Speaker 1: It was near sunset when the old man looked up
Speaker 1: from his labors and saw the stranger approaching from the west,
Speaker 1: And though his eyes were weaker than they once were,
Speaker 1: he soon saw that the stranger carried himself like a soldier,
Speaker 1: though he bore no weapon that could be seen, and
Speaker 1: so the old man continued scraping his hides till the
Speaker 1: stranger approached close enough to greet him. Hello, grandfather, Oh,
Speaker 1: please don't let me disturb your labor. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to ask, is this the way to the greenwood path? Hey?
Speaker 1: It is, But what business have you in the woods?
Speaker 1: Not the woods, grandfather, the lands on the other side.
Speaker 1: You see, I'm returned from the war and I seek
Speaker 1: my family's farm. It's been five long years, and I'm
Speaker 1: eager to aid them with the harvest. There's no path
Speaker 1: through the green forest, at least none blazed by the
Speaker 1: likes of you or me game trails. Then, well, so happens.
Speaker 1: I'm a gifted tracker and can make my own way,
Speaker 1: your own way. If there are any land marks, you
Speaker 1: might a lurt me too, well, I'd be most gracious.
Speaker 1: But the old man didn't answer right away. He looked
Speaker 1: out to the woods, and instead motioned back towards his hut,
Speaker 1: where the old woman would have supper ready soon enough.
Speaker 1: Tell you what stay with us tonight, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you of the forest. What the young soldier lacked in
Speaker 1: caution he made up for in politeness. When he had
Speaker 1: finished his bowl of rabbit stew, he thanked the old
Speaker 1: man and woman a half dozen times. He cleaned the
Speaker 1: bowls and scrubbed the pot. He split more wood for
Speaker 1: the fire, and even produced a bottle of spirits, which
Speaker 1: he shared with the old man. So tell me of
Speaker 1: the forest, grandfather. You'll not find your own way through
Speaker 1: the green forest, not by moonlight and not by day.
Speaker 1: What little of either filters down to the tree tops.
Speaker 1: The animal paths won't help you either. That only winds
Speaker 1: you down into greater depths. There is neither your way,
Speaker 1: you nor my way in the green forest. There is
Speaker 1: only the law of the woods. And there is a leshy.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll be troubled by some forest dwarf
Speaker 1: tis no dwarf. The less she has always been in
Speaker 1: the old forest. He was there before human tribes roamed in.
Speaker 1: He was there when strange animals still range these parts
Speaker 1: and he is no man nor dwarf, but a shaggy
Speaker 1: figure that casts no shadow, that stares straight through the
Speaker 1: forest depths with eyes that burn like green fire. He
Speaker 1: passes gigantic behind the great trees and sneaks meekly behind
Speaker 1: the nearest blade of grass. Like that, he is on you.
Speaker 1: And he who breaks the forest law is broken. Well,
Speaker 1: then tell me the forest law so that I might
Speaker 1: avoid him. The forest law is not like man's lot,
Speaker 1: can't be told or written down. A very nature breaks
Speaker 1: it as much as our acts. But you're a trapper,
Speaker 1: how do you avoid the less? She's wrath. I do
Speaker 1: not trap in the woods, but at its border, And
Speaker 1: for that the less she spares me, and asked, but
Speaker 1: one more thing that I worn wanderer, such as yourself.
Speaker 1: The young soldier nodded and smiled, but the old man
Speaker 1: could tell he was only being mannerly. He did not
Speaker 1: believe his tale of the leshy, and would not be
Speaker 1: swayed from his shortcut through the woods. And so the
Speaker 1: next morning he thanked the old man and woman yet
Speaker 1: again and departed into the green forest, no doubt, thinking
Speaker 1: he'd found the makings of a path, or discovered some logic,
Speaker 1: and the dead leaves beneath his feet. The old man
Speaker 1: went back to his traps and snares near the forest edge.
Speaker 1: He flinched when he heard the first startled scream from
Speaker 1: the forest depths, then the howl of the leshy as
Speaker 1: it wore the young soldier limb from limb. As he
Speaker 1: walked back home, his spirit sapped by the sounds, he
Speaker 1: caught once more the sense of something vast and shaggy,
Speaker 1: walking just behind the great tree trunks, yet tiptoeing impossibly
Speaker 1: behind the smallest shrub or mushroom, not like a thing
Speaker 1: that moved through the woods, but like something reflected in
Speaker 1: its substance. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And hey it's still October. We are still going strong
Speaker 1: with the monster stuff. And boy, I'm I'm excited about
Speaker 1: today's episode. So, Rob, if it's okay with you, I
Speaker 1: want to begin by reading reading a quote. You you
Speaker 1: cool starting this way? Yes, let's do it. Okay. So
Speaker 1: this quote is recorded in a nineteen book called Russian
Speaker 1: Folk belief by a Penn State professor of Russian and
Speaker 1: comparative literature named Linda j Ivantas. And this quote is
Speaker 1: attributed to an old woman from the Kluga Province of
Speaker 1: Russia describing what she believed to have witnessed during the
Speaker 1: height of a forest fire. So she says, I looked
Speaker 1: and bears and with them wolves, foxes, hairs, squirrels, elk, goats,
Speaker 1: in a word, every sort of forest life, and each
Speaker 1: in his own group, not mixing with the others. Thronged
Speaker 1: out of the forest and passed me and the horses,
Speaker 1: not even looking at us. And behind the beasts with
Speaker 1: his knout over his shoulder and horn in his hands,
Speaker 1: was he himself, and he was the size of a
Speaker 1: bell tower. He himself tall as a bell tower, dragging
Speaker 1: the horn and the nowt, and a nowt means a
Speaker 1: whip or a scourge. Who is he? Who is she
Speaker 1: talking about? She's talking about the leshy and awesome monster
Speaker 1: of Slavic mythology, the demon of the woods, sort of
Speaker 1: a malevolent trickster. NT. Yeah, I was, I was reading
Speaker 1: about the leshy. I was not not really familiar with
Speaker 1: it prior to our research. Here But according to Carol
Speaker 1: Rose in her Excellent Spirits Fairies, lepre cons and Goblins
Speaker 1: and Encyclopedia, uh, they're they're numerous different versions of the
Speaker 1: spelling and and or pronunciation of the name. You see
Speaker 1: it kind of like leshy but also lessovic or less
Speaker 1: shak or less nor. Uh. So there are several different
Speaker 1: variations on it. But just as just as the name
Speaker 1: is kind of a morphous, uh, the you know, the
Speaker 1: actual substance of the creature is also a fair bit
Speaker 1: of morphous, to which one might expect with folklore, traditions
Speaker 1: and any kind of entity that arises out of out
Speaker 1: of out of old beliefs and old legends, old mythologies. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the Leshy is not something that comes originally from
Speaker 1: one canonical source. It it is a folk belief and
Speaker 1: thus you're going to get lots of different versions of it.
Speaker 1: And I think it's gonna be really fun to explore
Speaker 1: where a lot of these different stories overlap and then
Speaker 1: what the differences are. Yeah. So Rose points out that
Speaker 1: the less She is essentially a Ussian nature spirit and
Speaker 1: forest guardian. He's often described as a pale humanoid figure
Speaker 1: with green eyes, green beard, and long straggly hair. He
Speaker 1: wears a pair of of of boots, often made from bark,
Speaker 1: which an he wears them on the wrong feet. It's
Speaker 1: often said that he cast no shadow, and he's also
Speaker 1: a shape shifter. And as we tried to reflect in
Speaker 1: our opening, a bit of narration there a little or
Speaker 1: dramatic opening. Uh. It's said that he can be as
Speaker 1: tall as a great tree or as small as a
Speaker 1: blade of grass. Likewise, he can mimic any sound in
Speaker 1: the forest, which is a tool he might use to
Speaker 1: lead humans astray. Sometimes, yes, and this is one of
Speaker 1: the main threats that the less she represents that. There
Speaker 1: again a number of stories, but the most common ways
Speaker 1: that he represents a threat to human existence are in
Speaker 1: making sounds or in laying sort of traps and tricks
Speaker 1: that lead travelers off the path and get them lost
Speaker 1: in the woods to wander hopelessly until they die in
Speaker 1: the woods or die in a swamp. Or The other
Speaker 1: thing is that he's often said to kidnap babies at
Speaker 1: the edge of the forest, or to kidnap children, especially
Speaker 1: unbaptized babies and children. Uh. And a lot of sources
Speaker 1: mentioned this this idea of him luring wanderers off the
Speaker 1: forest path by making noises. One of the sources I
Speaker 1: was reading for this episode is a book by Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Warner called Russian Myths from the University of Texas Press
Speaker 1: in two thousand two, and Warner says, the less She
Speaker 1: would quote hoot, roar, and howl, and the voices of
Speaker 1: birds and beasts emit wild bursts of laughter, blood curdling shrieks,
Speaker 1: and clap his hands loudly. Uh So, so it seems
Speaker 1: like there are a couple of different ways that you
Speaker 1: might catch the less She making sounds in the forest,
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe mimicking the voice of an animal or human
Speaker 1: in order to lure somebody off the path, or sometimes
Speaker 1: just making a lot of noise, maybe to mess with
Speaker 1: your head, kind of scare you or make you laugh.
