Teddy Schroeder and the Pooka

Margaret seemed a bit unconvinced that a vagrant started the fire in the greenhouse when she met up with Owen Slater in the last scene of Ging Gang Goolie (Boardwalk Empire, S3 E6). Owen assured her that the man certainly smelled like a vagrant and she needn’t worry anymore, but she was feeling a bit guilty about her half-assed spanking of her son Teddy after Cornelia Predock caught the boy red-handed in her garage with a bag containing kerosene and matches.

Teddy Schroeder* is the one who first reported the greenhouse fire to his mother. He claimed it was set by a gypsy man and told what he knew about that to Owen. Then he sat on the stairs and listened to his mother and Owen talk about the pooka. And yes, we know it is also spelled púca, phouka, phooca or púka but we like the phonetic spelling best, don’t you?

The pooka is a shape-shifting creature in Irish folklore and Welsh mythology which is capable of appearing in many forms. It can show up as a horse, a rabbit, a goat, a dog and even as its real self — a goblin. Legend has it that the only known human to ever get a ride off a pooka was Brian Boru, High King of Ireland. The pooka can talk and has even been known to give folks advice. It likes to scare the devil out of people, but not to harm them.

But Teddy doesn’t know all that. What he overheard further enhanced what he already seems to think: that the person who started the fire is a pooka who will set you on fire if he doesn’t like you. Teddy must have also overheard something about Gyp Rosetti burning up Sheriff Sickles. He’s got the idea that the vagrant was a gypsy. Teddy assures his sister Emily that he can protect them from the pooka because he has a knife under his pillow and if it ever shows up, he will stab it in the face.

So do you think they brought all this pooka stuff up just to go remind us that Margaret and Owen share the common bond of an Irish childhood?

We think that Teddy is going to mistake Owen for the pooka. We think he’ll see his mother and Owen making love in the greenhouse and think that Owen is trying to hurt Margaret.

It’s doubtful that a stab wound delivered by Teddy Schroeder will take Owen Slater out, but it would be awesome to have Nucky Thompson find out about Margaret and Owen this way, wouldn’t it?

We’d like to see Owen try to explain how he was really protecting Margaret with his pants down around his ankles.

*Nucky still refers to himself as the children’s stepfather, so we’re assuming he has not adopted them and their last name is still Schroeder.