Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone

Uncle Pat sat on my grandmother's porch and told a tale that bears repeating. He was a diminutive man, dressed in work jeans with suspenders over a green flannel shirt and a red handkerchief around his neck. He wore a straw hat pushed back on his head.

Like the other children with me, I wondered a bit about the truth of the tale, but Uncle Pat swore it to be as truthful as any told in Congress and none of us children doubted the truthfulness of it after that.

The gist of the story went like this ...

"It was a few hundred years ago, just yesterday, way out west in the old country. We called it the island of magic and it was a beautiful place. The fields were always fallow but yielded tremendous harvests of grain and berries. The trees were always in bloom, yet the fruit fell from the limbs daily. If you went to the town pub you would hear such great stories of the times of the early humans and their meetings with the wee folk ..."

"Now wait a minute," this was Kenneth an older cousin who from the lofty heights of 9 years old knew bunk when he heard it. "How can trees be blooming and have fruit on them? How can yesterday be a hundred years ago?"

Uncle Pat's teeth grinned between lip hair and beard. "If you were to sit and listen as well as you stand and talk, young lawyer, you would learn a thing or maybe even two given enough time." Kenneth sat back down to ponder this last convoluted sentence in silence.

Uncle Pat cleared his throat, took his pipe from his shirt pocket and tapped it on the sole of his boot. He tipped back his chair, packed tobacco from a cloth sack into his pipe, and pulled out a long wooden match. He flipped the end of it with his thumbnail and it flashed into flame. He touched the tobacco and a trail of smoke appeared.

He took a puff or two then chuckled.

He continued in his heavy accent. "Now there was a time when humans and fey folks got along with each other. They didn't get along well mind you; but they no longer went to war."

"Went to war?" Kenneth again. We all chose to ignore him.

"What are fey?" asked Elizabeth -- the 6 year old.

He rocked back and forth a few times puffing on his pipe. "Fey folk are the fairies, the wee ones, the leprechauns," he winked, "the jokers, the mischief maker. People learned to leave the fey alone mostly. But sometimes, you'd hear of a human crossing paths with a leprechaun.

"Usually people try to catch leprechauns because of all the fey folk they are the bankers. Now the bankers keep all of the fey folks' golden treasures in big pots. They hide the pots at the end of the rainbows ..."

Kenneth stood up. Uncle Pat stopped talking and looked at him sideways. Kenneth sat down.

"They hide the pots at the end of the rainbows because only the leprechauns can find them there. They are as safe there as in any human bank of stone or wood. Because," he paused for effect, "only the leprechauns know the tune to play on their pipes to make the rainbows touch the ground. When the rainbows touch the ground, a pot of gold coins appears for only a few seconds."

"Now, some people think if they catch a leprechaun they can steal their pot of gold. What do you think?"

Kenneth again, "You've got a pipe. How do leprechauns make music out of an old pipe?"

I couldn't be still, "Not that kind of pipe! A music pipe like a flute."

Uncle Pat smiled at me. "Exactly! One like this!" He pulled a long wooden pipe from his shirt pocket, put it to his lips and played a bouncy tune. So bouncy in fact that we all started dancing!

We danced till we all fell down exhausted and Granny came to the door to call us in to eat. "What are you kids doing out here?"

"Listening to Uncle Pat's story of leprechauns," I explained.

"Who's Uncle Pat?" Granny asked.

We all looked quickly at the empty chair. On the chair, there was one gold coin. Not a real gold coin, but a piece of chocolate wrapped in gold paper.

Uncle Pat had made me believe that a story is as true as you want to believe it to be. What do you think?