Speaker 1: Now picking up in the lessis appearance, there are several
Speaker 1: sources that summarize the folklore. Again this is from Warner
Speaker 1: and Russian Myths. Uh. The less She may and often
Speaker 1: does look and dress like an ordinary human being. Like
Speaker 1: there are some stories where the less She leaves the
Speaker 1: forest and interacts with humans as if he looked like
Speaker 1: any other human. But in fact, again, he is a
Speaker 1: shape shifter, so he can mimic the appearance of not
Speaker 1: just all the animals of the forest. Those are common
Speaker 1: forms he takes, especially the form of a wolf or
Speaker 1: a bear, But he can also mimic the appearance of
Speaker 1: any particular person. So a child might be lured into
Speaker 1: the forest by a vision of their own grandfather offering
Speaker 1: them fruits and sweets. Or a person might be you know,
Speaker 1: antagonized or lured off the path in the woods by
Speaker 1: the shape of their own father or mother, or husband
Speaker 1: or wife, or even their child. But much like the
Speaker 1: succubus who appears as a seductive, beautiful woman but with
Speaker 1: say a duck's foot, the less she in disguise will
Speaker 1: usually have a detail out of place, and that detail
Speaker 1: will be noticeable to the observant. Hero you mentioned the
Speaker 1: idea that the less she might cast no shadow, or
Speaker 1: have their shoes on the wrong feet or backwards. Warner
Speaker 1: gives the examples that the less she might be wearing
Speaker 1: a calf tan like a like a Russian traveler might wear,
Speaker 1: but the calf tan would be buttoned backwards, or his
Speaker 1: eyes might be extremely pale, or he might have no
Speaker 1: eyebrows I like that one, or again, he might cast
Speaker 1: no shadow. And and and then finally, this one seems particularly
Speaker 1: relevant in his role in confusing travelers in a forest,
Speaker 1: he might leave no footprints. I love how common this
Speaker 1: detail is across so much different folklore, that the monster
Speaker 1: or the trickster demon will have some kind of detail
Speaker 1: wrong that allows you to spot it. Yeah. And it's
Speaker 1: the kind of myth, that kind of legend that that
Speaker 1: appeals well to our our nature, you know, because when
Speaker 1: when we're just encountering people for the first time, situations
Speaker 1: for the first time, the suspicious mind is always looking
Speaker 1: for for some sort of a tell, right, like what's
Speaker 1: weird about this person, what's weird about this place? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And and it also it makes the myth more fair,
Speaker 1: I mean, unlike just the less she being a a
Speaker 1: power that cannot possibly be overcome, and it just takes
Speaker 1: whoever it wants and does whatever it wants. The fact
Speaker 1: that there's some detail often wrong with it allows the
Speaker 1: observant hero, the virtuous protagonist of the story, to to
Speaker 1: catch them, to be like, hey, wait a minute, there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with you. It makes you It makes you
Speaker 1: think that maybe if you are clever enough, if you're
Speaker 1: observant enough, then you could best the leshy. Now, Warner
Speaker 1: agrees with what we already talked about about the less
Speaker 1: She being able to dramatically change size, and it's often
Speaker 1: reported in these stories that he can become taller than
Speaker 1: the tallest tree tops. Remember the story at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the woman who says the less She is like
Speaker 1: a bell tower. Or he can be small, small enough
Speaker 1: to hide behind grass or behind a mushroom. Now in
Speaker 1: his true form, Warner says that the leshies appearance betrays
Speaker 1: his affinity for the vegetation of the forest. So his
Speaker 1: skin might very much resemble the bark of a tree.
Speaker 1: It will be rough and gnarly. And sometimes he's said
Speaker 1: to be completely covered in hair, But sometimes he's just
Speaker 1: got hair on his head and a beard, and in
Speaker 1: those cases his hair and beard might be as green
Speaker 1: as the vines and the grass. But some imagery of
Speaker 1: the leshy is more classically devilish in the Christian sense,
Speaker 1: or at least in the syncratistic Christian sense that that
Speaker 1: combines sort of Satan with the god pan uh Warnt.
Speaker 1: Warner says that many descriptions include shaggy hair, almost like moss,
Speaker 1: but also cloven hoofs and horns on his head and
Speaker 1: a tail like the devil's tail. And then finally she
Speaker 1: mentions that the horns are golden in the case of
Speaker 1: one particular killer Lessi known as the leshy Czar. Uh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think this devilish appearances is interesting because
Speaker 1: it uh, it makes sense based on something that Warner
Speaker 1: talks about in her book, which is called the dual Faith.
Speaker 1: This idea that after Christianity took over the Kiev and
Speaker 1: Ruth state in the tenth century, Christianity and old pagan
Speaker 1: practices kind of mesh together. They coexisted for hundreds of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've discussed examples of this before with other other
Speaker 1: legends and folklore and and even mythologies. Um where Yeah,
Speaker 1: the new, a new faith comes along and it doesn't
Speaker 1: just wipe out the old. It adds new wrinkles to
Speaker 1: the old or and or exist alongside the old uh
Speaker 1: in ways that that might not make sense if you
Speaker 1: were to say, write them out or discuss them. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's always fascinating how even as modern humans, the
Speaker 1: various conflicting worldviews and ideas of the natural and the
Speaker 1: supernatural that can simultaneously exist in our minds. It can
Speaker 1: be hard to enforce the borders of one supernatural picture
Speaker 1: of the world, Like it can be hard to sort
Speaker 1: of like beat into people like no, no, no, like
Speaker 1: this part these supernatural beliefs are acceptable. But these other
Speaker 1: ones that your grandparents believed and their grandparents before them,
Speaker 1: you can't believe those anymore. Yeah, Like, I remember, when
Speaker 1: I was younger, there was a time when I was
Speaker 1: at least a bit afraid of the prospect of both
Speaker 1: aliens and ghosts, which rationally, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 1: now I'm looking back and like, well, surely I should
Speaker 1: have just picked one or the other, like one would
Speaker 1: seem more likely than the other, and that should be
Speaker 1: the one to be afraid of. I can't be, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't just be afraid of everything that's on Unsolved Mysteries.
Speaker 1: I have to pick, you know, like obviously be afraid
Speaker 1: of the criminals, but then choose aliens or ghosts Like
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't take both on. But no.
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mysteries presents a perfect synchrotistic view of the world,
Speaker 1: where all paranormal phenomena exists simultaneously now. Additionally, as Rose
Speaker 1: points out, each forest is said to have its own leshy,
Speaker 1: unless it's a very large forest, and then then you
Speaker 1: can have more than one lessie. I guess it just
Speaker 1: comes down to It's kind of like having park rangers, right,
Speaker 1: depends just how big the park is, right. They gotta
Speaker 1: like a range a territory, right. Furthermore, the less she
Speaker 1: may have a wife in some traditions, which is a lessovica.
Speaker 1: And then there are sometimes leshy children or l shunky.
Speaker 1: And there's also a variety of leshy sometimes described as
Speaker 1: a as a zoi, a bots schnick that takes on
Speaker 1: the guys and sound of a baby gurgling in the treetops.
Speaker 1: So in that in that case, a quality that is
Speaker 1: sometimes ascribed to the leshy in general is sometimes pulled
Speaker 1: out and made its own particular thing. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting the idea of giving a leshia family
Speaker 1: allows you to to sort of add in more dynamics
Speaker 1: that would explain natural phenomenon potentially, Like, for example, one
Speaker 1: of our sources was saying that if you saw a whirlwind,
Speaker 1: I think mean you know, whirlwind or even a tornado,
Speaker 1: that was the leshy dancing with his wife, so adding
Speaker 1: the wife in you know, they're twirling through the forest.
Speaker 1: But this dovetails with another interesting belief, which is that
Speaker 1: sometimes fallen trees found in the forest were said to
Speaker 1: have been knocked over by fights between leshies. But you know,
Speaker 1: you put those two things together kind of dovetails into
Speaker 1: this interesting idea that I wonder if people at some
Speaker 1: point maybe came across the path that a tornado or
Speaker 1: whirlwind had cut through a forest, and you know, it
Speaker 1: looks like something is just like come through and mode
Speaker 1: this this shaved line out through the middle of the woods,
Speaker 1: and what happened here? What was less She's fighting or
Speaker 1: it was less she's dancing. Yeah, because there are no tracks,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's no there's no sign that animals
Speaker 1: did this, and yet something large has has trampled the
Speaker 1: woods now like the forest itself. You know, at least
Speaker 1: from a folkloric standpoint, the less she is said to
Speaker 1: die with the advent of winter and then emerge from
Speaker 1: his winter death in the spring. And it's during this
Speaker 1: time and once the lessies have come back that has
Speaker 1: said that the that the leshies of the forest rage
Speaker 1: over their autumn deaths. They realize that they had died previously.
Speaker 1: Now they're mad about it, and this raging produces storms
Speaker 1: and floods in the process, but then all that settles
Speaker 1: down again. So here we see an idea of the
Speaker 1: leshy is a way to explain not only specific storm
Speaker 1: damage but also just the general pattern of like spring storms.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the the lesh she is a
Speaker 1: bit of a bit of a trickster again, sometimes calling
Speaker 1: out to human travelers with the sounds of the forest
Speaker 1: to lead them astray, even taking the form of a
Speaker 1: fellow traveler to give them bad advice or guidance, disappearing
Speaker 1: and laughing once they managed to get them lost in
Speaker 1: a bog or worse. Um, and uh, you'll have other
Speaker 1: individuals though, that are wise to the ways of the leshy,
Speaker 1: that they'll know how to out smart them or and
Speaker 1: we'll get into an example of that. It's smart them
Speaker 1: in a bit, but also making offerings to them such
Speaker 1: as salt and bread. Yeah, Elizabeth Warner points out how
Speaker 1: there was some kind of division. Like She starts by
Speaker 1: saying that, of course, you know, for many Russian people
Speaker 1: living at the edge of the forest, the forest was
Speaker 1: itself an image of of great bounty but also great
Speaker 1: chaos and great danger, and that is of course true,
Speaker 1: Like you know, becoming lost in the forest, you can
Speaker 1: quite easily die. This is something I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't really remember these days. Maybe they go
Speaker 1: out and experience the forest in say nature trails that
Speaker 1: have forged paths that you can follow, but like, it's
Speaker 1: really easy to get lost and die in the woods.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk more about the science of
Speaker 1: that later on. But but then there are these professions
Speaker 1: where people would have to go into the woods in
Speaker 1: order to make a living, for example, and there would
Speaker 1: be herdsman and hunters like you mentioned, and herdsman very
Speaker 1: often in medieval Russia would not graze their cattle in
Speaker 1: open pastures, but would graze them through the woods. They
Speaker 1: would have to find, you know, like little patches and
Speaker 1: openings throughout the trees, and so it would require them
Speaker 1: to go into the domain of the leshy and and
Speaker 1: risk risk all these dangers. And so Warner writes, quote,
Speaker 1: protective measures could be taken against the leshy, making the
Speaker 1: sign of the cross, uttering a prayer or spell, and
Speaker 1: more interestingly, reversing one's clothing or retracing one's steps backwards
Speaker 1: out of the forest, reversal of the normal back to frontness,
Speaker 1: upside downness, left as opposed to right. We're all signs
Speaker 1: of the supernatural and Russian tradition. Yes, I I absolutely
Speaker 1: love this. Uh this example, the idea of wearing your
Speaker 1: clothes backwards or walking backwards as a way to to
Speaker 1: outsmart the leshy um and we see we see versions
Speaker 1: of this pop up in other traditions as well. For instance, Uh,
Speaker 1: I read that you see this in Irish folklore, sometimes
Speaker 1: concerning encounters or potential encounters with dangerous varieties of fairy um. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the idea here, it seems, and this is gonna vary.
