St. Patricks Day Stake

He is a shoemaker, and that is how you catch him.

Most people picture the leprechaun as a small man with a pot of gold. In the old stories he is something more particular: a cobbler, working alone, mending a single shoe. The name is thought to come from leath bhrógan — maker of one shoe. And the way you find him is by ear. You listen for the tap of a small hammer in the hedge, and you follow it, and you do not take your eyes off him, because the moment you look away he is gone.

He is on this one mid-stride, reaching for a shamrock, plainly leaving.

The horseshoe hangs beside him, ends up. There has been an argument about that for two hundred years. One camp says ends up, so the luck collects in the bowl and stays. The other says ends down, so it pours out over everyone who walks beneath. We cut ours ends up. You are welcome to hang the whole piece however you please.

And the shamrock. The story goes that St. Patrick used its three leaves to explain the Trinity — though nobody wrote that down until the 1700s, some twelve hundred years after the fact. Which makes it a fine story rather than a reliable one. The clover itself is honest enough: three leaves are the rule, and a fourth turns up about once in five thousand.

Set it where the light gets behind it — a limb over the walk, the tree by the drive, the porch post.

Specifications