Mariah had a dream about a little red man running around naked. She did not like to think of it as her own little red man linked to her anger. She liked to connect it to Uishneach after his outburst, or that leprechaun who told the story of his feelings when he found his wife in bed with another, as he chased him, hopping around one leg in and one leg out of his pants. Finally she noticed she herself was angry the next morning. She was very sleepy, having to get up without enough sleep. She noticed she would like to break something if she could get away with it, silently, without being seen, preferable belonging to someone else.
She remembered being in a gathering of good leprechaun friends once and heard the story about the stolen slipper. Her friend, Shiela Bui, reported that she heard her just married son’s wife talk about her after she had left to go home from her son’s nuptials. She forgot her shawl and as she approached the house she could see her son’s wife, and her family, through the open window.
The guests
Many were staying the night, in her old house. Her son’s new wife was criticizing her in a loud voice, what she wore to their union, the make of her dress, her figure, her hair and her shoes. She had vacated her house for this leprechaun and her son and was livid. She told of how she silently got into the house through the back door. She did a tour of her back rooms, picked up what she thought was most cherished; including two beautiful embroidered first night garments and one of her favorite slippers and hid them in the voluminous dress she was wearing to the celebration.
She thought her homemade dress was lovely
She slipped out the back door and was gone. After she went a ways on the road to her new home, through the bog, she sat down and wept for the letting go of her son and her house and for having to put up with this new interloper wife.
Her son and his new wife
She then wandered around and found a suitable bog hole full of dark water into which to put her dark thoughts and put a few well meaning looking stones on top of the stolen goods. She made sure it would not be found and got some delight in thinking about the mystery of the lost slipper and her son’s new wife endlessly searching for the lost items.
The bog hole
When Shiela Bui met the druid Bernie she burst into tears and told him what had happened and what she had done. While advising her to go back and get the stolen items and clean them and put them back, he laughed a lot and before long they both were howling with laughter on the path in the bog.
She knew she would have a terrible time trying to find them again and fish them up out of the swampy depths. He told her to pray for the new family and he wished her many grandchildren from her son’s union. This placated her and she agreed to the praying for her new relative. At the time of Mariah hearing this story, Shiela Bui had been granted three grand-leprechauns and had asked Mariah to knit a new pair of slippers for her son’s wife with the birth of each new addition to the family.
Sometimes the slippers are too big or too small, shrink unexpectedly, or loose a piece and are patched with other unexpected pieces. But they are always loved for their warmth and for their ability to keep the wearer in touch with the ground of their being and Roisin Bui’s son is very happily married.
Living happily ever after
Sometimes Mariah goes searching for the slipper and the other things that were hidden there in the bog. Once she came upon Uisneach in a well of water waiting to be given some water from the well. And there beside him was the blue slipper, and some other twisted up pieces looking well preserved, and deeply black. He had been trying to distinguish the difference between the true well water and the bog hole water for some time. He had his eyes closed so she decided not to disturb him, as he liked to be left alone when out and about on his quest for gold.
Uisneach is reflected in the well in the bog.
The end.
Rose today had a dream of being part of a group of soldiers and the war was to start that very day and she was with the group. She was preoccupied with getting water to drink, but those in charge were not interested in her quest for water. She was considering how to get into some water pipes that were almost underground. There was no spigot and she did not have the right spanner to get to the water. She was very thirsty. There was upheaval around but she did not seem interested in that.
After looking at her dream for a bit she decided to play a game of Quiddler to see if any of the words would help her in her quest for meaning in her dream. She got the words; war, wet and hail, which connected to her dream. Sometimes she treats the words from the game as coming from her unconscious in a synchronistic way. Hail is frozen water, a symbol for being stuck.
This ego representation is made of some very plastic putty and it is easy to shut him up and put him back in his box, even as he is in mid sentence. When he talks you have to hear all about fears and worries and other endless considerations.
Later as she followed up with the dream she remembers how she prays to the Angel of the Water of Life, for that water, which when you drink, causes you to be never thirsty again. She sees that water of life as a life force everywhere. The war from her dream is about the fight between her ego, and her fight for the eternal, the spiritual, the infinite in her life. She is being shown that she needs to get out from under, from what is in charge inside, that wants to keep chaos and fear going, through those things she does due to fear. She has to get herself some water of life. Those in charge within, from her ego, are not interested in giving or getting the water of life for her.
The lack of a spanner is that frozen attitude of wanting someone else to do it for you. I have to get a spanner from within to open up that water for myself. Like Uisneach, in the Leprechaun story, he will never get the water into his mouth, until he sinks down enough to let the water into his mouth, or gets out of the well and stick his head down into the water. Rose has to be silent and sink down enough to get into the layer below the ego, below the conflict, and get to where there is an eternal river flowing, from which she can drink and not be thirsty again.
Cooks Creek in Dayton, Virginia
And if you are interested in the water of life, want to share the humor in your life, and work with the dreams that are mysterious, then it is time to give me a shout, and start working with wresting the power away from that which keeps you in fear and worry and reorient yourself toward that which travels within you, like a mighty river, ready to bring you into the water of life in yourself. Love from Rose.
Rose Longworth Counseling 