Speaker 1: There's not like you know, anybody wrote wrote this down
Speaker 1: and came up with necessarily a straightforward reason that this works.
Speaker 1: But one one interpretation is that it's just about confusing
Speaker 1: the spirit. Like the spirits like, oh, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get this woodsman now, and then he realizes, oh
Speaker 1: that what's going on here? His clothes are on backwards.
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do. I guess I'll just
Speaker 1: watch him for a bit. Or it tricks the spirit
Speaker 1: or fairy or leshy in this case, into thinking you're
Speaker 1: leaving rather than arriving. And I love the twisted logic
Speaker 1: of this, where it's like the lest She shows up,
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, it's time to time to to
Speaker 1: to unleash some havoc. Well, look at this guy coming
Speaker 1: into my far Wait. Oh, the way they're clothes are
Speaker 1: or are based. I can tell it looks like he's
Speaker 1: walking away. All right, He's good, he's leaving. Carry on.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just fabulous. This is really funny because
Speaker 1: it kind of connects to the idea of wearing eye
Speaker 1: spots on your back to deter preditors in the forest. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is which is something that has been been done.
Speaker 1: We've discussed this in the show before too, with varying
Speaker 1: degrees of success with both humans and also putting eye
Speaker 1: spots on the back of cattle to deter lion attacks
Speaker 1: and in parts of Africa. Now, as Rose points out
Speaker 1: that the lest She can be very generally classified as
Speaker 1: a guardian spirit, which we see in various and far
Speaker 1: flung cultures. Many versions of this revolve around the protection
Speaker 1: of individuals, uh, and these should be pretty familiar with
Speaker 1: a lot to a lot of people. You have like
Speaker 1: the guardian angels of Latin, Greek and Russian, Orthodox and
Speaker 1: Anglican churches. These are assigned from the hour of an
Speaker 1: individual's birth. Uh. Interestingly, one that Rose describes in her
Speaker 1: book is the grind a gin of in the folklore
Speaker 1: of Morocco. That's described as kind of inhabiting a parallel world.
Speaker 1: So it's not that they're assigned to an individual, but
Speaker 1: they're they're born at the same moment in this other world,
Speaker 1: and so there's this bond between the two. Likewise, you
Speaker 1: also have just Damon's and lend Lars, you know, getting
Speaker 1: into ancient Greek and Roman tradition, and one also sees
Speaker 1: this concept in the traditions of say Uh in Native
Speaker 1: American tribes, Native Australian cultures as well. There there are
Speaker 1: a lot of these to list, and she has a
Speaker 1: lot a lot of them in the book, ranging from
Speaker 1: the ab gal to the zoa. But then as an
Speaker 1: extension of this, there's the idea of a protector spirit
Speaker 1: that looks after particular places such as standing stones or mounds,
Speaker 1: or certain natural places and or animals. And so clearly
Speaker 1: this is going to be the kind of guardian or protector,
Speaker 1: that the lesti is not of a person, but of
Speaker 1: a place, which is the woods. Right, Yeah, the protector
Speaker 1: of the forest very very much in keeping with such
Speaker 1: woodland or vegetation spirits as the Gandharva's of India, which
Speaker 1: are described as being like shaggy half animal beings and
Speaker 1: some tellings, or the green Man of ancient European traditions,
Speaker 1: a quote pagan image of a grotesque severed head with
Speaker 1: emergent foliage from the mouth, beard, and hairline. We find
Speaker 1: him in Christian churches from the sixth century onward. He's
Speaker 1: a he's a wild man of the woods, a guardian
Speaker 1: spirit of the forest, and like the leshy, is prone
Speaker 1: uh you know to two tricks and meanness in the
Speaker 1: woods and you know, leading people astray, etcetera. He is
Speaker 1: also the genesis of both the Green Knight of Authoritian
Speaker 1: legend and of Robin Hood. Yeah. I think one traditional
Speaker 1: interpretation of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green
Speaker 1: Night is of a conflict between the Christian chivalric virtues
Speaker 1: represented by the Arthurian Chord and by Sir Gawain, and
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, the sort of pagan embodiment
Speaker 1: of nature and the wilderness, that is the Green Knight
Speaker 1: a k a. The Green Man. Now, of course, we
Speaker 1: have various modern versions of this tale as well, the
Speaker 1: most the most obvious, at least to me, being the
Speaker 1: character swamp Thing UH, which is very much a guardian
Speaker 1: spirit and the tradition of the green Man and the
Speaker 1: Leshy the more of a noble twist as a pure
Speaker 1: protector as opposed to a trickster. And this is especially
Speaker 1: the case and the Alan Moore run of the character
Speaker 1: UH in the comic books, but you also see it
Speaker 1: in most UH cinematic and TV incarnations like that. I
Speaker 1: kept thinking back this time and time again reading about
Speaker 1: the Leshy Uh. The nine nineties TV show version of
Speaker 1: Swamp Thing had this um, this catchphrase that that the
Speaker 1: swamp Thing would always say at the end of the
Speaker 1: intro to the TV episode. It was do not bring
Speaker 1: your evil here. What was the evil? It was like
Speaker 1: a like a polluting factory or something. Oh yeah, polluting factory,
Speaker 1: just general mad science from Dr Anton Arcane, you know
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Um. But but yeah, the swamp
Speaker 1: Thing is very much in line with this tradition. I
Speaker 1: think one of the interesting things if you start thinking
Speaker 1: about modern standards versus um versus these more archaic versions
Speaker 1: of the myth. And this is something I tried to
Speaker 1: just sort of get at in that dramatic opening, the
Speaker 1: idea of to what extent humans can understand the law
Speaker 1: of the forest. And I think these these more recent versions,
Speaker 1: like swamp thing, they tend to imply they kind of
Speaker 1: take on, I think this environmental message of like, yes,
Speaker 1: we can understand the law of the forest at least
Speaker 1: to some extent, and we can do good for the forest.
Speaker 1: And and I and I believe I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think that is part of our responsibility to the
Speaker 1: forest as as protectors. We are kind of we have
Speaker 1: to take on the mantle of the swamp thing and
Speaker 1: the leshy and the green man, but the are I
Speaker 1: think the more archaic version of this is again, like
Speaker 1: you said, the forest is a place of chaos. If
Speaker 1: it has a law, it is a law that we
Speaker 1: cannot really understand, and it's a law that is not
Speaker 1: written and maybe you know, it can't even be comprehended
Speaker 1: by us, and therefore there's even more danger in running
Speaker 1: a foul of it, because you you can't really comprehend
Speaker 1: all the details of that law. Yeah. I think it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the law of the hidden folk. It's
Speaker 1: the law of the other world, and these uh, these laws,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes in a lot of folk traditions can
Speaker 1: be understood by but only by certain special kinds of people,
Speaker 1: people who have a often people who are in some
Speaker 1: way considered otherwise not normal. Yeah. Like another modern take
Speaker 1: that gets into this is um Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro,
Speaker 1: which of course is inspired by Japanese and Shinto traditions,
Speaker 1: but the totoro that we encounter, they're very much forest
Speaker 1: guardian spirits, and in Miyazaki's version of this, the only
Speaker 1: ones who can really who can certainly see them and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent understand them, are children. Like children
Speaker 1: have that privileged insight into the rules and laws and
Speaker 1: existence of this other world. It's almost like we're born
Speaker 1: with an understanding of the law of the forest, but
Speaker 1: the process of socialization and maturing beats it out of us. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, So this is one of the reasons at
Speaker 1: the beginning I said that the less she is kind
Speaker 1: of like a malevolent trickster. Int It's like if the
Speaker 1: nt were a demon, because it makes me think of
Speaker 1: the scenes in Lord of the Rings where the orcs
Speaker 1: are punished for hacking down the trees of Fangorn Forest.
Speaker 1: You know, the the trees get revenge and the ants
Speaker 1: get very angry to see their forests destroyed. This is
Speaker 1: something that that does come through in some of the
Speaker 1: folk tales. For example, Warner talks about how there were
Speaker 1: certain things you could do in the forest or near
Speaker 1: the forest to really especially bring on the leshies wrath.
Speaker 1: And these things might involve whistling, swearing, making a noise,
Speaker 1: willful damage of flowers or trees, or hunting on certain
Speaker 1: church festivals, which that last one seems kind of incongruous
Speaker 1: with the other, isn't. Maybe it's tacked on a bit
Speaker 1: by the by the by the priests. I agree with
Speaker 1: all of those go ahead and going on a lot
Speaker 1: of nature hikes these days. I feel like, I like
Speaker 1: we need a leshy enforcing all of those rules plus
Speaker 1: social distancing norms. Yeah, but that's just me. No. I
Speaker 1: wonder if I ever needed to get another job, could
Speaker 1: I get a job as a kind of leshy, like
Speaker 1: in a state park or something. I just wander around
Speaker 1: the forest. If I find somebody carving their name into
Speaker 1: a tree or some you know, littering or whatever, I
Speaker 1: make them wander off the path into a bog, you know.
Speaker 1: I had my family actually had a very recent experience
Speaker 1: on a hike which kind of felt akin to running
Speaker 1: a foul of the forest. We never got off of
Speaker 1: a paved path because it had just been a very
Speaker 1: rainy weekend and uh, and so we knew that, you know,
Speaker 1: we needed to get like a paved path to walk on.
