leprechauns are not confined to the logical, stoical, or bound by the laws of common taste or regulation. They wander freely between this world and the next, caring only for the simplest comforts and the delight of a tale well told.
We don’t know why they’re only found in Ireland, but it’s lucky that they are – long may they continue to frequent the leafy corners of this ancient land!
Storytelling is a nuanced craft and may only be judged in its practice. As an art form it is for the listener to discern what quality it holds. As the founder of the Folklore Commission Seamus Delargey says, “Is rud deacair é.”
