Irish. Forms: 7 lubrican, 9 leprehaun, lepreehawn, leprechaun. [Written lupracán, lugharcán, lugracán, in O’Reilly, Irish Dict., Suppl.; in the body of the Dict. it is spelt leithbrágan, doubtless by etymologizing perversion, the sprite being ‘supposed to be always employed in making or mending a single shoe’ (leith half, bróg brogue); O’Reilly also gives luacharman as a synonym. In some mod. Irish books the spelling lioprachán occurs. All these forms may be corrupted from one original; cf. Middle Irish luchrupán (Windisch Gloss.), altered form of O Irish luchorpán (Stokes in Revue Celtique, I. 256), f. lu small + corp body.] In Irish folk-lore, A pigmy sprite ‘who always carries a purse containing a shilling’ (O’Donovan in E. O’Reilly, Irish Dict., Suppl. 1817).
1604. Middleton, 2nd Pt. Honest Wh., III. i. Wks. III. 175. As for your Irish lubrican, that spirit Whom by preposterous charms thy lust hath rais’d In a wrong circle.
1620. Dekker, Dreame (1860), 28. Mounted on a spirits back, which ran With mandrake-shrikes, and like a lubrican.
1627. Drayton, Agincourt, etc. 127. By the Mandrakes dreadfull groanes, By the Lubricans sad moanes.
1818. Lady Morgan, Fl. Macarthy (1819), I. v. 289. There, your honor, them’s my cordaries, the little Leprehauns, with their cathah heads, and their burned skins.
1834. Croker, Fairy Leg. S. Irel., 96. Court.—Pray what is a leprochaune?… Witness.—My lord, it is a little counsellor man in the fairies, or an attorney that robs them all, and he always carries a purse that is full of money.
1860. All Year Round, No. 38. 282. A little, lisping, attenuated falsetto voice, such as you would fancy would have proceeded from an Irish leprechaun.
1895. Jane Barlow, Strangers at Lisconnel, x. 231. He was the living moral of a little ould lepreehawn that they were after making a couple of sizes too big by mistake.
Comb. 1883. Black, Shandon Bells, xvii. This little red-haired leprechaun-looking Andy.