Speaker 1: But we still on this one particular road, we encountered
Speaker 1: first a stretch of the road where mud had washed
Speaker 1: over everything, so suddenly we were tramping through mud. And
Speaker 1: then immediately we were set up on by by by
Speaker 1: a whole cloud of mosquitoes, despite being kind of late
Speaker 1: in the year, and I could you not. At the
Speaker 1: very same moment, two deer showed up and a snake
Speaker 1: crossed the road in front of us, like very close
Speaker 1: to us, so like suddenly it just felt like like
Speaker 1: the woods were opening up and speaking to us and
Speaker 1: saying that we should not proceed any further, and in fact,
Speaker 1: we turned back. He's about to come out in belltower
Speaker 1: form with the nowt over his shoulder. Yeah, leave this place.
Speaker 1: Do not bring your evil here. All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think we need to take a break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, let's talk about Grandfather Mushroom. Thank thank, thank, Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we know as usual that the listeners
Speaker 1: to our episodes, you know, are far flung, and some
Speaker 1: of you are going to have a great deal of
Speaker 1: familiarity with these various Russian folk tales that were discussing here.
Speaker 1: For for others of you, though, you might only be
Speaker 1: familiar with them through some of the more popular, you know,
Speaker 1: mainstream Western treatments. Like one thing that comes to mind
Speaker 1: is once Again Jim Hinson's Storyteller series. The first season
Speaker 1: of that relied heavily on and folk tales. I actually
Speaker 1: haven't seen that first season. I've only watched some of
Speaker 1: the Greek episodes, so maybe I should go back check
Speaker 1: that out. It's like it's like Slavic folklore. Yeah yeah there, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the czar shows up in one of them.
Speaker 1: So there's several really good good tales in there, like
Speaker 1: that whole season is worth watching. But there are some
Speaker 1: really good ones like The Soldier and Death is a
Speaker 1: great one. That that one in particular is wonderful. But
Speaker 1: another place that a lot of you might be familiar
Speaker 1: with Russian folklore is from a particular nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: film titled Moral's Goal or Jack Frost. And there's a
Speaker 1: very good chance you're familiar with this film because Mystery
Speaker 1: Science Theater three thousand famously featured it in one of
Speaker 1: their episodes. So this is how it's certainly how I
Speaker 1: discovered it, but I've I've had conversations with people like
Speaker 1: I was this is years and years ago. I was
Speaker 1: talking to someone from the Czech Republic and they pointed out, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they would show that every year for Christmas. That was
Speaker 1: our Christmas film, Like is that is a part of
Speaker 1: our holiday culture? And uh and and and and at
Speaker 1: this point I would say Jack Frost is also part
Speaker 1: of my holiday culture. I rewatch it every year. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's a little bit different coming
Speaker 1: at it from this lampooning direction, but it is a
Speaker 1: very beautiful film. And if you've only seen, like, you
Speaker 1: know this this really degraded quality version of it as
Speaker 1: far as like the video quality goes on Mystery Science
Speaker 1: three Mystery Science Theater three thousand. I I challenge everyone
Speaker 1: out there to check out a pristine cut of this.
Speaker 1: Either I think there's a version as of this recording
Speaker 1: available on Amazon Prime, or you can also sometimes find
Speaker 1: uh you know, versions of it on YouTube that have
Speaker 1: just the full glorious quality of the film. It is
Speaker 1: a beautiful movie and even without the riffing, extremely watchable
Speaker 1: and extremely enjoyable. This is why I've never thought about
Speaker 1: the idea that this was a commonly viewed Christmas film
Speaker 1: for lots of people. So like here in America we've
Speaker 1: got bumbles balance, and then maybe throughout Eastern Europe they've
Speaker 1: got we will rob them. We won't rob them, we
Speaker 1: will beat them. We will be beaten. Yes, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean really, it's it's not fair because we have like
Speaker 1: Charlie Brown Christmas, which is awful, but but they have
Speaker 1: Jack Frost, which is wonder Oh man, we're we're going
Speaker 1: to get hate mail now. It's it's fine, I risk
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's perfectly okay. It's just not my thing.
Speaker 1: I mean no, this is a wonderful movie. It's got
Speaker 1: it's it's so imaginative. I love when Ivan gets the bearhead.
Speaker 1: I love Grandfather Mushroom, I love the bandits, I love
Speaker 1: the the creepy girl. It's it's fantastic, Yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: has so many It actually has so many wonderful elements
Speaker 1: of Russian folk tales, so just straight out of Russian
Speaker 1: folk tales that really you could you could watch that
Speaker 1: film and you already are in a great place to
Speaker 1: begin reading more Russian tales and exploring them from yourself,
Speaker 1: because it has you know, you have the the you
Speaker 1: have Ivan Tsarovich is the you know, the blonde guy
Speaker 1: who gets his head turned into a bear in the film.
Speaker 1: He is a staple of Russian folk tales. You have
Speaker 1: Boba Yaga, the the evil woodland witch. Again, just a staple,
Speaker 1: the easy time and time again. Now you might be wondering, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: where's where's the leshie in Jack Frost and I don't
Speaker 1: We don't have a direct leshie, and we'll get into
Speaker 1: some of the reasons for this, but we do have
Speaker 1: an interesting character that pops up that I instantly thought
Speaker 1: about in reading all of that this, and that is, uh,
Speaker 1: the little grandfather Mushroom Father Mushroom character, the little diminutive
Speaker 1: old man with a mushroom cap that shows up and
Speaker 1: uh has a little bit of mischief in him and
Speaker 1: teaches Ivan a lesson. Yeah, he is portrayed as sort
Speaker 1: of a wise figure, a figure of the force, but
Speaker 1: also like the less a trickster. You know, he's playing,
Speaker 1: he's like doing, he's disappearing, playing hide and seek, sort
Speaker 1: of taunting Ivan. Um. I don't know if we said
Speaker 1: his his Russian name. I guess in Russian he's known
Speaker 1: as Starry Chalk Borovia Chalk. Yes, that's what I've read
Speaker 1: as well, you know, father grandfather mushroom. Uh. And and
Speaker 1: again he has a very memorable um appearance in that film. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the lingering questions that I'll get back to
Speaker 1: again is I was never able to determine if he
Speaker 1: has an existence outside of this film, like if he
Speaker 1: if he pre existed as part of Russian folklore. I
Speaker 1: did not run across him in any of the stories
Speaker 1: I read, though I did not read all written accounts
Speaker 1: of Russian folklore. And I didn't find him mentioned in
Speaker 1: any of the academic papers we were looking at. But
Speaker 1: that that doesn't mean anything either. Uh. And certainly that
Speaker 1: film was such a big part of of several cultures
Speaker 1: in sixty five of hints that you look and you
Speaker 1: find like countless Christmas ornaments of him. So like now,
Speaker 1: he is definitely a part of of our understanding of
Speaker 1: Russian folklore to a certain extent. But I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: was never sure if he was authentically something that existed.
Speaker 1: But for that film, you know, there are some interesting
Speaker 1: connections I was thinking about between this, this mushroomy character
Speaker 1: and the leshy. Beyond just the fact that he is
Speaker 1: sort of a a trickster guardian of the forest in
Speaker 1: a way, uh, there are some other things. Like for example,
Speaker 1: I was reading in one of our sources that the
Speaker 1: wrinkles on a mushroom are often said to be the
Speaker 1: marks of the Leshy's whip, remember the less she carries
Speaker 1: the now it or the whip to show his dominion
Speaker 1: over the forest. You know, it's like the I'm the
Speaker 1: Boss stick. But apparently the all the little ribs and
Speaker 1: wrinkles on the mushrooms are from him flicking the lash. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I ran across that as well. Um, that that's that's interesting,
Speaker 1: that that seems to be the that was the only, like,
Speaker 1: I think, one of the only true leshy mushroom connections
Speaker 1: I came across, but I was reading a fung Guy
Speaker 1: folk Ways and Fairy Tales, Mushrooms and Nildews and Stories,
Speaker 1: Remedies and Rituals from Oberon to the Internet by Frank M. Duggan,
Speaker 1: which was published in North American Fun Guy in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, and Duggan rights that Eastern Europe and Russia
Speaker 1: are generally microphilic in nature. Again going back to we
Speaker 1: discussed this in a previous episode. How broadly speaking, some
Speaker 1: cultures are microphilic and some are microphobic, and this is
Speaker 1: often based just in how they describe and broadly view mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Um uh and uh, and certainly listen to our Mushroom
Speaker 1: Foraging episode for more insight on that. But yes, uh,
Speaker 1: Slavic culture is Eastern Europe, from you know, Poland, through
Speaker 1: Russia and Finland. I think it's widely viewed as uh
Speaker 1: as a totally common and desirable thing to go out
Speaker 1: in the forest looking for mushrooms. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time Dugan points out that there were there was
Speaker 1: still often a taboo against speaking about certain kinds of
Speaker 1: mushrooms due to sexual connotations associated with them. Huh. Likewise,
Speaker 1: some sorts of mushrooms were also heavily associated with Baba Yaga.
Speaker 1: That uh that that evil m haggish um which that
Speaker 1: lives in the would uh in that that fabulous hut
Speaker 1: with the chicken leg. There's a story about her hunting
Speaker 1: for mushrooms and running into a hedgehog that was doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. So the Bobby Yaga and the hedgehog,
Speaker 1: they reach an understanding, and she later turns him into
Speaker 1: a boy hero. And then there's also this really interesting
Speaker 1: bit in light of mysilia. Quote Baba Yaga, he's also
Speaker 1: an associate of magic and benevolent spirits who dwell under mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Under mushrooms. Well, so you mentioned the massilia. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: fibers that stretch out underneath the soil that are in
Speaker 1: many ways the actual body of the the fungus, whereas
Speaker 1: the mushroom part is just the fruiting body is the
Speaker 1: reproductive part. Yeah. So I can't help but wonder if
Speaker 1: that little nugget of folkloric wisdom is is touching on
Speaker 1: this understanding that there's a you know, this is vast
Speaker 1: network beneath the visible mushroom. I don't know. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of of Bobby Yaga, according to Andrea's John in Baba
Speaker 1: Yaga the Ambiguous Mother and Which of the Russian folk tale.
