Alp-luachra

An Irish instance of an international type of fairy known as the joint-eater. The alp-luachra may be male or female; it inhabits the body of a human, much as a tapeworm in everyday life, and consumes most of the food the poor victim tries to eat. It may also sit beside the victim. Douglas Hyde recounts a story in Beside the Fire (London, 1890) of a man infested with thirteen alp-luachra. He was advised to eat a great quantity of salt beef while drinking nothing. He was then made to lie down with his open mouth above a stream until the fairies jumped out to quench their thirst.

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An Alp-luachra is an evil, greedy fairy from Irish mythology. When a person falls asleep by the side of a stream, the Alp-luachra appears in the form of a newt and crawls down the person's mouth, feeding off the food that they had eaten. Douglas Hyde's Beside the Fire tells of how a person got back at an Alp-luachra by eating large amounts of salted meat and sleeping near the stream. The Alp-luachra fed upon him, but jumped to the water in thirst.

• http://www.efairies.com/fairy_lore.htm
• http://www.faerytrail.com/fairytrail3/faerya-f.html
• Beside the Fire: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/btf/btf07.htm

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