Dear Jim, The version my children listen to is the Fairy Shoemaker on Classic Children's Tales Volume 1: http://www.edconpublishing.com/proddetail.php?prod=ED5511CD You can read the transcript of the story here: http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/plays/shoemaker.html We checked the CD out of our local children's library, so maybe yours would have it too. Or at least you can have it jotted down on paper to show the police when they come for you. <s> I think there is a book version too; maybe that would have notes about the origin of the tale? Other related bits: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry By William Butler Yeats (http://books.google.com/books?id=oNklVtBSda4C&dq) has a poem by William Allingham about the Fairy Shoemaker on page 81. It doesn't include the ribbon part though. Yeats also writes that the word "Leprechaun" means "one-shoemaker". He also mentions the Far Darrig, which is similar to a Leprechaun, but "busies himself with joking, especially gruesome joking." So maybe he would suit your purposes better? Also, the Wikipedia article on Allingham mentions that the first line from one of his other poems has been used as a sinister reference:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Allingham) " The opening lines from Allingham's poem The Fairies was quoted by the character of The Tinker near the beginning of the movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, as well as in Mike Mignola's comic book short story Hellboy: The Corpse, plus the 1973 horror film Don't Look in the Basement: Up the airy mountain/Down the rushy glen/We daren't go a-hunting/For fear of little men;" - Kristi | 
