Patrick Nomos | 20/10/2026
While the presence of “Little People” or fairies in Celtic folklore is well established and documented, they also feature in the cultures of many people in the Asia-Pacific region. In traditional Irish folklore, a leprechaun is a diminutive, solitary fairy or spirit, typically portrayed as a mischievous little old man with a beard who works as a shoemaker and guards a hidden pot of gold buried at the end of a rainbow. Leprechauns are sometimes depicted as wily, menacing water spirits or tricksters rather than cheerful mascots. Legend holds that if you manage to capture a leprechaun, he must either grant you wishes or reveal where his gold is hidden, though he usually tricks his captor into looking away so that he can vanish.
Wood/rock fairies (Tokwatokwa) in the Dobu language-speaking Milne Bay Province, eastern Papua New Guinea (PNG) were described to me by secondary school students at Salamo, Fergusson Island, as small beings with very long hair that they wash in fast-running streams flowing to the sea that encircles the islands of the D’entrecasteaux Group – Goodenough, Fergusson and Normanby. The students told me that if you can catch one of these little people by the hair as it is lying on a warm boulder in a mountain stream, the captured Tokwatokwa will grant you a wish.
Not all “Little People” are reputed to be endowed with the ability to grant wishes or provide riches. In Pakistan’s remote Ishkoman Valley, local Chitrali folklore, predating the spread of Islam in the region, holds that shamans may consult mountain fairies (peris) to foretell the future. A peri is an incandescent, winged, fortune-telling being that exists between the human and divine worlds. Shamans were traditionally believed to communicate with them and seek their guidance from the mystical realm. Although the tradition has declined sharply over the past century, with few practitioners believed to remain, the two belief systems continue to co-exist.
In her classic 1935 ethnographic book, Both Sides of Buka Passage1, Beatrice Blackwood describes the physical and behavioural characteristics of bush goblins (Kirin) believed by local people to inhabit Buka Island and the surrounding islands, Autonomous Region of Bougainville, PNG. She states, “There are a great many Kirin. They are described as being about a foot (30cm) high and look like human beings, either male or female. Their skin is black; they have long hair and long nails with which they scratch people in order to kill them. They can make a noise like a whistle.
They live in holes under stones, especially at places where there is water. They also climb trees. They are not always malevolent, but sometimes helpful to people. On the whole, however, they are regarded as mischievous. Those who are ‘close to’ them, (i.e. in kinship), can see them; they will come to such people when called, and are given food, especially ceremonial pudding, of which they are said to be very fond. I could get no clear idea of exactly what was meant by this connexion”.
Although Buka Islanders still mention the existence of Kirin in their oral history and songs, tales about Kirin may be used by parents trying to warn their children about the dangers of venturing alone into the bush. As to their actual existence, Beatrice Blackwood states, “……although everybody knows about these spirits, which are thought to be visible to human beings, I never heard anyone say that he had seen one, or even anyone who knew someone who had!”.
1Blackwood, B. 1935. Both sides of Buka Passage : an ethnographic study of social, sexual and economic questions in the north-western Solomon Islands. Clarendon Press, Oxford.