Speaker 1: In various Slavic languages and dialects, Baba derived words serve
Speaker 1: as names for the butterfly, cake, types of cake, pears,
Speaker 1: and certain kinds of mushrooms, as well as the pelican,
Speaker 1: and she is sometimes associated with the Leshi. The author
Speaker 1: points out that in the Mezen region, the less She's
Speaker 1: wife is often said to be the yaga Baba. Wait,
Speaker 1: did you mean to say baba or well, it was
Speaker 1: written as jaga baba, so I'm not entirely sure if
Speaker 1: we're I mean it's it seems very close. We either
Speaker 1: either dealing directly with Bobba Yaga or some regional twist
Speaker 1: on it. I'm imagining the inverted Baba Yaga. Yeah. John's rights.
Speaker 1: Uh Melantinski, referring to an author and his colleagues feel
Speaker 1: that Babba Yaga became associated with a forest hut later
Speaker 1: than figures such as the forest spirit or the bear. Presumably,
Speaker 1: Baba Yaga is a later kind of forest demon because
Speaker 1: of her anthropomorphic and therefore less archaic form, whether or
Speaker 1: not she is the original owner. Baba Yaga is probably
Speaker 1: the most frequent and popular inhabitant of the forest hut
Speaker 1: in Eastern Slavic fairy tales, so in that you know
Speaker 1: the author is talking about like forest huts, and now
Speaker 1: they factor into these various folk tales. But it also
Speaker 1: points to this idea that that that you have the
Speaker 1: Bobba Yaga coming along after pre existing ideas of forest spirits,
Speaker 1: because she's very much a forest spirit. She's very much
Speaker 1: an encounter you have when you go into the magical
Speaker 1: Russian forest. But there seems to be this idea that
Speaker 1: the leshy is in essence something more archaic, and perhaps
Speaker 1: I see this reflected in other sources, perhaps less story shaped,
Speaker 1: less less fitting for a proper narrative, and therefore you
Speaker 1: actually see less leshy than you might think in in
Speaker 1: at least known and recorded Russian tales. Maybe the less
Speaker 1: she more often a figure than a character. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you do see see him pop up, but less as
Speaker 1: like a key antagonist. But we will touch on some
Speaker 1: examples here in a debt. Now. I also looked around
Speaker 1: for tales concerning Ivan Tsarevich, the hero in Jack Frost,
Speaker 1: and a traditional Russian character, and I did find a
Speaker 1: tale concerning concerning Ivan and the leshy. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is collected in a fabulous collection titled an Anthology
Speaker 1: of Russian Folk Tales by Jack V. Hainey. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: hear it all right. So the story mainly concerns Ivan
Speaker 1: and the immortal antagonist uh Cosha, the deathless who's this
Speaker 1: this like evils are like being that is encountered in
Speaker 1: a lot of these tales, Like he's he's kind of
Speaker 1: the big bad. For instance, Boba Yaga is sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: like you know, more of the primary villain, but she's
Speaker 1: often just this weird character you encounter on the way.
Speaker 1: But but the death List is just all evil and
Speaker 1: and and terror and uh and and it's just you know,
Speaker 1: the ultimate bad is he's sort of sort of a
Speaker 1: low pan sort of yeah, just you know, he can't die,
Speaker 1: but there's some sort of secret to his immortality that
Speaker 1: the hero has to figure out, and in this case,
Speaker 1: that's what Ivan is doing, trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: he can deal with this deathless enemy. But in one
Speaker 1: part of the story, Ivan and basically Ivan goes into
Speaker 1: the forest and his typical in Russian tales, has encounters
Speaker 1: in the forest that help and hinder. So in the forest,
Speaker 1: Ivan encounters three leshy in the woods who are searching
Speaker 1: for their grandfather's buried treasure. And these three treasures are
Speaker 1: an animate fighting club. So it's like a club and
Speaker 1: you say, hey, go hit that guy over the head,
Speaker 1: and the club goes and does it. Um there's a
Speaker 1: hat of invisibility, which I don't have to describe because
Speaker 1: we have versions of this in every folk lord tradition
Speaker 1: I believe. And then you have the fabulous self laying
Speaker 1: table cloth that seems not as good as the other two,
Speaker 1: and yet it's it's amazing thing, especially I guess if
Speaker 1: your dungeon master is very particular about making sure you're
Speaker 1: you're you're eating properly, because the self laying table cloth
Speaker 1: is a table cloth that you whip out and spread
Speaker 1: on the ground and it is instantly set with food
Speaker 1: and beverage. Oh so it's it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: Loaves and Fishes multiplayer absolutely. So the less she are
Speaker 1: fighting over the rights to these treasures, which Ivan has
Speaker 1: already found, by the way, and and Ivan tricks them
Speaker 1: into running a foot race instead of fighting. He says, hey,
Speaker 1: don't fight each other over this, Why don't you run
Speaker 1: from here to that? See that far tree that you
Speaker 1: can barely see over there and mid the horizon, go
Speaker 1: run at that. Whoever gets to that first wins and
Speaker 1: the less you're like, that's great, let's do it, And
Speaker 1: they go off to run the race, and so Ivan
Speaker 1: slips away while they're far away from him. From there,
Speaker 1: he encounters the Baba Yaga at her hut, who he
Speaker 1: who's seeking for answers on how to achieve cos the
Speaker 1: deathless how to achieve death? And of course the the
Speaker 1: answer ends up that there's an egg in a box
Speaker 1: hidden under a mountain that he has to gain access too.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this is a fun encounter in and of itself,
Speaker 1: but it also makes me think back to the Jack
Speaker 1: Frost film and remember the sort of dwarf like bandits
Speaker 1: that Ivan encounters and I can't help but wonder if
Speaker 1: they are sort of serving as a version of Leshi
Speaker 1: in that regard. Yeah, like a dangerous chaotic force in
Speaker 1: the forest that that Ivan has to interact with. And
Speaker 1: Trick I can't remember in the movie, doesn't he Arthur
Speaker 1: clubs in their scenes as well? Like they have to
Speaker 1: they end up throwing clubs up in the air and
Speaker 1: then later the clubs come back down and hit them. Yes,
Speaker 1: they do. That seems to connect to like the automatic
Speaker 1: fighting club that the less she was arguing over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, I was wondering the same thing. Um now
Speaker 1: now again this this. I read this in the Anthology
Speaker 1: of Russian Folk Tales by Jack V. Haney, who I
Speaker 1: believe that this particular volume has ninety nine different folk tales,
Speaker 1: some very small, someome a little bit longer, and also
Speaker 1: commentary on them, and it's it's a wonderful read. I
Speaker 1: recommend it. But he also had like several volumes on
Speaker 1: top of this that he had compiled and these were
Speaker 1: just like the best or most, you know, helpful to
Speaker 1: share with readers. But he adds later in in this
Speaker 1: particular volumes, his stories featuring the forest speech, spirit, the
Speaker 1: leshy are uncommon, and perhaps this again speaks to the
Speaker 1: more archaic take on this being a more archaic take
Speaker 1: on spirits of the forest, which are less narrative compared
Speaker 1: to other embodiments of the forest and wildness, such as
Speaker 1: Baba Yaga or even you know, Father Frost Morosco himself,
Speaker 1: you know, who's very much an embodiment of of the
Speaker 1: winds of winter. So it seems that maybe the less
Speaker 1: She and these stories are less going to be like
Speaker 1: the main villain of the story and more kind of
Speaker 1: an environmental threat. I mean, the less She might be
Speaker 1: something kind of like a like a particular monster encountered
Speaker 1: along the way, or almost like a like a pit
Speaker 1: of quicksand like just something that you've got to worry
Speaker 1: about in the in the wild environment. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. Now I want to share some other points
Speaker 1: that that Haney makes about Russian folk tales in general,
Speaker 1: because I think these can help us understand Russian folklore
Speaker 1: a bit more and also understand the less She's place
Speaker 1: in these tales. So Haney contends that there are there
Speaker 1: are more folk tales that may have emerged out of
Speaker 1: the Russian people than any other. He says, due in
Speaker 1: part to the fact that well into the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Russia quote remained in illiterate and basically peasant country where
Speaker 1: folk traditions were strong and carefully maintained. Okay, so is
Speaker 1: the idea that if the culture was more literate, the
Speaker 1: folk tales would have been less less retold. Um Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the idea is like, once you start writing
Speaker 1: them down right, then you have like a total a
Speaker 1: different energy takeover regarding the folk tales, and then you
Speaker 1: also have different influences on the shape of those tales.
Speaker 1: But in Russia, he's arguing that they remained um like
Speaker 1: the property of of the common Russian people, and they
Speaker 1: were speaking of this sort of Russian existence that had
Speaker 1: not changed a whole lot, you know, throughout their history.
Speaker 1: But then he points out that the twentieth century comes
Speaker 1: along and this is an exceedingly hard time on the
Speaker 1: Russian people and it ends up disrupting their storytelling traditions.
