Lianhan Shee Coloring Pages
Most of the fairies in Irish folklore are after your milk or your best cow. The Lianhan Shee wanted something a lot stranger. Her name, leannán sí in Irish, means "sweetheart from the Sidhe," and she was the fairy who chose poets and musicians, then filled their heads with the most beautiful songs they'd ever written.
Unlike most of the Sidhe, who live together in the fairy mounds, Lianhan Shee lived on her own... she spent her time looking for a mortal man to love, and she came with a very odd bargain.
If the man that she desired turned her down, Lianhan Shee would follow him around and serve as a devoted helper, inspiring his creativity. If he said yes, he belonged to her from then on, and the only way to get free was to find somebody else to take his place.
Nobody agrees on exactly what she looked like, so you get to decide. She belongs to twilight and firelight, so deep blues and soft purples work beautifully, and a pale green dress is a nice nod to the colour the Irish have always linked with the fairies.
A Fairy for Poets
So why would anyone say yes to a bargain like that?
Because of what she gave in return. A poet with a Lianhan Shee wrote verses better than anything he'd ever managed on his own, and people used to say that a lot of the old Gaelic poets had one. The gift came at a price, though. The stories said she lived on the life of the people she loved, so they slowly faded, and many of them didn't live to be old.
A Fairy for Musicians
Poets weren't the only ones she chose. In old Ireland, harpers were honoured almost as highly as poets, travelling from one great house to the next to play, and a harper with a Lianhan Shee was said to play tunes nobody had ever heard before. These days, when a writer or a musician says an idea came out of nowhere, as though someone whispered it to them, it sounds a lot like her, just a friendlier version that lets them grow old and keep playing.
She turned up in other Celtic lands too. Scotland had the leannan sìth, and on the Isle of Man the Lhiannan Shee had a very scary reputation.