This is another one of those stories about my child, shared with his permission. I've posted before about the strange business with the invisible dog, but there was also an issue with pookas.
It started when I found a very small James dancing about in the living room, apparently on his own, but with his hands raised as though he was holding hands with someone taller than him. He was just about talking at this point, so I asked him who he was dancing with, and he announced that this was pooka dancing.
I'm reasonably confident that pookas were not beings James had been told about before he mentioned them. If you're new to the word, it's an old English word with a lot of different spellings, and it means a goblin or fairy creature. There's some good content about the Irish variant on Morgan Daimler's blog - https://www.patheos.com/blogs/agora/2016/11/irish-american-witchcraft-into-the-dark-of-samhain/
They're generally thought to be mischievous and tricksy, and are shapeshifters. They might steal you away and drop you in a ditch somewhere. I'm not honestly sure how you'd tell between a pooka horse and a kelpie horse - and kelpies are prone to drowning people so it's an important consideration!
As with the invisible dog, the pookas did not become explanations for James acting out. He just danced with them sometimes. As he grew, incidents of pooka dancing decreased.
I remember from my own early years that my understanding of language went far beyond anything I could reliably articulate. I remember phrases that were said to me, and that I am certain are reliable memories but that I am also sure I should not have been able to understand at the time. I do wonder if there was something similar going on. Children can be decidedly uncanny creatures, and I cannot help but think of all the many stories out there of children cheerfully describing their previous lives, and I wonder about that, too.
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