Speaker 1: He also points out that Russia has the second largest
Speaker 1: number of tale types according to the International Classification System
Speaker 1: for Folk Tales UH. And this gets you know, when
Speaker 1: you get into the the scholarly study of folk tales,
Speaker 1: you find it, ye other, there are all these different
Speaker 1: classifications for the different types of tales you encounter in
Speaker 1: cultures around the world. He points out that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of animal tales. UH. The frequent villains you
Speaker 1: encounter are, of course the Baba Yaga, which is nasty dwarves,
Speaker 1: shape shifting the shins. However, Bobby Yaga is also sometimes
Speaker 1: a donor or helper. Frequent characters in general, you have
Speaker 1: Bobby Yaga and or Hut, you have the Firebird, the
Speaker 1: deathless Prince, Ivan's are of Itch. We already mentioned Princess Elena,
Speaker 1: and of course generic Czar is often involved as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the king that is. And I believe that
Speaker 1: the exact nature the king depends, uh, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: a little more on the cruel side, sometimes a little
Speaker 1: more in the bedevolent side, kind of like just sort
Speaker 1: of the generic king you encounter in other folkloric traditions. Now,
Speaker 1: it does seem that a huge number of these tales
Speaker 1: do involve having to travel through the forest, right, absolutely
Speaker 1: that the hero frequently wanders through the woods and at
Speaker 1: some point receives help in his quest from an animal
Speaker 1: or some other sort of supernatural aid. And uh, and
Speaker 1: sometimes the charactery encounters is a devil or the devil
Speaker 1: or the devil's offspring. Uh. This this was interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a whole category of tale. Ivan the fool
Speaker 1: versus the devil or the devil's offspring. And it's not
Speaker 1: really Ivan as a fool, but Ivan. I think it's more.
Speaker 1: You know, he's clever, but in kind of a a
Speaker 1: roguish way. And in these tales, Hainey writes, it's important
Speaker 1: to recognize first the satire, but then also that the
Speaker 1: devil is not really a Christian devil, but quote rather
Speaker 1: a figure derived from the various malevolent spirits that inhabited
Speaker 1: the Russian peasants universe, the forest spirit or Leshy, the
Speaker 1: water spirit or Vodiana, and others too numerous to mention.
Speaker 1: So again the idea of the devil comes along and
Speaker 1: it ends up kind of absorbing these other ideas of
Speaker 1: evil things in the wild wood. This is just another
Speaker 1: one of the many interesting ways that the concept of
Speaker 1: Satan or the devil has evolved over the centuries. I mean,
Speaker 1: like if you go back to the earliest versions of Satan,
Speaker 1: even like in the in the Jewish tradition, Satan then
Speaker 1: is not even presented as as monstrous or evil, like
Speaker 1: in the Book of Jobs. Seems to be one of
Speaker 1: the earliest references to Satan. Satan is like one of
Speaker 1: God's angels, you know, he kind of works for him.
Speaker 1: He he's sort of like a prosecutor or a like
Speaker 1: a detective doing you know, trying to sniff out disloyalty.
Speaker 1: But later on you incorporate more and more into this
Speaker 1: adversary figure of the monstrous, of the evil, of the
Speaker 1: all that's wrong with the world. And I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons that the devil figure accumulates
Speaker 1: the monstrosity of every particular location and every culture that
Speaker 1: absorbs him. Now hany does have some some other stories
Speaker 1: with Leshy popping up. One of them that that was
Speaker 1: really good is a story called A Prince and his Uncle,
Speaker 1: which features an old trapper in the woods who serves
Speaker 1: the farest spirit or leshy. When a greedy king shows
Speaker 1: up looking to squeeze more money out of the commoners,
Speaker 1: he asked the old man how he catches his beasts,
Speaker 1: and the old man says, well, the forest spirit sets
Speaker 1: out snares and the beast is stupid and gets caught.
Speaker 1: So the king hears this and he gets an idea.
Speaker 1: He bribes the old man with wine and money for
Speaker 1: the location of these snares that again were set by
Speaker 1: the leshy, and then the king orders the less she
Speaker 1: caught and fettered to an iron post. Meanwhile, the prince
Speaker 1: is a decent lad and listens to the less She's
Speaker 1: please for release. He instructs the prince in how to
Speaker 1: obtain the key to his irons and distracts the others
Speaker 1: uh while he's being released. Afterwards, the king is enraged
Speaker 1: and sends the Prince out on an excursion into the
Speaker 1: far corners of the world his punishment, and he sends
Speaker 1: his old uncle with him to guide him. This uncle
Speaker 1: figure who it's always in quotations, so it's like not
Speaker 1: really his uncle, um, but then again it's not super
Speaker 1: important to the story. Seemingly, eventually, the prince and the
Speaker 1: uncle switched places, and at one point the less She
Speaker 1: meets the prince again and gives him some magical items,
Speaker 1: which include once more the self setting table cloth, but
Speaker 1: also a magic mirror that shows you whatever you want
Speaker 1: to see and a magical musical instrument that kind of
Speaker 1: plays on demand. And then he later provides him with
Speaker 1: a horse and magical vodka to give him strength against
Speaker 1: a terrible monster. Now, sadly the story doesn't really involve
Speaker 1: the less she Be on this point, but we see
Speaker 1: the less She kind of serving this role uh in
Speaker 1: the later portions of the story as this magical forest
Speaker 1: creature that shows up and provides assistance to the hero.
Speaker 1: But then he goes on to share what I think
Speaker 1: is my favorite leshy story that I read um Hain.
Speaker 1: He shares this story titled The Forest Spirit, which hinges
Speaker 1: on this notion that you have a leshy or some
Speaker 1: or various other creatures like a like a coldn which
Speaker 1: is a type of male sorcerer. If you if they
Speaker 1: are not invited to your wedding, they may show up
Speaker 1: anyway and find some way to spoil it. Wait, so
Speaker 1: you are supposed to invite them, apparently, that's that's one tradition,
Speaker 1: is go ahead and invite the leshy. It's it would
Speaker 1: be rude not to because if you don't invite the leshy,
Speaker 1: he will show up and he might cause chaos. But
Speaker 1: I guess if you do invite him, he won't show
Speaker 1: up there. You know, they're fickle, chaotic creatures. It's reverse psychology.
Speaker 1: So this, this The Forest Spirit, is a fun little tail.
Speaker 1: There's not much to it, but this is how it
Speaker 1: goes down. Basically, So there's an old peasant who grows
Speaker 1: and threshes grain, but then he suddenly keeps coming into
Speaker 1: the drawing shed to find that the grain he just
Speaker 1: harvested is already threshed. Now, basically this means somebody is
Speaker 1: doing half his work for him for free. But you
Speaker 1: know he's he's he's an old cadger, you know, probably
Speaker 1: a bit grumpy about things. He wants to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this. He doesn't want unexplained threshing going
Speaker 1: on and his his his drawing shed. So he asked
Speaker 1: an old woman for help, and she says, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just an old woman. I can't help you. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to go ask the local witch. So he goes
Speaker 1: to the local witch and she says, well, look, it's
Speaker 1: a leshie that's doing this. Uh, but if you want
Speaker 1: to stop him, you want to catch the leshie. This
Speaker 1: is what you do. Stake out your shed and then
Speaker 1: you sneak up on him and you loop a necklace
Speaker 1: with a cross around on it around his neck and
Speaker 1: that'll capture him, making him your servant. And so the
Speaker 1: old man does just that. Uh. The lessie, of course
Speaker 1: immediately asked for release and offers to help the old
Speaker 1: man build a new slip to haul grain on in
Speaker 1: exchange for his freedom. The old man agrees, but then
Speaker 1: keeps asking for more work in exchange for the less
Speaker 1: she's release. So he's like, yeah, well I need some firewood.
Speaker 1: Maybe after you get me some firewood. And he's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know I need the firewood chopped up as well.
Speaker 1: I am altering the deal. Pray I alter it no further, right,
Speaker 1: But then finally he says, you know, Lee, she says,
Speaker 1: all right, how about now can I go free? I've
Speaker 1: chopped your wood. I made you this slip. You know what,
Speaker 1: what else do you want? He's like, no, my niece
Speaker 1: is getting married next week and you're coming to the
Speaker 1: wedding with me. So the old man is just straight
Speaker 1: up taking the less she to a family wedding as
Speaker 1: his plus one. Does it explain why he wants the
Speaker 1: less she to go to the wedding? Is he just
Speaker 1: trying to like pad out the attendants. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't expressly say in this book, or doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, interpret it expressly in this book. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a sense where like I'm supposed
Speaker 1: you're supposed to invite unless you to the wedding, So
Speaker 1: I will I'll just straight up bring him Like maybe
Speaker 1: he is misinterpreting the tradition being an old man who
Speaker 1: lives in the woods or um or maybe maybe he's lonely.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I kind of like the idea that
Speaker 1: he's lonely, and it's just like he's spending so much
Speaker 1: time with the less She's like, now, I'm come to
Speaker 1: this wedding with me. Come hang out. I may need
Speaker 1: you to chop some wood during the ceremony. Yeah. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: they attend. The less she seems at first to be
Speaker 1: standing back and minding his own business in the corner
Speaker 1: of the room, standing by the doors, out of sight,
Speaker 1: not even partaking of the food in the drink. But
Speaker 1: then the less she sees a pretty maid bringing out
Speaker 1: the soured milk the cup, which, by the context of
Speaker 1: the story seems to be just part of the ceremony.
Speaker 1: So the less she immediately takes her, spins her around,
Speaker 1: and then she falls down, spilling the milk all over
Speaker 1: the place. And unless she begins to clap and laugh
Speaker 1: at this loudly so everybody hears it, the guests do
Speaker 1: not find this amusing at all, and they chastise the
Speaker 1: old man for bringing such a guest with him to
Speaker 1: the event. Oh so this is the first time they've
Speaker 1: noticed there's a Lessi here at the wedding. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's standing over there by the door. Nobody noticed until
Speaker 1: he started, you know, making a spectacle and spoiling the wedding.
Speaker 1: So everyone is displeased, and they curse him and all
Speaker 1: and cuss at him. Uh, the old man and unless
Speaker 1: she go home the less she asked once more for
Speaker 1: his release, and the old man grants it to him.
Speaker 1: And I love the way that Haney winds this up. Uh.
Speaker 1: He attributes this tale the telling him this tale to
Speaker 1: a sixty two year old peasant who related it in
Speaker 1: n and the The final quote at the end of
Speaker 1: the tale is in olden times, they believe this, but
Speaker 1: now they don't believe anything. Those darned kids no longer
Speaker 1: believe in the leshy. Yeah, I just yeah, I love
Speaker 1: the the grumpiness of the tale, like the tale that like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you this story. Kids don't believe
Speaker 1: it anymore, but it happened. This is actually similar to
Speaker 1: another tale that I was reading, at least summarized in
Speaker 1: in one of the sources we were looking at for
Speaker 1: this episode, which is the Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic
Speaker 1: myth and legend by Mike Dixon Kennedy. And in this
Speaker 1: entry there was a story where there's a there's an
Speaker 1: old man who lives by the forest, and one day
Speaker 1: a traveler appears and asks if he can rest in
Speaker 1: his hut, and the old man says, yeah, sure, you
Speaker 1: can rest in my hut. Now, the old man is
Speaker 1: a is a cattle herdsman who has to, you know,
Speaker 1: take his herd of cattle through the forest to graze.
