Folklore Films #1: Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day with a review of the psychotronic, vaguely traumatizing Dark Disney obscurity Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959)

Welcome to Hauntology Now! - an examination of all things spectral and strange, subtle and surreal. Discussing critical theory, psychogeography, sense of place along with incidental cultural ramblings from the author, J. Simpson.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! In honor of the holiday, we’re taking a look at a true gem of folklore film - Darby O’Gill and the Little People, released in 1959 from Disney. Based on the books by Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, Darby O’Gill and the Little People feels like folklore. The lead character sending the leprechauns into a frenzy with a ferocious jig on the violin until they spill out in the night on tiny horses, feels like a madcap chapter from a volume of fairy tales or a storyteller deep into his cups more so than a Hollywood picture.

Furthermore, Darby O’Gill and the Little People is a remnant from a former time, when people weren’t afraid to make dark and disturbing media for children. Yes, Robert Stevenson, of similarly traumatizing Old Yeller fame, perhaps went too far with the rotoscoped banshee, traumatizing generations of children in the last 70 years. Even if it’s scary and dark, it makes more sense to include folkloric and mythological creatures - all the witches and goblins and changelings and faeries and shapeshifters - in children’s stories, when kids actually believe in them. To a child, a ghost or a witch or a fairy isn’t an allegory, it isn’t symbolism. They are real.

The banshee from Darby O’Gill would become a central figure to my own interests and spirituality as life unfurled. When i was growing up, my family owned property in a town called Jasonville, Indiana (which i am named after, fun fact.) Across an unpaved gravel road, which would inevitably wake me near the conclusion of the 5-hour drive, lie around 5 acres of woods. These woods were my magical kingdom, growing up, my imagination growing strong in the shadows of its brambles and thickets.

Across from the trailer where we stayed, and a bit to the East I want to say, lie the ruins of an old foundation, worn down to little more than a couple of cornerstones. This particular place made quite an impression on my young imagination, as you could never find it when you were looking for it. I tried to show it to others when i got older, with no luck. To make matters even stranger still, the few times we did find it were always strange and striking. I remember playing house with my older sister and her friend Ramona, which transformed into a sprawling melodrama about a housewife afraid of her husband who was returning from war. I recall something about a helicopter setting down in front of the house - i could practically see the shadows of the blades. The whole memory is stark and vaguely unsettling, somewhere between an episode of Days Of Our Lives and Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. Not one of us was more than 10.

The day in question, I was out exploring the woods, as i did. I must’ve been four or five - very young. I came upon the ruins and was playing when, to my surprising, my little nervous system rung out in alarm. I don’t know what set me off but I looked to the treeline and there was the banshee, just as she was in Darby O’Gill. Needless to say, i got the hell out of there with no delay! I wouldn’t come across that foundation again for many years, and only two or three times in my entire life.

To this day, i do not know if what i was seeing was truly a creature out of folklore, a superimposition from my subconscious, or merely a flight of fancy from a jumpy kid. I do not know if there is something in my blood and bones that makes spirits and entities seek me out, if i’ve read too many fantastic stories, or if i’m just an average suburban kid desperately wanting to be special. I may never know. I suspect i’ll spend the rest of my life looking.

You can read my full review at Maze of Media.