Púca

Stories tagged Púca:

• The Púca of Ballynure Aug 13, 2025

  

  The púca comes after harvest when the nights edge earlier and the moon looks large enough to pluck. It is not wicked, exactly, but it is unpredictable as a foal and twice as quick. In Ballynure, where lanes fold between hedges like tucked blankets, everyone has a púca story.

  There was the miller, Seán Mór, who found a fine black horse outside his door one Michaelmas. It tossed its head, and Seán—who trusted horses more than men—swung up without asking. At once the horse became spring and shadow. It carried him over hedges as neatly as if the world were a book and the púca turned pages. They leapt the river in a single clean brush; they ran along the ridge of a stone wall without knocking one cap from its lichens. Seán laughed until tears washed the flour from his beard.