Speaker 1: And after giving the traveler a good night's rest in
Speaker 1: his home, he is told it's like review old that
Speaker 1: the traveler was a leshy and was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: You're not going to have to worry about your cattle anymore.
Speaker 1: You don't have to follow them around. You just let
Speaker 1: him go out and roam in the morning, and then
Speaker 1: they'll come back full of and and give plenty of
Speaker 1: milk at the end of the day. And this happens
Speaker 1: for a while until the traveler gets curious about what's
Speaker 1: happening during the day, so he follows his cattle out
Speaker 1: and then finds that they are being shepherded in in
Speaker 1: or I guess not shepherded. I don't know. What the
Speaker 1: term for a person who heards cattle would be a
Speaker 1: cat cattle herded by some old crone. I guess the
Speaker 1: the ideas that she's a witch or a helper of
Speaker 1: some kind of the leshy and when he finds her
Speaker 1: and tries to speak to her in the forest, she vanishes,
Speaker 1: and then the basically the blessing is lifted and he
Speaker 1: has to keep toiling with his cattle again after that,
Speaker 1: like they're no longer self servicing cattle. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: his curiosity breaks the leshies goodwill. Yeah, yeah, that does
Speaker 1: seem a very similar story that I did. The let
Speaker 1: she might just spontaneously start helping you. You out, but
Speaker 1: if you get too greedy about it, Uh, then it's
Speaker 1: going to backfire on you too greedy or too curious. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, I guess one way you could take
Speaker 1: the moral of that story is just like, don't go
Speaker 1: in there, don't look too close at what's happening in
Speaker 1: the woods, don't inquire about the law of the woods.
Speaker 1: Just let the woods do its thing. Yeah. Alright, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take another break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Than alright, we're back, so clearly a
Speaker 1: lot of the folk tales about the leshy come from
Speaker 1: anxieties people have about the idea of getting lost in
Speaker 1: the woods. Again, remember one of the main threats that
Speaker 1: the the leshy and his demon or monster form uh
Speaker 1: you know, represents threats in a couple of different ways.
Speaker 1: One by like kidnapping children or unbaptized babies at the
Speaker 1: forest's edge, but also by causing people to become lost
Speaker 1: in the woods. You're traveling through the woods, maybe you're
Speaker 1: trying to stick to the path, but then you're lured
Speaker 1: off the path by the call of the leshy, or
Speaker 1: by the she pretending to be somebody you know or
Speaker 1: you know, or or mimicking the sound of a distressed child,
Speaker 1: and then you get lost in the woods. You you
Speaker 1: can't find your way home, and you perish out among
Speaker 1: the trees. I wanted to talk about an article that
Speaker 1: I was reading about the real life sort of like
Speaker 1: science and history of people getting lost in the woods. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is an exerpt adapted from a book called From
Speaker 1: Here to There, The Art and Science of Finding and
Speaker 1: Losing Our Way by Michael Bond, published by Harvard University Press.
Speaker 1: This excerpt was published and wired and I thought this
Speaker 1: was really interesting. So a lot of the article focuses
Speaker 1: on the story of Geraldine Larkay, who was a sixty
Speaker 1: six year old retired nurse from Tennessee who died in
Speaker 1: the forest after becoming lost just off of the Appalachian
Speaker 1: Trail in and once her body was discovered, details from
Speaker 1: her diary and her phone clarified what happened. She had
Speaker 1: been hiking the Appalachian Trail and she moved just slightly
Speaker 1: off the path in order to go to the bathroom.
Speaker 1: It was that she wrote that she went no more
Speaker 1: than eighty paces off the path, but then afterwards was
Speaker 1: nevertheless unable to find the trail again. She survived for
Speaker 1: nineteen days before dying of the effects of exposure and starvation,
Speaker 1: and when her campsite was discovered, it became clear that
Speaker 1: she was actually less than half a mile from the
Speaker 1: trail as the crow flies, and that search and rescue
Speaker 1: teams with dogs had passed within a hundred yards of
Speaker 1: her campsite while she was still alive. She was also
Speaker 1: really close to some railroad tracks that could have led
Speaker 1: her out of the forest if she had known about them.
Speaker 1: And in this case and others like it. There are
Speaker 1: there's some really kind of like cruel and unsympathetic and
Speaker 1: and and dumb ways that people react to this by
Speaker 1: saying like, oh, how could you know? How dumb? How
Speaker 1: you know she could have survived? How could you get
Speaker 1: lost when you're that close to the trail? But Bond
Speaker 1: points out that experienced hiker don't talk like this because
Speaker 1: most of them know actually how easy it is to
Speaker 1: become hopelessly lost in a forest, and how powerful is
Speaker 1: the urge to do all of the just exactly the
Speaker 1: wrong things in that scenario. For example, one common piece
Speaker 1: of advice is if you're lost in the woods, you
Speaker 1: should immediately stop moving, Like, as soon as you realize
Speaker 1: that you don't know where you are and you don't
Speaker 1: know how to get back where you came from, immediately
Speaker 1: stop moving. Stay in place, and you're more likely to survive.
Speaker 1: While you're in place, you can come up with a
Speaker 1: plan if you need to, and not exhaust yourself moving
Speaker 1: around or getting more lost in the process. You can
Speaker 1: wait for rescue without worth without wandering further and further
Speaker 1: away from where you were. However, the stop and wait plan,
Speaker 1: while actually very good advice, is extremely difficult to actually follow. Uh.
Speaker 1: What people with experience report is that the moment you
Speaker 1: realize you're lost in the woods, you are overcome with
Speaker 1: a powerful sense of panic that compels you to keep moving,
Speaker 1: in fact, to start running all over the place. Bond
Speaker 1: quotes a British psychologist named Hugo Spears from another work
Speaker 1: about his experience of becoming temporarily lost in the rainforest
Speaker 1: in Peru. So Spears writes, quote, so I didn't go far,
Speaker 1: but it's the jungle, and ten meters into the jungle
Speaker 1: is enough to be completely disoriented. I was lost in
Speaker 1: this jungle for two hours. They sent a dog out
Speaker 1: to find me. I wasn't the first person to have
Speaker 1: a dog sent out. It was terrifying. My brain just
Speaker 1: wanted me to run, just run, just keep moving. I
Speaker 1: was very aware that that was not the right strategy.
Speaker 1: Keeping moving in the jungle is not going to save
Speaker 1: your life. So I tried to calm down and think
Speaker 1: carefully and not react at high speed, and look at
Speaker 1: my environment. And I realized I was going in circles
Speaker 1: exactly like in the movies. I is using a machete
Speaker 1: to mark big trees, laying down a thread to know
Speaker 1: if i'd come that way before that was starting to work,
Speaker 1: I'd mark a tree with three slashes, and if I
Speaker 1: ended up back at that tree, I knew I'd gone
Speaker 1: in a circle. I was nearly back at the camp
Speaker 1: when they sent the dog out, but it was a
Speaker 1: huge relief. It just made me very aware that being
Speaker 1: really really lost is quite terrifying. It is not a
Speaker 1: normal thing. I think being lost in the woods is
Speaker 1: one of those types of scenarios where your imagination of
Speaker 1: it really does not capture what the experience would be like.
Speaker 1: People imagine they're like, Okay, you know, I've I've I've
Speaker 1: gotten turned around disoriented before, maybe you know, in a
Speaker 1: in a in a city or in a neighborhood or something.
Speaker 1: You don't know exactly where you're going, but it's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to find your way back when there are roads
Speaker 1: and sidewalks and landmarks. Oh yeah, there's that house. Being
Speaker 1: lost in the woods is not like that. Being lost
Speaker 1: in the woods, I think could it could be argued
Speaker 1: that it is a form of an altered state of
Speaker 1: consciousness that is terrifying and completely short circuits your better
Speaker 1: judgment in multiple ways. Oh absolutely, And you know I
Speaker 1: I have my friends who have been lost in the
Speaker 1: forest before, and they were not like as lost as
Speaker 1: like one can truly become lost in the forest, or
Speaker 1: certainly as lost as one could in the times of
Speaker 1: these folk tales, because they at least had not lost
Speaker 1: cell coverage for their phone and we're able to to
Speaker 1: use that. You know, they were still tethered to the
Speaker 1: into the civilized world via their their device, and it
Speaker 1: was still a terrifying experience. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, try
Speaker 1: to imagine it without those devices, without even a compass. Again,
Speaker 1: this is there are so many ways that imagining what
Speaker 1: it would be like to be lost in the forest
Speaker 1: does not really cut it. Like, you're not likely to
Speaker 1: predict a lot of the ways that your normal powers
Speaker 1: of navigation fail. For example, of course, now, uh, if
Speaker 1: you are lost in the woods, it is generally advised
Speaker 1: that you should just stop and wait for rescue. But
Speaker 1: if you are going to walk, you need to have
Speaker 1: a good idea where you're going and try to travel
Speaker 1: in a straight line. You might think that going straight
Speaker 1: is easy, right, I can walk a straight line. We all,
Speaker 1: you know, we walk straight lines all day, But actually
Speaker 1: it is not easy without landmarks, without trails or a
Speaker 1: compass lost people really do, and this is proven by research.
Speaker 1: They just walk in circles. There was research in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine by by Jan Suman who used GPS monitors
Speaker 1: to track volunteers while they tried to navigate in a
Speaker 1: straight line through a couple of natural environments without the
Speaker 1: aid of external landmarks or signs. This was the Sahara
Speaker 1: Desert and Germany's buy and Walled forest, and it did
Speaker 1: not go well. When they couldn't see the sun, people
Speaker 1: could not travel in a straight line at all. Small
Speaker 1: initial errors in orientation would just quickly grow wider as
Speaker 1: they piled upon themselves. And people actually truly did just
Speaker 1: walk in circles. I know, it sounds like that wouldn't happen.
