He spent all day working on a pair of shoes. He look around and spotted the last piece of leather on a nearby table. He stood up and cried in despair. He look outside a window and saw a rainbow. He whispered in a trembling voice to the rainbow, "Please, oh please, may someone help me tonight."

He left his workshop and went to his bed hunger. He and his wife had no more food, since the day before he had spent their last coins on a piece of leather.

In the morning, the shoemaker cleaned his glasses and threaded his needle and looked around for that piece of leather. But something amazing had happened. A finished pair of shoes stood in the center of the table. The shoes were perfect to the last shiny buckle. Someone had made those shoes for him that night. He rapidly sold those shoes at twice the usual price. And with that money got a bit of food and some pieces of leather. The next morning he had twenty shoes which he sold in least than a hour. He then purchased a several pieces of fine leather.

As he laid all those pieces of leather on the table he was determine to see who was making all those shoes. He and his wife stood in the next room and spied through a little hole in the wall. Around midnight they saw six naked leprechauns sneak into the shoemaker's shop. It was winter and the leprechauns shivered while they busily made two hundred shoes.

"Poor fellows! They must be very cold," the shoemaker's wife whispered to her husband. "Tomorrow I will make them some beautiful clothes to thank them for helping us. "

The shoemaker's wife search for the best material to make their clothes. All she could find were green colored silks, green tweeds and green wools. She spend almost all the money they had left buying the most expensive fabrics. She worked all day making the clothes for the six little leprechauns. She hoped that they wouldn't be too disappointed that all their clothes were green in color.

That night the leprechaun found a large pile of leather. They magically created thousands of pairs of beautiful shoes. The shoemaker and his wife wouldn't need to worry about money anymore, since they had now more shoes in the shop that they could sell in a hundred years. After finishing their job one leprechaun spotted a large thank you note and a pile of very small clothes. He called his friends over and they found six elegant green jackets with gold buttons, green tweed pants, green woolen socks, a silk green vest, some green underwears and silken green top hats. When the leprechaun saws the clothes, they jumped with joy and danced a jig. They shouted as they got dressed, "What a beautiful color for these fine clothes and we'll never be cold again."

They suddenly vanished and reappeared in front of the shoemaker and his wife. The head leprechaun smiled as them and said, "We give thanks for such beauty clothes. We heard your cries for help and came. But we are rarely if never given any thanks for our efforts. Because of your gift we promise not only to help you went you are in need but to help every shoemaker in need in this land of Ireland."

Then a wonderous rainbow appeared and the leprechaun leaped on it and disappeared. And this is why leprechaun always wear green and the shoemakers in Ireland are the luckiest people in the world.