Speaker 1: You're like, no, no, no, I could. I could go
Speaker 1: into straight line, but you probably couldn't. You just go
Speaker 1: in circles. Uh. And to read from the article quote,
Speaker 1: Sumon concluded that with no external cues to help them,
Speaker 1: people will not travel more than around a hundred meters
Speaker 1: from their starting position, regardless of how long they walk for.
Speaker 1: That's so hard to believe, but apparently it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the path in the forest is not just a
Speaker 1: suggestion you know it is. It is a lifeline. But
Speaker 1: another big part of this article, Bond talks about how
Speaker 1: being lost in the forest it doesn't just make it
Speaker 1: hard to navigate. It does that, but it also affects
Speaker 1: the way we reason. He says being lost as a
Speaker 1: cognitive state in that the woods make it extremely difficult,
Speaker 1: sometimes basically impossible, to form a mental map of your
Speaker 1: surroundings because woods just kind of look like woods if
Speaker 1: you're if you're not used to being in them, uh,
Speaker 1: he says, quote, nothing in your spatial memory matches what
Speaker 1: you see. Your normal mental equipment for navigation becomes close
Speaker 1: to useless. But even more so, Bond argues that being
Speaker 1: lost is an emotional state. Quote it delivers a psychic
Speaker 1: double whammy. Not only are you stricken with fear, you
Speaker 1: also lose your ability to reason. You suffer what neuroscientists
Speaker 1: Joseph LaDou calls a hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion.
Speaker 1: Of people make things a lot worse for themselves when
Speaker 1: they realize they are lost by running, for instance, because
Speaker 1: they're afraid they can't solve problems or figure out what
Speaker 1: to do, they fail to notice landmarks or fail to
Speaker 1: remember them. They lose track of how far they've traveled.
Speaker 1: They feel claustrophobic, as if their surroundings are closing in
Speaker 1: on them. Uh And Bond also says that there are
Speaker 1: chemical signatures of this lost in the woods panic. He
Speaker 1: quotes a search and rescue specialist named Robert Kester who
Speaker 1: argues that being lost is in terms of neuro by allergy,
Speaker 1: similar to a panic attack. The body floods with catechola
Speaker 1: means and the standard fight or flight behavior patterns get triggered.
Speaker 1: So in a subjective sense, it often feels kind of
Speaker 1: like a break with reality. You know, you're you're just
Speaker 1: kind of you feel like you're losing your mind. And
Speaker 1: this can even last after a person gets out of
Speaker 1: the state. He also quotes Ed Cornell, who's a psychologist
Speaker 1: who studies the behavior of people who get lost. And
Speaker 1: and Cornell says that it can be really difficult to
Speaker 1: get information out of a person who's been lost. They
Speaker 1: often have trouble communicating their experience and can't remember quite
Speaker 1: what happened to them. And uh And and the type
Speaker 1: of disorientation and panic and stress that's brought on by
Speaker 1: being lost in the woods causes people sometimes to experience
Speaker 1: delusions and hallucinations. Even in otherwise healthy people or seemingly
Speaker 1: otherwise healthy people. They will sometimes report hallucinating interactions with
Speaker 1: people in the forest. And given all this, it's not
Speaker 1: hard at all to see where stories and other oldly
Speaker 1: demon who lives in the forest and lures people into
Speaker 1: becoming lost where they would come from. You know, you
Speaker 1: can easily imagine somebody becoming lost in the forest in
Speaker 1: medieval Russia and then by chance they managed to find
Speaker 1: their way back or get rescued somehow, and what is
Speaker 1: their experience. It might be kind of hard for them
Speaker 1: to remember what happened, that's strange, and they may be
Speaker 1: experienced like stress based hallucinations while they were out there,
Speaker 1: hearing voices or hearing sounds, maybe even seeing people who
Speaker 1: were taunting them or luring them this way and that, Uh,
Speaker 1: it becomes quite clear how stories like this could come
Speaker 1: out of real experiences. Yeah, and I think it's also
Speaker 1: interesting how you know, we can compare this to the
Speaker 1: leshy and the idea of the leshy being both gigantic
Speaker 1: and small, hiding behind blades of glad grass, and also
Speaker 1: being the another size of a bell tower. There's this
Speaker 1: kind of this idea of the nature of the leshy
Speaker 1: warps physical space in a way that's ms to line
Speaker 1: up well with this um that the experiences we're describing here. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, I gotta say researching this episode has has
Speaker 1: made me think kind of differently. I mean, I'm somebody
Speaker 1: who I love to go hiking in the woods on
Speaker 1: a on a path of course, and in the past
Speaker 1: I think I might have been, i don't know, more
Speaker 1: likely to to say, like, oh, there's something that looks
Speaker 1: cool over there, maybe I'll go off the path. I
Speaker 1: think that's something people should genuinely be cautious about, Like
Speaker 1: it is much easier to lose the path and lose
Speaker 1: your way in the woods than you might think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: certainly keep in mind for anybody who listened to our
Speaker 1: episode on mushroom foraging and decides to get into it,
Speaker 1: because you know, often is the case that you you
Speaker 1: spot the you know, the the tempting Chanterrell's just a
Speaker 1: little off the path, and you may go out to
Speaker 1: them and and may that may work out just fine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, for you, but it also might not, especially
Speaker 1: if you then see the next patch of Chanterelle's or
Speaker 1: what might be Chanterrell's, but also might be just some
Speaker 1: some you know, orange ish colored leaves on the ground,
Speaker 1: and then before you know it, uh, the lesh she
Speaker 1: has led you astray. We will eat them. We won't
Speaker 1: eat them, we will saute them in butter. We will
Speaker 1: be saute in butter. I I do you know again,
Speaker 1: I have to to really recommend that that Haney book
Speaker 1: for anyone who wants to read Russian folk tales. But
Speaker 1: I have to drive home again just how good that
Speaker 1: sixty Jack Frost film. You know, it's not only in
Speaker 1: terms of just what a beautiful production it is, but
Speaker 1: it seems to really capture the nature of those Russian
Speaker 1: folk tales, because there's this like whimsy and danger and magic, uh,
Speaker 1: that is inherent in a lot of these beings, like
Speaker 1: for instance, the Baba Yaga herself is in the tails
Speaker 1: often described you know, is being you know, having these
Speaker 1: qual qualities of of a woodland monster spirit, but also
Speaker 1: of just like a ridiculous, farting old woman, you know,
Speaker 1: and and all that I think is reflected very well.
Speaker 1: And that whimsical performance in the sixty five film. Yes,
Speaker 1: Tom petty riffs society. It is haunted by peasant genius.
Speaker 1: It really is. You know. Another interesting point than Haney
Speaker 1: made in his overview of Russian folk tales is that,
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that the hero very frequently goes
Speaker 1: into the forest and has an encounter, also the hero
Speaker 1: always prevails, Like Haney really underlined that, like that the
Speaker 1: hero is going to win in these stories. So again
Speaker 1: we can think back to so many of these tales
Speaker 1: dealing with like the the chaotic nature of the woods
Speaker 1: and it being they being stories about how humans can
Speaker 1: and do overcome the chaos of the wilds. Though it's
Speaker 1: funny because the story is also uh, they don't encourage
Speaker 1: what in the modern day at least is generally the
Speaker 1: best behavior if you become lost in the woods, like
Speaker 1: the you know, Ivan Sarovitch does not sit down and
Speaker 1: wait for rescue. He does not hug a tree, which
Speaker 1: is actually the smartest thing to do if you get lost.
Speaker 1: He's like, no, forge ahead, Yeah, it always works out
Speaker 1: for him eventually. If you get lost, don't be like Ivan.
Speaker 1: I guess unless you've got a self setting table cloth,
Speaker 1: then you might be okay. Oh yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've got a self setting table cloth. That's really gonna
Speaker 1: help you out in the long run. I mean that
Speaker 1: that means you don't have to worry about food and water.
Speaker 1: Do you think the food from the self setting table
Speaker 1: cloth was good or was it just like you know,
Speaker 1: kind of yeah, you know, it's bread or whatever. Is
Speaker 1: it like really nice scourmet stuff? Um? I mean I'm
Speaker 1: assuming it was probably like basic like everyday food. Uh.
Speaker 1: I guess it was pretty good. I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: section where where Ivan's dining from it. Um, And I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just not I don't think it was
Speaker 1: mentioned in that particular retelling of the tale, but I
Speaker 1: imagine it as being like typical like typical Russian people's
Speaker 1: food borshed in morals. Yeah, I guess. So you know,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna go ahead and close this out here.
Speaker 1: Obviously there there's there's so many other things we could
Speaker 1: talk about with Russian folklore, a tremendous amount of material
Speaker 1: out there. You know, who knows if if you all
Speaker 1: enjoyed listening to this episode, perhaps we could return in
Speaker 1: the future, but we would love to hear from you
Speaker 1: in the meantime. Some of the key questions, Um, I
Speaker 1: would regard, of course, did you grow up watching Jack Frost.
Speaker 1: If so, tell us about that and it's impact on
Speaker 1: your you know, your your your holidays, or your just
Speaker 1: a sort of appreciation of cinema in general. I understand
Speaker 1: it was quite influential on some filmmakers. By the way,
Speaker 1: I also am interested if anybody has any definite answers
Speaker 1: regarding father or grandfather Mushroom. Does he have an existence
Speaker 1: in Russian Russian folklore prior to that nine film? I
Speaker 1: would I would love to have some clarity on that question.
Speaker 1: And of course, if you have been lost in the woods,
Speaker 1: either just a little bit lost or like majorly lost
Speaker 1: in the woods, if you would like to share your
Speaker 1: your experience with us and tell us how it relates
Speaker 1: to both the you know, the studies that Joe mentioned
Speaker 1: and also the folklore we've discussed here. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you totally. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you get
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Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
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